Tag Archives: hope

the day in between

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We know how the story turned out. We know that there was a resurrection. We know that hope was realized, that everything turned out great. We know that Sunday made up for Friday.

But on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, on the first of those Saturdays, on the one that happened before there was an Easter Sunday, no one on earth knew for sure what was going to happen. There had been promises, yes. There had been assurances. There had been prophecies and predictions. There was faith.

But Jesus was dead. Jesus was in the tomb. Jesus was gone.

We don’t know anything about that day, about the feelings or actions of the disciples. We know that on Sunday they were hiding. But we don’t know if they went to the temple on the Sabbath.

Think about it. For the previous three years, they had spent Sabbath with Jesus. They had gone to the temple or to the synagogue. They had heard him read, they had watched him heal, they had listened to him debate. The sabbath had been a big time of activity for Jesus.

And now he’s gone. What do they do?

The ones in charge of the meeting places killed him. The one who was transforming their lives had gotten himself killed.

The disciples had to be feeling pretty uncertain about religion on that day.

We end up in that same place. We have many days in between, between our affirmations of faith and the evidences of God’s action. We pray and there isn’t healing yet. We hope and the job is still missing. We ache and the child is still somewhere else.

Easter Sunday tells us that God does the impossible. Easter Saturday reminds us that we are invited to live with faith.

twice in two days

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Twice in two days I’ve gotten stuck.

Twice in two days I’ve been in conversations and not known what to say.

Twice in two days I’ve been talking with people who came looking for money because of troubles. They come, of course, to a church because churches are where you go when you need money, when you can’t keep the phone on, when you can’t pay the electric bill or the rent or the food bill.

I talk and I suggest and I listen. A lot of listening.  I often help.

But twice in two days I’ve talked with people who think differently than I do. More simply. More desperately. More filled with loops.

Both of them talked about church being important, though neither attends much anywhere and neither attends our church. Both talk about God. Both  talk about needing to go to church. Both talked about prayer. Both wondered what God was doing, what God was putting them through.

Both couldn’t quite figure out what to say when I said, “tell me about Jesus.”

I know. It’s a disorienting question. I ask it often. I want to see what people who are talking about prayer and church and God think about Jesus.

I need to think through the next question, the next comment, the next sentence. I think that they are confused, not by the question, but by an uncertainty about what to say about Jesus.

Which I understand.

I should be telling them about healing. I should be telling them that the Kingdom is at hand. I could be explaining to them something about asking and seeking and knocking, and offering comfort and hope.

I end up offering them gasoline and money.

Those are important, but they don’t really help people understand why God isn’t listening. It seems.

please take care of me

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“You aren’t going to leave me, are you?”

When you are getting to know someone too good to be true, you have questions.  You acknowledge their greatness. You ask them for help. You acknowledge your weakness.

Then, after all that, as you are starting to relax a bit, you are suddenly seized with fear. What if they aren’t going to stick around? What if they aren’t going to follow through? What is they are going to be like everyone else we have ever known in our lives who sometime, someday, doesn’t come through?

We get so used to people who don’t keep their word, who let us down. We are familiar with the feeling of betrayal, of abandonment, of disappointment. We watch every leader we know prove to be human, at best.

And so, having made all our requests known, we stop and we say

“Don’t lead us into temptation.”

“Do deliver us from evil.”

God, please don’t bring us this far and leave us. Don’t bring us through the week and into the weekend and then leave us alone, facing temptation.

Don’t do to us what you did to your own son.

There it is.

We want to be able to trust God but we somehow can’t.  We look at what happens to people who follow him, who even are Him, and what we see undermines what we think should happen.

Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted by the devil. By the Spirit. Just two chapters ago. And Jesus survived the direct testing. Now he says, “Ask the Father not to do the first part with you, and to just do the second part.”

Maybe we don’t have to understand the theology to say these words. Maybe we just have to give voice to our fears.

word of mouth

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[Matthew 4:23-25]

I’ve started reading about word of mouth marketing. I think that it’s helpful to understand how to get people talking about what you are offering. If you put up a billboard or run an advertising campaign or mail something to a thousand houses, that is you talking about you. And while talking about yourself can be helpful in providing information, it isn’t nearly as compelling as other people talking about you.

Jesus was teaching and preaching and healing. News about him spread. It went north. It went east. It went south. People were coming from all around to get healed. And to get free.

The news was all by word of mouth. People were talking about what Jesus was doing and saying. And everyone wanted to come to him.

What was the secret? Why did everyone talk about him with such effectiveness that people came from everywhere?

He said and did what people needed.

The people that were coming had no hope for any other solution for their sicknesses. They had no money to afford what care existed. They had no options.

When there aren’t any other options, when there isn’t any reason for hope, the words of Jesus, or more importantly, the actions of Jesus, are incredibly inviting. We go to where we think there will be some healing, some hope.

We often think that our job as Christ followers is to talk other people into thinking that they have holes in their hearts. What was clear from this part of Jesus’s ministry was that people who have holes in their hearts and lives actually go looking for Jesus.

Maybe our job isn’t to convince people of how much they hurt. Maybe it’s to talk about our own story of healing. And that’s word of mouth.

who are you yelling at

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[Matthew 3:7-12]

John called people snakes.

That’s rude.

The people he called snakes were people who claimed to be godly. They were the religious people of the day, denominational leaders. They were the people who believed that they were closest to God.

John was saying, “Is your life messed up? Here’s what you do. Tell someone and take a bath.” It was a symbolic, though still very wet, dip in a muddy river in front of everyone.

The leaders were checking things out, coming to the river not because they were wanting to get wet but because they wondered what was happening.

And John calls them snakes. He calls them deceptive ones. He calls them, well, he calls them names.

They, of course, had names for people like John. Heretic. Troublemaker. And they tended to punish people like him. (They called Jesus names, too.)

Tragically.  the religious leaders probably had names for the people that John was baptizing. Tragic because they were criticizing the people who most needed help.

They were sinners, but John was baptizing them anyway. They were broken, but John was willing help them toward wholeness.

We think of John being edgy and harsh, prophetic, abrupt. But he offered hope. And he offered it humbly. He acknowledged that he was not the main attraction. He was the warm-up act.

John gets the hierarchy clear when he says that he won’t deserve to carry the sandals of the one to come. Sandals that walked on camel paths. It’s a subtle, powerful message.

We are warmup acts. Our calling isn’t primarily to offer condemnation. It’s to offer hope, to point to the One to come.

John’s life bought the right to critique the ones who should have been in the hope-giving business. He bought it by giving hope.