Andy's Blog: A Personal Word
March 2008 Archive
March 26, 2007
Mar. 26, 2008James Dean, our Jack Russell Terrier, doesn’t know he is suppose to follow me when I walk him. I watch other dog owners with their dogs walking obediently by their side and think, that’s the way it is suppose to be. But not my dog. In fact, he doesn’t know I am the one walking him. He thinks it’s the other way around. He pulls me along, looking back at me every now and then as if to say, “Hurry up. Why are you so slow? I’ve got places to go!”
It is interesting that in Matthew’s account of the resurrection, the only words the risen Christ speaks to the women at the tomb, are “Do not be afraid, go and tell my brother to go to Galilee, there they will see me.” In other words, “Tell them to quit feeling sorry for themselves and get a move on. We’ve got work to do.”
Jesus doesn’t hang around in the cemetery. He is alive in the world, on the move. He takes the lead as he always does, pulling us along – yanking us back to life. The cross didn’t tame him, or deter him.
I love the old hymn, “he walks with me and he talks with me and tells me I am his own,” but I am not sure this hymn is biblical. In the Bible, Jesus is mostly walking out front, taking the lead, calling us to follow him.
He walks us, we don’t walk him.
March 19, 2008
Mar. 19, 2008When our daughter Meredith was four years old, we signed her up for Powder Puff Little League Ball. She wanted to play because her brother played ball. And I suspect, she liked the idea of getting a uniform!
The day she got her uniform she paraded around the house, very proud of herself. She called her grandmother and said, “Come and see me.” During her bedtime prayers she adlibbed, “Bless Meredith and help her win her game.”
The next morning when she woke up, she was bright eyed, excited and filled with anticipation. “It,s already tomorrow, and I get to play my game.”
I can’t really think of a better summation of the Easter message than that. Because Jesus who died our death, was raised by the power of God, it means that it is already tomorrow. The past of sin, brokenness, defeat, denial and death are over. God has made possible a new future for all of creation.
Now we get to play the game. We get to live as though the future was already here. WE get to proclaim that though the wrong seems often to strong, God is the ruler yet. WE get to live the truth that nothing in life or death can defeat God’s love for us and for God’s creation.
It’s already tomorrow…
March 12, 2008
Mar. 12, 2008When I was a child, one of the TV shows I never missed was the Lone Ranger. The basic plot was the same every week. The Lone Ranger would come riding into a town where something bad was happening and straighten it out. And then, he would ride off into the sunset, and someone standing there watching would say, “Who was that masked man?”
That is the question that Jesus’ followers asked of him. During his lifetime, even his closest friends did not get it, did not get him. They were always misunderstanding, saying and doing stupid things – like trying to keep children away from him or prevent him from going to Jerusalem. It was only later, after everything was said and done, after cross and resurrection, that they began to understand who he was.
We have been looking at Jesus during Lent. We began with the obvious; he was a man, a teacher, a healer, and a friend. But the closer we get to the final acts, the closer we get to Jerusalem and the cross. We see that he was something more, and other words, tiles and images come into play. One of those words is “Savior.”
This week, we will follow Jesus from his Palm Sunday triumph to the humiliation of Good Friday – and to talk about it, we must use the word “Savior.”
March 5, 2008
Mar. 5, 2008George Buttrick, former chaplain at Harvard, recalls that students would sometimes come into his office, plop down on a chair and declare, “I don’t believe in God.” Buttrick would give this disarming reply, “Sit down and tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in. I probably don’t believe in that God either.” Then Buttrick would talk about Jesus, the corrective to all our assumptions about God.
During Lent, we have been taking a fresh look at Jesus. We have considered Jesus as a human being and explored his roles as teacher, healer and friend. He is all of these, but according to the scriptures and the testimony of the church, Jesus is also the Son of God. This is where we leave some people behind. Most would grant that Jesus was a great teacher. Some would allow that he was a healer of some sorts. And surely, he seemed to care about people. But the notion that Jesus is the Son of God is a leap they are not prepared to make. In the words of the song sung by Mary Magdalene, in the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, “He’s a man, he’s just a man….” And that’s how we should leave it.
The problem is that the gospels do not leave it there. They are all in agreement with the words of the centurion who stood at the foot of the cross and declared, “Truly this man was God’s son.” In fact, it is doubtful that the gospels would have been written at all if the writers had thought that Jesus was just another good man struck down before his time. It would take the church four centuries to define the nature of Jesus’ divinity, but from the beginning there was no doubt that somehow in this man Jesus, God was present in a unique way. Jesus does indeed correct all our assumptions about God.
We Christians cannot use the name God without using the name Jesus in the
same breath.