a reflection for holy week: a Savior for betrayers

The long-awaited day had arrived.  Since Jesus had begun His ministry, whisperings about Him had been heard all through the land of Israel.  There were people who guessed He might be the Messiah, the coming Deliverer who was prophesied about in the Old Testament.  So when He got on a colt and rode into the city of Jerusalem the week of the Passover celebration, when the town was bustling with celebration and out of town visitors were everywhere, it seemed like perfect timing.  Everyone around, a big crowd of people, were caught up in the excitement.  They spread their cloaks and palms beneath Him…treating Him with honor, like a King.

The long oppression of the Romans…was it finally over?  Everyone in Jerusalem saw the Messiah, the promised Deliverer, to be a military hero…they thought that Jesus would clobber the Romans and set them free from their oppression.  So they wave palm branches, which were political and nationalistic symbols, like waving an American flag would be today…and they cry out, “Hosanna!” which means, “Please save us!”…but they are blind to their need for spiritual deliverance.  All they want is their homeland back again.  All they want is a Jesus on their own terms.

Jesus for His part is deliberately fulfilling an Old Testament promise about the Messiah in order to push the envelope with the Jewish leaders, so they would push things toward the crucifixion.  He knew that the Jewish religious leaders would see His actions as directly related to Old Testament prophecy, the prophecy that we read this morning in Zechariah 9, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 

That’s why Jesus deliberately sent His disciples out to find a colt.  He wanted to exactly fulfill Old Testament prophecy in order to get the religious leaders’ attention.  He knew that they would do anything to preserve the little bit of power they had by cooperating with the Romans.  He knew they would see Him as a challenge to their power, and He knew that they would try to kill him, that He would be crucified and rise again.  Acts 2:23 says, “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (NIV).  In other words, God knew exactly what was going to happen…Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen…the Holy Spirit knew exactly what was going to happen when Jesus rode into Jerusalem in fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture.  Jesus was going to get Himself killed…at the hands of the religious people.

And so we are pulled in and implicated in the crucifixion.  It wasn’t the secular Romans, the world, that was out to get Jesus…it was the religious people.  The Romans were just the means of execution.  So when you think about it, that means it was us.  All too often, just like the people of Israel, we think that the problem is all the people who are outside, those worldly people who don’t value old-time values and old-time religion…all the while, we miss the fact that the real problem is us. And that truth hurts.

What is it that we do wrong?  We have a tendency to try to make Jesus do and be what we want Him to do and be.  We try to make Jesus into the God we want Him to be, instead of the God that He is.  We want a leader who does everything for us without requiring anything of us. 

We do this in several ways.  First of all, when we—like the crowd in Jerusalem that welcomed Jesus with palms—confuse our nation with God’s Kingdom.  The people of Israel just wanted their nation back again.  This is not so very unlike those in the Church who spend all their time and energy trying to make the United States into a Christian nation, as if God’s Kingdom could be found in an earthly government. 

Obviously, God cares about the government and can use it to do good in the world, and we ought to do all we can to see that that happens.  But…there has snuck into the Church an angry, fists-in-the-air, defensive attitude towards the world…as if non-believers out there are trying to steal "our" country from us. 

What if, instead of expecting the world to act like the Church, we acted like the Church should?  What if we taught and served and loved in such a way that people sat up, took note, and began to ask us (as Peter suggests), “What is the reason for the hope that is within you?”  Yes, we are just like the people in Jerusalem when we demand that Jesus give us political power and a Christian nation instead of realizing that the Church often functions best as a loving minority, serving and reaching out to a broken world.  That’s how the Early Church worked!

We also act like the people in Jerusalem when we praise God at Church but deny Him by our actions the rest of the week.  I think most of us would have to admit to this.  It is super easy to come to church and sing songs of praise and act religious but when we return to our homes and work places, all too often we treat our family and co-workers badly.  We act selfishly.  We break each of the Ten Commandments.  We do not spend the time in the Bible and in prayer that we should.  We don’t care for the needy as we should.  We don’t forgive.  We don’t share our faith in a loving way with those around us.  We are quick with the Hosannas but slow to follow through.

The people of Jerusalem were all excited to praise Jesus when it was convenient for them…when they thought He would be a military leader who would set them free from Rome.  But when He didn’t move fast  enough for them, when He began to lead in a more spiritual manner and didn’t take out the Romans, they quickly became a part of the fickle crowd shouting, “Crucify Him!”

I see myself in that fickle crowd too. For example, there was a time in my life when I was going to school and even though I had always gone to church every Sunday before that time, I found myself getting up on Sunday mornings and saying, “I’m too tired to go to church.”  And so all too frequently, I wouldn’t go.  I see my own times of faithlessness, my own following Jesus just when it is convenient for me, my own confusing the Kingdom of God with my country…and the many other ways that I try to make Jesus the leader I want Him to be, instead of the God that He is.  I try to make Him bow to my desires instead of bowing to His will. 

The bottom line is, we are all implicated.  There is no escape for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We turn away from Jesus.  We are not faithful.  We are His betrayers.  We are the ones who will shout in a few days’ time, “Crucify Him!”  We are the ones who drive the nails into His hands and feet.

But here’s the good news: when we face our naked selves and see the depth of our sin, when we see how far we have wandered from God, our creative and surprising God takes even our failure and sin and turns it around and uses it as a tool in His hand to save and redeem us.  Again, Acts 2:23-24 says, “This man [Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.  But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (NIV).

God knew what we would do. God knew we were going to kill Jesus.  So He took that very thing, that most evil of things that we did, and turned it around.  Jesus humbly emptied Himself, as Philippians told us, took on our sin and the punishment for it, and then rose again, showing that He had conquered sin, death, and the devil. 

Christ came for you.  He rode into Jerusalem for you, even though He knew you were only offering convenient words of praise, even though He knew you would desert Him when the going got tough, even though He knew you would turn away, even though He knew that you would kill Him and not just with any old death but with an excruciatingly painful death. 

But He still rode into Jerusalem for you.  He did it because His love is an insanely powerful kind of love.  It’s a love that embraces the unlovely.  It’s a love that pulls in the unfaithful.  It’s a love that chases down the rebellious.  Romans 5:6-8 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

He died for you before you were a believer, when you were at your ugliest and worst.  And He still loves you when you wander from Him.  He will keep chasing you down.  He will keep pursuing you.  He will never give up on you.  Because you, you who are His betrayer (and I who am His betrayer), are precious to Him.  And He came to set you free from sin, death and the power of the devil.  To make you His own.  To bring you out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light.  To adopt you as His child.  And this giving of Christ for you and for me, though we do not deserve it, is the very Gospel, the very good news.  Amen.

why "The Descendants" meant so much to me

The Descendants won big at the Golden Globes this weekend, taking home the Best Picture, Drama award, as well as Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama award for George Clooney.  In addition, young actress Shailene Woodley was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture award.  All these Hollywood honors are wonderful, but I think the real test of a great film is its ability to touch our hearts, to connect with us in a universal, lasting way.  When we walk away from a film, a validated and more insightful person, we have seen a truly great film.

I saw The Descendants about a week before the Golden Globes and it touched my heart profoundly.  It is the story of Matt King, whose wife has just had a water-skiing accident that leaves her in a coma.  Shortly after this accident, Matt's teenage daughter, Alexandra, reveals to him that his wife has been having an affair.  Matt has hardly been the ideal husband, with little time for his family, but the revelation hits him with shocking impact.  He still loves his wife, despite his poor track record as a husband.  Around this same time, the doctors give Matt the terrible news that his wife is never going to wake up from her coma.  This news is made particularly devastating because Matt knows that now he will never have a time to mend his relationship with his wife; neither will have a chance to make amends.  The central question of the film now becomes: how do you find closure in circumstances that seem to resist any possibility of real closure?  How can you end a relationship forever when there is so much left unsaid and undone? 

I understand this central dilemma.  When my father got cancer, I was in college and what followed was a prolonged, seven-year battle with the disease that would ultimately kill him.  He died two years ago.  My dad was a complicated man.  He loved God above all.  I know he loved me and my brother.  He also could sometimes be stubborn and difficult and carry around baggage from the past.  There were elephants in the room in our relationship.  There were unspoken secrets at time.  I loved my dad very much, but there were some conversations I always wanted to have with him, but could never muster the courage to have. 

We are taught that we ought to wrap everything up with a bow when someone is dying.  We are to have perfect closure, everything clean and neat.  But, for the most part, I don't think death is really like that.  I think that we all end our lives with regrets, despite the slogans that we are trying to live life with none.  There is always the sense of what might have been.  The Descendants merely heightens this reality.  It is a profoundly helpful film for the grieving because it shows us the truth of what grief is like and how we might find a realistic kind of closure so that we might move forward in our lives, never forgetting our loved one, but able to continue living with hope.

Another central theme of The Descendants is appreciating what has been given to us, here and now.  Matt King serves as trustee of a large chunk of land in Hawaii, where his ancestors have dwelt for generations.  He alone may say yay or nay to the upcoming sale and division of this property.  Yes, the sale will make all the descendants a lot of money, but King must grapple with the fact that the inheritance his ancestors have left to him may find its true value not in money, but in the connections and beauty that it provides.  The land is a metaphor for what King still has left in his relationship with his daughters.  In the beginning of the film, he calls himself "the back-up parent."  Just as his relationship with his wife has been wanting, so has his relationship with his two daughters.  But as the three grapple with the hard realities of grief--including their anger, sadness, and finally acceptance--they are drawn closer together.  The false mask of indifference that they have all been wearing is shattered.  The journey to a more authentic relationship is painful, but the bond that they all form through the suffering is quietly hinted at in the closing frames of the film.

The idea that there can be a real healing as we move into the future, a healing which acknowledges the past, which gives it dignity and truth, a healing which is not perfect, but which also gives us permission to move forward...this moved me so much as I watched this film.  I appreciated that the reality of grief in its nothing-like-picture-perfect truth was portrayed so well.  And for the first time in a while, I found myself able to cry about my loss of Dad, connecting to the pain of the death of one loved so well and in such a complicated way.  Finally, this film gave us a beautiful picture of forgiveness, in the final monologue of George Clooney to his coma-ridden, dying wife.  The bringing together of his anger and his love for her in that final speech was masterful. 

I think that over the years, I will watch this film over and over again.  It connects me to the truth of grief, which must be felt in order to be healed, and to the possibility of hope.