Thrown Down, but not Broken

On the Saturday after Good Friday, the disciples were locked in the upper room. Fearing for their lives.
Even on Easter Sunday, after a few of them had seen and believe, they were still uncertain of what it all meant and returned to the upper room and locked the door.

John 20: 19 That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said

Up until that point, I imagine they were solidly fixed in the left hand column of this verse (2 Cor 4:8-9)

     We are pressed on every side by troubles,                     but we are not crushed. 
     We are perplexed,                                                             but not driven to despair. 
     We are hunted down,                                                       but never abandoned by God. 
     We get knocked down,                                                     but we are not destroyed.

Then Jesus came and declared himself to be the Prince of Peace. He is the one that works all those red things in the left column into the green things on the right, in his time, and through his body.

I recently experience some major trauma and initially this verse rang fairly hollow, because I did fell pretty crushed and abandoned and knocked down.

Easter is the message of hope, that God MEETS US in the darkest of places and shines light in.
As it says in the Message "What Jesus did among them, he does in us -- He LIVES!

Come to the Garden - A Pictorial devotional for Holy Week

Last Sunday, I was in Karen, Kenya at the Dimessi Sisters' Convent and Monastery, a retreat center where we frequently go for small workshops and meetings. Karen is the site of the Karen Blixen farm, where "Out of Africa" was set. The historic site is just a kilometer from where we were.

So after a nap on sunday afternoon, I went out in the afternoon to their garden, hoping to read and journal in the quiet. What I discovered was much more.

Come with me to the garden and find a bench to sit on in the late afternoon sun.

What's that back in the trees?  At first it blends in to the bushes and branches and cacti.

 

Let's move closer to get a better view. .

  

The light breaking through the trees catches the figures and draws you

                            to stand with them, at the foot of the cross. 

Your focus draws inward to the central figure.

 Behold, the Man, hung on a tree.

 The Lamb of God -  Broken for you and for me.

 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering....He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 

 Take a moment to ponder just how much he loves you and me. 

 

 We adore you O Christ and we bless you. All: Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

 

 .

4 Windows on the Cross: Suffering, Sin, Shame, Scars

Okay, so this is really a Good Friday post rather than an Easter Sunday post, but I am just now getting around to writing it.
This really started out as comments on the page of my Facebook Friend, Lance Schmitz, pastor of the "World's Largest Nano-Church", Capitol Hill Church of the Nazarene in Oklahoma City.


Lance likes to post thought provoking articles and get input and this is one that he posted: No, the Crucifixion is Not About Bloody Child Sacrifice Being Necessary for Forgiveness  by someone named Hellen Painter Dollar. Her post is long but she is arguing against the theological idea of "substitutionary atonement", that is that God required an innocent blood sacrifice in the person of Jesus to pay for our sins. She is not, however, saying that it is without meaning or purpose, but rather posits that cross is God's way of becoming fully human and identifying with all who suffer.

My first reaction to the comments on this article was to say that there is good scriptural backing to the idea of Christ as a substitution for us. 

• In John 1:29, John the Baptist declares that Jesus is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world". "Lamb of God" really could only have one reference and that would be the sacrificial lambs in the temple.  An interesting thing to say as the death and sacrifice was not in focus at all in this point in the story. I wonder what people took away from that statement in the context of Jesus' baptism.

• Peter and Paul's epistles are rife with the metaphor of substitution
  

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.  1 Peter 3:18

Of course, the actual theological construct of "substitutionary atonement" went through various phases and precisions in church history: ransom theory, Christus Victor, penal subsitution. (See substitutionary atonement).  Each of these has verses that will back them up. 

I remember hearing church historian Professor Andrew Walls speak at a conference in 2002. He posited that the church develops doctrines (already existent in scripture) as the gospel message is carried across cultural boundaries. "Christ as Messiah" (Jewish context) becomes "Christ as Lord" when the gospel goes from Israel to Greece and Rome. According to Walls, the concept of the "atonement" was crystallized as the message was taken to the germanic tribes of northern Europe.

Could it be that these different theological ideas are all just windows looking out on the same central truth, providing different views of the same reality? 

In the original post above, Hellen Painter Dollar says that the cross is about Christ joining in our suffering. I believe that is true. And Philippians 3:10  turns this on its side when it talks about the fellowship we have of sharing in Christ's suffering.

And in shame-based cultures (Africa and the Middle East), people are not as concerned about the GUILT aspect of sin (as we are in Western cultures) but the SHAME that comes with our own sin or the sin of others around us. In these cultures, an important part of the Good News is that Christ taking our shame when he dies on the cross. (The shame aspect is what causes fathers to kill daughters who have been raped due to the excessive shame that has been brought on the family.)


As I reflected on this late Friday evening, I was drawn to Isaiah 53. Assuming you see this passage as a prophecy about Jesus' crucifixion, then you can see that the cross works in so many areas, and they are so intertwined it is almost hard to extract the quotes from each other. (quotes taken from NIV)

  1. Suffering and Injustice

• "A man of suffering, familiar with pain" v. 3
• "Surely he took our pain and bore our suffering. . . Afflicted" v. 4
• He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;  v. 7
•  Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, v. 10a
• After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; vs 11a
  

 2. Shame (He was Shamed on the Cross and bore that for us)

•  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. v. 2  

• He was despised and rejected by mankind ..... Like one from whom people hide their faces
  he was despised, and we held him in low esteem v. 3
  (For more on the shame side of things, see Psalms 22:6-7  "But I am a worm and not a man,
  

  scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads."  Also consider that a major aspect of the problem for the "first Adam" was shame, so the Second Adam needs to address that).

3. Healing

• and by his wounds we are healed. v.5

4. Guilt of Sin

• But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him,v. 5
• and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. v. 6
• for the transgression of my people he was punished. v. 8
• and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, v. 10 b 

• by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. v. 11b

Different aspects of the Cross speak more to different people and cultures and also as we go through different phases of life - shame, sickness, guilt of sin, shame, suffering.  

 
What a beautiful mystery! Let's thank
God for the Cross and revel in all that it means and so much that we will never understand. 

Stations of the Cross

I went downtown to the Catholic cathedral today and did the "Stations of the Cross".

I don't think I had even heard of the Stations of the Cross until I went overseas. I recall seeing Stations of the Cross at the Basilica in Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast, and the term sounded odd to me - kind of like "feeding stations" you might find on a bike race, or battle stations.

In his book, "Monk Habits for everyday people: Benedictine spirituality for Protestants", Dennis Okholm points out that we Protestants have the idea that spiritual things are real only if they are spontaneous. He asks why we will practice various physical disciplines like flossing and exercise, if the doctor or dentist tells us to, but not spiritual ones?

Until very recently, I was in a similar place and had little place in my life for liturgy and prayers that were already written down, etc. I have been reading a book called "Common Prayer: a Liturgury for Ordinary Radicals" (Shane Claiborne) and have found it very helpful. Likewise, my time in N. Ireland last year gave me a taste for Celtic prayers.

So anyway, one day while cycling around downtown Kansas City, I saw a sign outside the beautiful Cathedral advertising the Stations of the Cross and was open to giving it a try.

The setting was beautiful - Good Friday at noon. A beautiful sanctuary with pretty impressive stained glass. The pews were maybe 2/3 filled with people of various ethnicity and ages and dress. I had the sudden realization that I was wearing my "Bob the Tomato" T-shirt and thought it was perhaps inappropriate, so I buttoned up my jacket.

There were two priests who advanced in a circle around the sanctuary, stopping at wooden panels representing the 14 stations of the cross.
At each one, the priest read a paragraph and then the congregation kneeled and read a paragraph in response.
There was a sort of stanza that went like this:

Priest: We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.

Congregation: Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.”

At the end of almost each station there was a part that read: "This is for me, so I express the feelings of my heart." I found this to be meaningful as it personalized Christ's action at that particular station for me, and then gave me time to respond in prayer. 

The Stations that we did are found online here. There are other versions that are perhaps better suited for protestants (see here), but I didn't have any troubles with the ones we did.

What struck me - and this should have not been a surprise really - was the big emphasis on Christ’s suffering: 

• his weakness, inability to even carry the cross alone. He understands my fatigue and defeats. In this he was “deprived of the satisfaction of carrying his burden alone”. He "enters the experience of all who must depend on others".(Stations 3 and 5)
• Jesus falls a second time: “I will never feel alone in my suffering or in my diminishment with this image of Jesus on the ground.”(7th station)\
• Jesus is stripped – the indignity of it, In this, Jesus shows the ultimate vulnerability of the defenseless. (10th station)
• Jesus experiences the pain and agony of the nails. Can there then be any pain or agony I would experience that he would not understand ?(11th station)
• The Tomb represents every tomb I stand before with fear, in defeat, struggling to believe it could ever be empty. (14th station)

I came away with the realization that the cross is not just about Jesus bearing our iniquities (which is so much the focus in Protestant circles), but also about Jesus enduring extreme suffering and pain and sorrow and weakness, and indignity and finally a cruel death and in so doing, identifying with us as we experience similar things and providing comfort to us as we walk through those things! Wow!

Looking at Isaiah 53, you certainly see all  of this. In verse 5, he is pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The other side shows up in verse 3 where he takes our pain and bears our sorrows. The cross also brings healing (by his wounds we are healed). Our Western cultures are "guilt-based" so the first one speaks well to us, but for those from African and Asian "shame-based cultures", the fact that he was despised and held in low esteem (vs 3) speaks strongly to removing shame as well as guilt. 

Stand with me at Station 12, "at the foot of the cross, side by side with all humanity and behold our salvation."

Happy Good Friday and Happy Easter!