Forgiveness

Most Christians know we are now in the period of the Church calendar known as Lent. According to Wikipedia:

Lent is a solemn religious observance in the liturgical calendar of many Christian denominations that begins on Ash Wednesday and covers a period of approximately six weeks before Easter Sunday. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer through prayer, penance, repentance of sins, almsgiving, atonement and self-denial. This event, along with its pious customs, is observed by Christians in the Anglican, Calvinist, Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Today, some Anabaptist and evangelical churches also observe the Lenten season.

Last year during this Lenten season I published essays surrounding all seven of Jesus' last words on the cross. This year I will repost them because the message of each essay is worth reading again.

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The First Words of Jesus on the Cross

 “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

The more I think about what Jesus said, the more I am encouraged.  

Forgive them.

Just a few hours earlier, in the Gethsemane Garden, soldiers led by the Jewish priests surrounded Jesus and the disciples. Peter drew His sword and came within a hair of cutting the skull of the high priest’s servant. He sliced off His ear, instead.

But Jesus would have none of the fight. “Put back your sword, Peter,” Jesus commanded. “Don’t you know I could call just now to my Father and He would put at my disposal 12 legions of angels to defend me?”

A Roman legion consisted of 6,000 soldiers. In other words, the Lord could have called for 72,000 angelic warriors, swords unsheathed and glistening in the firelight, and the ground would have been drenched with the blood of those who’d come to drag Jesus away.

But He didn’t call for them. Instead, God-in-the-flesh-of-a-man, God their Creator, the Almighty God permitted His creatures to spit at him, pull His beard, punch him in the face, and haul him off to court.

And now, hanging bloodied and bruised on an old rugged cross, crowds of priests, soldiers and rabble mocking Him, cursing Him . . . .

I wonder sometimes if the thought crossed His mind even for a nanosecond to glance toward His Father and ask for those angels. If it did, He put it from His mind and said instead – Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.

Forgiveness. 

It is why we can come anew to Jesus in our continuing journey toward the Kingdom. There is no sin so grievous, so dark, so vile that the grace of God and the mercy of God cannot – and will not – cleanse with Christ’s blood.  What is it St. John wrote in His first epistle? If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:7). And St. Paul’s encouragement to the church at Ephesus: In [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:7).

Forgiveness. 

It is why we can stay with Him today, wherever we are in life and whatever we've done wrong. If we confess our sins, St. John tells us, again in his first epistle, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9). When the penitent walks out of the confessional he or she has God’s absolute and inviolable assurance of forgiveness. As the Holy Spirit promises through the psalmist: For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on His children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust  (Psalm 103:11-14).

Forgiveness. 

It is why we can journey with Him wherever He leads us. As St. Paul wrote to the church at Rome: If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.(Romans 8:31-39)

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

When we sin, when we slash the whip once again across His back, when we drive another nail into His bleeding hands, how much do we really understand what we are doing? How much do we know how it grieves Him? How it breaks His heart? If we had the remotest clue, I don’t think we’d be so cavalier to do some of the things we do.

Father, forgive them.

If the Scriptures teach us anything, it is that there is forgiveness with God, complete, unhesitating, and unqualified forgiveness to the penitent. And that is precisely why you and I can come to Christ, stay with Christ, and journey with Him wherever He leads us.

For which we can gladly say, "Thanks be to God!"

The Poor in Spirit

While Nancy waited in the doctor’s office for her appointment time, she noticed an elderly woman across from her. Mid-seventies, Nancy guessed. Maybe five feet tall. She looked well-put together in her nicely tailored pink pant suit – until she stood up and shuffled behind her walker to the receptionist. It was then Nancy noticed the woman’s pant legs were so long that she’d rolled up about a foot of material to keep it from dragging on the ground. Nancy wondered if she had no one to hem them for her, or to take her to a seamstress.

As she told me this story, lyrics of an old Beatle’s song passed through my thoughts:

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church 

where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face 

that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon 

that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks in the night 

when there's nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

When Nancy finished talking I sat in silence for a few moments, pondering the well-put together woman with the rolled up cuffs. What can the gospel – the good news of Jesus – what can it mean for all the lonely people? What can it speak to those who don’t speak because they’ve learned no one cares to hear what they have to say? What message can the good news have for those who won’t look others in the eyes because they know by experience their place is always beneath and behind and in a corner?

Does God really have good news for the Father Mckenzies and the Eleanor Rigbys and for those who don’t have someone who cares enough to hem their pants?

Yes. Of course He does.  That’s why Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

He was talking to the discouraged ones, the desolate, the rejected, the lonely, the forgotten. He was talking to the invisible ones in every employee break room, in every church, in every classroom, in every doctor’s office, in every family.

Their God – called “Immanuel, God with us” – their God aches for their sadness. He listens intently to every word whispered by their heart. He catches their every tear in His bottle. He cups their chin in His hands and invites them to look into His eyes. 

The good news of the gospel is this: Though no one else knows them, God-With-Us knows them. His gaze follows those who are poor in spirit, each Eleanor Rigby, Father McKenzie, and each old woman with rolled-up cuffs. Each is immeasurably important to Him, so important that He says it again and again, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy burdened.”

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The Right Place and the Right Reason

I published this a few years ago here, and also in one of my books. I thought it good to repost it.

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It doesn’t take long for my eyes to glaze over when I read sections of Scripture like this one in Exodus: 

Fifty loops were made along the edge of the end sheet in one set, and fifty loops along the edge of the corresponding sheet in the other set. Fifty bronze clasps were made with which the tent was joined so that it formed one whole . . . . Boards of acacia wood were made as walls for the Dwelling [Tabernacle]. The length of each board was ten cubits, and the width one and a half cubits. Each board had two arms, fastening them in line . . . (Exodus 36:17-23).
 
Really, does anyone care how many clasps, loops, boards, and sheets were used to construct the Tabernacle in the wilderness? Does anyone care if each board was ten by one and a half cubits?

And what’s a cubit, anyway?*

For a people who spent generations slogging through mud pits to make bricks for Pharaoh’s empire, such precision and detail must have seemed somewhere between burdensome and tedious.

Then I noticed something I’d not seen in my many times reading through these “better-than-a-sleeping-pill” chapters. Every loop had its place. Every socket a reason. Every curtain and hammered blossom, every length of thread and slice of wood, each had a specific purpose.  And each has a critical lesson for the 21st century reader.

The New Testament Scriptures tell us God is building His followers into a holy dwelling called the Church. “Do you not know,” wrote St. Paul to the Christians at Corinth, “you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).

In the same way God meticulously orchestrated the construction of his desert dwelling, He is now, today, orchestrating with equal precision the construction of His Dwelling – the Body of Christ. Just as each board and clasp and loop held an important place in the former Tabernacle, today each member of Christ’s Body – the Church – fills a necessary role and function.

Leader and laity, professionals and paraprofessionals, rich and poor, healthy and not-so-healthy, across cultures, nations, languages, occupations, and backgrounds . . . the Master Carpenter knows where each one of us fits into His Dwelling – and He sets us there with meticulous precision in the right place.

And for the right reason.

Trust Him. He knows what He is doing.

* A cubit is approximately 1.5 feet

When Praise is Impossible

“Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!” (Psalm 147:1)

Yes, it is good to praise the Lord. But when life flings us to the ground our heart often catches in our throat and chokes the words before they can cross our lips. How can anyone praise God when a spouse suddenly ends a marriage? Who can give thanks when the physician says the word, ‘cancer’? Is it possible to praise God at the freshly dug grave of a child?

When any of a hundred things turn our stomach to concrete, how can praise ever hope to slip past a shattered heart?

Why do bad things happen to God’s children?  I don’t know. No one knows the mind of God at every convulsion that spreads through anyone’s life. But what we can know, what we must know to answer the ‘why’ question – at least in part, is rooted in sacred Scripture. What the Holy Spirit tells us through that precious text is something we so desperately need to hear again and again.

That unerring message is this: God is never unjust, unkind, or capricious. There is never a time He is unaware of our heartbreak. There is never a time He is unwilling to touch us with hope, with encouragement, with a gentle hand on our shoulder and strong arms to enfold us.

God’s passionate love toward us never wavers a hair’s breadth from any of His children. Here is what Holy Spirit inspired St. Paul to write in one of the chapters of that precious text we call the Bible: 

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . .  But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)

When tragedy rips the flesh from our heart, when we are paralyzed with grief and angry at God, how is it possible to praise Him?

In those circumstances and in our own strength praise is impossible – without His grace that helps us in our time of desperate need. And it is precisely His grace that has met every need and comforted every man, woman, and young person through the millennia who so desperately needed God’s touch.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask those around you whose lives in Christ you admire. Ask them if God has borne them in His arms through their difficult times. Ask if the words of St. Paul have not repeatedly proven true in their own lives:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:3-5)

The One who cannot lie told us more than once He will never leave us or forsake us (e.g. Deuteronomy 31:8; Matthew 28:20; John 14:18; Hebrews 13:5). And so He is with us when the spouse leaves. He is with us in the doctor’s office. He is with us at the grave site. And in time His grace will help us find words and reason to praise Him, even from the depths of our sorrows.

That is His promise.

Why Else Would He Say It?

Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness. (Joel 2:13)

Sometimes I think many think God is quick tempered, impatient, and intolerant of our moral failures. Sometimes I think they think God stands with clenched fists ready to strike those who turn aside to the right or to the left. 

But what is the mission and the message of the most sacred heart of Jesus? Is it not to demonstrate by His sacrificial death for us the immeasurable promise that God is slow to anger, that He overflows with mercy – and that He stands with open hands, ready to sprinkle cleansing and restorative blood from Christ’s wounds on every prodigal who returns from the right or the left? 

Why else would Jesus have said: Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28)?

So . . . won't you come home to Jesus?