God Helps Those Who Help Themselves???

David Burns on May 4, 2016

Today’s post is an excerpt from my new book, Half Truths: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves and Other Things the Bible Doesn’t Say, which examines several popular half truths that many Christians embrace.   I vividly recall an episode of The Tonight Show from some years ago. It included one of Jay Leno’s trademark “Jaywalking” segments, in which he would ask questions of random people on the street. On this occasion, he asked people to name one of the Ten Commandments. It was startling to me how many people answered him by saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” That, of course, is not one of the Ten Commandments. But those who gave that erroneous answer have plenty of company. A survey by the Barna Group, a Christian polling firm, found that better than eight in ten Americans think “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible. In fact, more than half of the respondents were strongly convinced that this is one of the major messages of Scripture. The “One-Third” Truth For the record, the Bible contains no such verse. The statement apparently originated in Greek mythology in the fifth century before Christ. Then it was echoed by various philosophers over the next two-and-a-half millennia. Most notably, in 1736 Ben Franklin popularized it in Poor Richard’s Almanac, helping to give the statement a permanent place in American thinking. Even though it’s not in the Bible, can we find any biblical truth in this theological idea? In one sense, I think it does capture a biblical teaching. But in two other important ways, I would argue that “God helps those who help themselves” is absolutely untrue. Instead, it sends a message that is the direct opposite of the Bible’s message. So it really doesn’t even rise quite to the level of a half truth—more like a “one-third” truth. The one-third-truth is that God does in fact expect us to help ourselves to the degree that we are able.  For example, when we pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” we don’t expect food to miraculously show up on our table – we have to shop and prepare our meal.  I’ve met Christians who were disappointed with God because God did not answer their prayers for a job or to sell a house, when they were applying for jobs they were not qualified for or asking a higher price for their home than it was worth.  But the falsehood of this “truth” is seen in two circumstances.  Often those who say it are speaking about the poor and it is used as an excuse to avoid helping those in need.  Yet many of those who are trapped in poverty cannot escape without the help of others, which is why the Bible consistently calls us to help those in need.  In those moments we become God’s means of answering another’s prayers. This points to the even more significant falsehood in “God helps those who help themselves.” The very essence of the gospel is that God helps those who cannot help themselves.  Christians believe that we cannot save ourselves from the brokenness and alienation from God that we call sin.  We are constantly in need of saving, which is why we call Jesus, “Savior.”  There is a theological word for God’s willingness to help those who cannot help themselves: we call it GRACE.  If you’d like to find out more about “God helps those who help themselves,” check out Half Truths.  Click here to order the book and read more.   

The Bible, Homosexuality, and the UMC — Part One

David Burns on April 27, 2016

Next month in Portland, Oregon, 800 United Methodists, delegates from around the world, will gather for the United Methodist Church’s General Conference. At this ten-day meeting, held once every four years, the United Methodist Church will set policy, priorities and denominational budgets for the ensuing four years.  Delegates will consider reams of proposed changes to the church’s Book of Discipline.  No issue will be more closely watched than the debate and decisions of the Conference regarding gay and lesbian people. Will the denomination continue to hold that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching”? Will it continue to prohibit pastors from officiating in same-gender weddings and United Methodist church property from being used for same-gender weddings? And will the United Methodist Church continue to require celibacy of gay and lesbian clergy? The deeper question, one which will largely be ignored, is what United Methodists believe about the Bible.  Our beliefs, or more often our assumptions, about the Bible shape how we view the question of the Bible and same-gender relationships. Conservatives on this issue (by the way, one can be progressive on a host of issues, yet conservative on this issue, and likewise one can be conservative on a host of issues yet progressive on same-gender marriage) base their views of the incompatibility of same-gender relationships on a particular way of reading the Bible, which in turn is based upon a particular, but often inconsistently held, way of understanding what the Bible is and how God speaks through it.  Progressives on this issue, likewise, base their willingness to embrace same-gender relationships as acceptable to God on a certain way of reading the Bible, one that is also based upon a particular, but not always clearly articulated, way of understanding what the Bible is and how God speaks through it. I’d like to use as an example a letter I recently received, signed by 12 members of a United Methodist Church in Nebraska.  They wrote asking me as a delegate to General Conference to please vote against any changes to the Book of Discipline’s policies regarding gay and lesbian people.  It began,  Dear Delegate to General Conference: As members of the United Methodist Church, we are alarmed at the possibility of changes being made at General Conference in our church Discipline regarding same sex marriages.  We believe that the Holy Bible is God’s Word, and that His Word is unchanging. … The letter goes on to cite the standard passages from the Bible that condemn some form of same-gender sexual acts.  I have no doubt that the folks who sent this letter are good people who love Jesus, seek to serve their neighbor and care about the United Methodist Church.  I visited their website to learn more about them.  The headline of their website states, “Welcoming everyone with Open Hearts, Open Minds and Open Doors.”  These fellow United Methodists seem to be stating that everything written in the Bible is God’s Word, and that it should be applied without question today because “His Word is unchanging.”  But I don’t believe this is actually how they approach Scripture.  Nor is it the way Christians have generally approached Scripture across the last two millennia.  Had the early church held these assumptions consistently, they would never have reached the decisions that circumcision was no longer required of Christians, or that Christians were no longer bound by much that is found in the Law of Moses.  We would still be worshipping on Saturdays, eating only what was kosher, offering animal sacrifices, and administering capital punishment for everything from working on the Sabbath to rebelliousness on the part of children (Jesus never explicitly taught that these portions of the Scripture were no longer binding upon his followers; this call was made by the apostles at the urging of Paul). Further if we consistently applied these same assumptions to what Paul teaches about women in the New Testament, the female members of the United Methodist Church would pray with their heads covered; they would remain silent in the church; and they would not be permitted to teach in any church gathering where men were present.  This is, in fact, how many conservative Christian bodies still read the Scriptures, hence I recently received a note from a member of a fundamentalist Baptist church who stated unequivocally that United Methodists are "unscriptural Christians because you ordain women." There are more than 200 verses in the Bible that allow slavery as an acceptable practice, even permitting the beating of slaves with rods.  The New Testament authors, as with their forebears, could not imagine a world without slavery.  If Methodist Christians consistently held that everything in the Bible is God’s Word and that it is unchanging — and by this they meant that what the Bible allows we must allow, and that what the Bible forbids we must forbid — we’d still support the practice of slavery today. While the words of Scripture don’t change, how we interpret those words does change over time. Interpretation is important because when we read Scripture we recognize that, while God speaks to us through the Bible, the Bible’s human authors wrote in particular historical circumstances, addressing specific situations, and in the light of their own historical and scientific knowledge. What they wrote was shaped by their own cultural and theological convictions.  On the issue of same gender acts, they wrote based upon their understanding of human sexuality, in the light of the prevailing same-gender practices of their time. And though we believe that they were inspired, the precise nature and extent of that inspiration remains a mystery. We do know that this inspiration was not some kind of divine dictation, but it was through the impulse of the Spirit at work in very human authors who were addressing the people and circumstances in which they lived. This inspiration did not prevent historical or scientific errors. It did not prohibit the recording of differing accounts of the same story in the Gospels. It did not keep the Bible's authors from allowing slavery and genocide; and it did not transform the biblical authors' patriarchal perspectives on women. Some time ago I was speaking on this question and a young pastor said to me, “It sounds like you are ‘picking and choosing.’”  I asked the young man if he had an account in the United Methodist Pension Fund. He indicated that he did. I then asked, “What part of Jesus’ words, ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth’ did you not understand?”  We often don't see that we all recognize Scripture is contextual. In the case of Jesus' words about wealth we're meant to take him seriously, but not literally. No pastor I know advocates eliminating savings accounts and planning for retirement.  A.J. Jacob’s wrote a book called, A Year of Living Biblically, in which Jacobs, a nominally religious Jew, described his year-long attempt to fulfill every part of the Law.  When he got to the end of the year, he concluded that it was impossible to fulfill the entire Law, and some of it made no sense today.  Then he said something to the effect of “Everyone picks and chooses; the important thing is to choose the right things.”  But in truth, I don’t believe that we are picking and choosing. I think we’re appropriately interpreting; we’re asking the question, “What was the historical and cultural setting of these words, and do they appropriately express the heart of God for us today?” And how do Christians make that determination?  We consider the words and actions of Jesus, we think of what he described as the great commandments, and we consider the major themes of Scripture. Then we bring our intellect and experience of the Spirit to bear on our reading of Scripture. This is precisely how the apostles came to set aside the clear teaching of Scripture (their only Scripture was the Old Testament) regarding circumcision and portions of the Law. This is how, centuries later, Christians came to oppose slavery despite Scripture’s allowance and regulation of it. This is how twentieth century Christians came to set aside Paul’s teaching regarding women.  Methodist seminaries train their pastors in critical methodologies for studying the Scripture. Those methodologies teach that the Bible’s inspiration is not undermined by acknowledging the biblical authors’ historical context, the ways in which the biblical text developed, and the process of its canonization. But it does teach us that the Bible is far more complex than the common dictum, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” allows.  At the Church of the Resurrection, of our 20,000 members, there are hundreds that are gay and lesbian and hundreds more whose children are gay and lesbian. Many are married. Some of these have children. Some are among the most committed members of our congregation. They attend worship every weekend, serve in mission, are in small groups, and witness to their friends about Jesus. They seek to love him with all their heart and to love their neighbors as they love themselves.  I love these people; they are part of my flock.  Most knew from the time they were children that they were “different.”  They were drawn to love the same gender in the same way I was drawn to my wife.  Do Moses’ words commanding that men who lie with men should be put to death express the heart of God towards them?  When Paul spoke of those who “gave themselves up to degrading passions” was he speaking of these couples in my church who love one another selflessly?  Or was he speaking about temple prostitution, older men molesting younger boys, and sexual exploitation, as well as unrestrained sexual acts divorced from love and commitment, that were the common expressions of same-gender acts in his time and at times, in ours? This last Sunday I had lunch with a group of senior adults at one of the largest senior living complexes in Kansas City.  We were talking about this very issue. They wanted to know if the United Methodist Church was going to split over this issue. I asked them their thoughts. These were lifelong United Methodists now in their seventies and eighties. They pointed to two same-gender couples living in their community and said, “God loves them, and so do we.”  They had lived long enough to see how our understanding of Scripture changes over time. Their great, great grandparents lived when white Christians owned slaves and felt justified in doing so by the Bible. Their grandmothers couldn’t vote in America, a practice rooted in the patriarchy found in Scripture. Their mothers couldn’t have served as pastors in the Methodist Church because "the Word of God was clear and unchanging.”  But thankfully things did change. They couldn’t imagine the church splitting over this issue. It is not only these senior adults who see things this way. A vast majority of young adults across all churches also see things this way. If the United Methodist Church can hold together for another ten years, this becomes a non-issue, as even most evangelical young adults in the United Methodist Church see this issue differently from their 40- and 50- and 60-year-old parents and grandparents. Thoughtful United Methodists understand that the nature of Scripture leaves room for us to ask the question, “Do these passages on same-sex acts in Paul and Moses actually reflect the heart of God for gay and lesbian people today?”  We may disagree about the answer, but we can at least ask the question. And, I believe, United Methodists may disagree about the answer and remain one church; we’ve been doing so for decades.  In my next post I’ll offer my hopes for what will happen at General Conference.

Does Everything Really Happen for a Reason?

David Burns on April 21, 2016

Today’s post is an excerpt from my new book, Half Truths: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves and Other Things the Bible Doesn’t Say, which examines several popular half truths that many Christians embrace.   Has anyone ever said to you, “Everything happens for a reason”? Most of us have heard that statement from someone at some point. Many of us have said it to someone else.   The statement is true if, in saying it, we mean that we live in a world of cause and effect. Actions create consequences. Our own choices produce results. A result of choosing to text while driving may be a collision in which someone is injured.   Usually, however, when we say, “Everything happens for a reason,” we’re not talking about cause and effect. Most often, we’re speaking in response to suffering. When something bad has happened and we’re trying to help someone through a difficult time, we say it, or something like it.  Similar statements include, “It must have been the will of God,” or, “It’s all part of the plan,” or at the death of an individual we might seek to console another by saying, “It must have been their time.”   In Half Truths, I devote a chapter to unpacking what’s untrue about this particular half-truth.  Here’s a bit of the argument I make there:   While God is ultimately sovereign, the opening story of the Bible shows that God has given human beings “dominion” here on earth – that is, we have the capacity to make decisions, a freedom we value and, as Americans, have been willing to fight and die for.  The biblical story is in many ways the story of humanity misusing our freedom, turning away from God, practicing the very things God has told us not to do, and then God’s working to redeem, restore and heal the mess we’ve made of things.   Consider ISIS.  If everything happens for a reason then we must assume that God raised up ISIS to accomplish some purpose.  They certainly believe that.  But our attempts to defeat them make clear that we believe they are an evil that must be stopped, not some part of God’s sovereign plan that must be allowed to continue unabated.   I’ll leave most of the case to the book, but I’ll end this post simply by noting when we say that “everything happens for a reason” (and we’re implying that God must have some reason for everything happening, hence God is ultimately responsible for everything that happens), we make God responsible for every bad decision, every act of wrongdoing, every disease, every inhumane thing we humans do to one another.  And we remove the responsibility from ourselves.  Telling a suffering person that God must have a reason for inflicting suffering on them is not comforting for many; it only serves to remove the one source of comfort they might have had.   Is this really how things work? Does God really will everything that happens?  Or is God often grieved by what happens here on earth?   If you’d like to find out more about why “everything happens for a reason” is at best a half-truth, check out, Half Truths.  Click here to order the book and read more.

New Book, HALF TRUTHS, Helps Christians Fully Experience Jesus

David Burns on April 15, 2016

Most of us as Christians have things we believe, and tell others, and even count on, that we’ve not carefully examined. Some of the things we accept and repeat to others sound so true, and we’ve believed them for so long, that they become what some call “sacred cows”—things above question or criticism. When these beliefs are questioned we become defensive or irritated. We may even worry that if the beliefs aren’t true, the rest of our faith may crumble. This week, my new book, Half Truths: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves and Other Things the Bible Doesn’t Say, publishes from Abingdon Press. Even though some of what I write in this book may unnerve or irritate you, I’d encourage you to keep reading. The book examines these popular half truths that many Christians embrace: Everything happens for a reason God helps those who help themselves God won’t give you more than you can handle God said it, I believe it, that settles it Love the sinner, hate the sin Here’s why it’s important to examine these particular half truths: I think they can sometimes hurt people. I think they can lead people to conclusions about God that not only are untrue but that may push some people away from God. Some of these half truths are used to avoid careful thinking about complex issues. Some are used to justify our own biases or prejudices. Some, when spoken to others, can bring pain. Scriptures must be interpreted. Sometimes their meanings seem to conflict, or a particular message given in one context appears to be contradicted in another context. It is important to read any Scripture in the light of its context and the Bible’s broader message and themes. It is not enough to find a passage or two or six to support a particular view. We interpret all Scripture in the light of Jesus’ life and teachings, as well as with the help of the Spirit’s witness, the wisdom of scholars, and our intellect and life experience. During the next few weeks, I’ll post excerpts from the book here on my blog. You can order the book, DVD, and leader guides here. Watch the book trailer preview video above, and listen to the Ministry Matters podcast where I discuss the new book with host Matt Rawle.

The Garden and the Mission of Easter

David Burns on March 28, 2016

I hope you had a happy and blessed Easter! Each day this past week leading up to Easter, I’ve been posting excerpts from my latest book, John: The Gospel of Light and Life. As we have celebrated the resurrection of Christ, let’s take a final look at John’s Gospel.     “There was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified, and in the garden was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid” (19:41). In the Gospel of John, there is always more than meets the eye when John tells the story of Christ. A little detail in verse 41 seems important to John. He mentions that there was a garden where Jesus was crucified, and then he says, “in the garden there was a new tomb.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t tell us there was a garden where Jesus was crucified, nor where he was buried. These details provide a clue, not just to John’s view of the Resurrection but also to John’s approach throughout his account of Jesus’ life. Remember, John’s Gospel opens with the words “In the beginning,” the same words that open the Book of Genesis. Genesis starts in a garden. John’s Gospel ends in a garden. In Genesis, God plants the garden. In John, when Mary Magdalene stands at the empty tomb and first sees the resurrected Christ, she thinks he is the gardener. To delve a bit deeper, in Genesis Adam and Eve turn from God, eat of the forbidden fruit, and paradise is lost. They are expelled from the garden. The earth is placed under a curse, and death comes into the world. I read this story as archetypal: it is our story. Each of us hears the serpent’s whisper. Each of us has turned from God’s path, has done what we know is wrong, and death and pain result. What is John hinting at by taking us back to the beginning? Why does he tell us Jesus was crucified and buried in a garden, and after being raised he appeared as a gardener? I believe John wants us to understand that Jesus came to break the curse, to destroy death, and to heal God’s garden. Paul describes Jesus as the “second Adam.” Perhaps that same idea is what John has in mind here. The first Adam ruined Paradise; the second Adam restored it. To put it another way, perhaps God the gardener, who took on flesh in Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection, has gone about setting the world aright. He has come to repair the garden. But God’s work was only begun in Jesus’ resurrection. We still live in a world afflicted with violence, materialism, deception, and worse. There’s work yet to be done. This is why, on the night when the risen Christ finally appeared to his disciples, he breathed on them and said, “As the father sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21). What Jesus began, we’re meant to complete. During his ministry as described in the Gospels, Jesus spent very little time teaching people about heaven. Most of what he taught was about how we should live to create a bit of heaven on earth. Two of his best-loved parables, the Good Samaritan and the sheep and goats, focus on our responsibility to care for those in need. His Sermon on the Mount barely mentions heaven but instead strongly challenges us to live by heaven’s ethics here on earth, practicing love, justice, and reconciliation. Our work is to follow Jesus in restoring the garden. That means that every day we are on a mission. Every morning we wake and say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me!” Every conversation we have, every decision we make, every action we take is an opportunity for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. Each year at Easter, our church commits a significant portion of the Easter offering to one or two projects that will heal our city— that will restore the garden. We provide beds for children who are sleeping on the floor, jobs for men just out of prison, housing for people moving away from homelessness. We give such grants each year from the Easter offering, in part because we believe Easter is about restoring God’s garden. We proclaim it every Easter: Christ is risen from the grave! Death is swallowed up in victory! Sin and evil will never have the final word! The curse is broken! There is always hope! Today’s post is an excerpt from John: The Gospel of Light and Life. To find out more about this best-selling book and small group study, click here.  

Christ Is Risen!

David Burns on March 27, 2016

Happy Easter! During this Lenten season, we have been reading through the Gospel of John together. I hope this Challenge has been a blessing to you. Each day this week, I’ve been posting excerpts from my latest book, John: The Gospel of Light and Life. Today, we celebrate the resurrection of Christ.   Different religions and philosophies offer very different answers to the question of death. Christianity’s answer to death is Easter (or perhaps better said, God’s answer to death is Easter). The resurrection of Jesus is God’s emphatic way of saying that death is not the end—that, in the words of Paul, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54 NRSV). Easter transforms our sorrow into joy and hope, our fear into peace and courage. This is what happened to Mary and the disciples on that first Easter. Jesus had been foreshadowing his resurrection throughout the Gospel of John. In John 5:28-29 he said, “Don’t be surprised by this, because the time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice. Those who did good things will come out into the resurrection of life, and those who did wicked things into the resurrection of judgment.” In 11:25-26 he promised, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” In 14:1-3, just before he was arrested, he said to his disciples, “Don’t be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. My Father’s house has room to spare. If that weren’t the case, would I have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you? When I go to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me so that where I am you will be too.” But as moving and hope-filled as Jesus’ earlier statements had been, it was in the Resurrection itself that his words were powerfully demonstrated to be true. Jesus’ resurrection demonstrated his power over death. The Impact of Easter In John’s Gospel, Jesus or John mentions life or eternal life forty-seven times. That’s more than Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined. So clearly this is a big idea for John. As I noted earlier, when Jesus spoke about eternal life, he always described it not as a future state after we die, but as something we begin to experience in the present. According to Jesus, eternal life starts now. I think that means that if we know that Christ is the I Am, if we accept him as our King, if we recognize the significance of his death, and if we trust in his resurrection, we see and experience God’s intention for human life now. This Word from God, this message embodied in Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and resurrection, once accepted, changes everything. It is life-giving. The Resurrection and its promise of life after death show that evil, sickness, and even death will not have the final word. Christ’s promise in John 14:19—“Because I live, you will live too”—fundamentally changes how I face the deaths of people I love, how much risk I’m willing to take in my life, how I approach growing old, and how I look at my own death. I’m okay with death, at least my own. The older we get, and the more of our loved ones are on the other side, the more we’re meant to look forward to that great reunion. Of course we feel sorrow, we cry, and we grieve. But we do so as those who have hope. Today’s post is an excerpt from John: The Gospel of Light and Life. To find out more about this best-selling book and small group study, click here.  

Sorrow to Joy and Hope, Fear to Peace and Courage

David Burns on March 25, 2016

During this Lenten season, we have been reading through the Gospel of John together. I hope this Challenge has been a blessing to you. As we begin Holy Week, we now turn to Jesus’ final days leading up to and including his crucifixion. Each day this week, I’ve been posting excerpts from my latest book, John: The Gospel of Light and Life.   On this Good Friday when we remember Jesus’ crucifixion, we look forward to Easter morning, the promise of resurrection, and the hope of eternal life. Let’s begin with the touching story of Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb. Her life had been changed forever by her encounters with Jesus. Mary Magdalene was likely a single woman, which we can surmise from her name. In the first century, if a woman was married, she would often be identified as Mary, wife of . . . . If she had children she might be Mary the mother of….But this Mary was referred to as Mary Magdalene—that is, Mary of Magdala, a town on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee. Not only was Mary likely a single woman; she was a woman who had had a troubled past. Luke tells us that she had had “seven demons” (Luke 8:2). A demon in the first century could be anything from an unexplained physical illness to a psychiatric disorder to an addiction of some kind. It also could indicate a deep spiritual wrestling that might have involved an actual spiritual entity. Any of these meanings could have been covered by the word demon. Whatever had afflicted Mary, she was a troubled person until she met Jesus, who set her free from the demons. She seems to have had some financial means despite the demons that had plagued her, because after her deliverance at Jesus’ hands she is named as one of several women who followed Jesus and the disciples wherever they went and supplied some of the financial resources that made their ministry possible (see Luke 8:1-3). I’ve always loved Mary’s song in Jesus Christ Superstar, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” It captures what must have been the range of feelings Mary had for Jesus. He had utterly changed her life. It is not hard to imagine just how deeply she loved him. Her love and courageous devotion to him were shown by her presence at the cross (John 19:25), by her accompanying his body to the grave (recorded in each of the Synoptics), and by her being the first to arrive at his tomb on Easter morning. She came to the cemetery at dawn on Sunday morning—weeping, her faith in tatters, her heart broken. She couldn’t stay away, but she was full of sorrow. Twice John tells us that she wept as she stood there, and as she did, she represented each of us who has lost someone we love dearly. We’ve all known Mary’s sadness—the grief that comes in waves, and the tears that won’t stop. If the death is untimely or unjust, as Jesus’ death was, the sorrow is even greater. Our hearts break. We weep as Mary wept for this man who had loved her and whom she dearly loved. The Angels Inside the Tomb In John’s account of the Resurrection, Mary looked inside the tomb and saw two angels. I want to pause for a moment at this point in the story to consider some unique features of John’s account. In each of the Gospel descriptions of the empty tomb, there is at least one angel. (The word in Greek means “messenger,” and these would look like people. In fact, Mark simply describes a young man dressed in white.) In John’s account there is an interesting detail included. He tells us there are two angels, and they are sitting inside the tomb on the ledge “where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot” (20:12). Why does John tell us the angels were sitting? Further, why does he tell us the precise location where they were sitting (at the head and the foot of the place Jesus had been)? I believe these details are an allusion to the so-called mercy seat of God—that is, the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, as described in the Book of Exodus. This “seat” was God’s symbolic throne on earth. It was the place where God’s covenant with Israel was kept. (The Ten Commandments were under the lid.) In Exodus 25:22, God said to Moses, “There I will meet with you.” Once a year the high priest was to slaughter a bull and a lamb on behalf of the people, and he was to take some of the blood and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. This seat was constructed with an angel on either end. Is it possible that John, in describing the angels in Jesus’ tomb, is trying to point us to the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection? Was he hoping we would see that this place where Jesus’ body had lain was the new mercy seat and that here, by his own blood, Christ had reconciled humanity to God? Today’s post is an excerpt from John: The Gospel of Light and Life. To find out more about this best-selling book and small group study, click here.  

The Crucifixion of the King

David Burns on March 24, 2016

During this Lenten season, we have been reading through the Gospel of John together. I hope this Challenge has been a blessing to you. As we begin Holy Week, we now turn to Jesus’ final days leading up to and including his crucifixion. Each day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from my latest book, John: The Gospel of Light and Life.   The soldiers took Jesus prisoner. Carrying his cross by himself, he went out to a place called Skull Place (in Aramaic, Golgotha). That’s where they crucified him—and two others with him, one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Pilate had a public notice written and posted on the cross. It read “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. (John 19:16b-20) Notice the sign that was placed over Jesus’ head. Every criminal who was crucified had a sign that named his crime. The sign over Jesus read “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.” Only John tells us that this inscription was posted in three languages: Aramaic, the language of the Near East; Latin, the language of the West; and Greek, the language of the Hellenistic world. Why does John tell us this? Because these were the languages of the Roman Empire; these were the languages of the world. In other words, in the very inscription meant to name Jesus’ crime, the Roman governor inadvertently became the first to declare that Jesus is the King, not just to the Jews but to the whole world. This detail leads to a really important idea for John, something that he’s been driving toward for the entire Gospel: here, on the cross, Jesus is enthroned and his glory is revealed; he is a king who embraced death to save his people. We’re meant to wonder and to reflect in awe: What kind of king would willingly give himself as a ransom, an offering of redemption, to save his people? John goes on to tell us that as Jesus hung on the cross, those nearby offered him a drink of wine. They affixed a sponge to a hyssop branch, dipped it in sour wine, and raised it to his lips. Isn’t it odd that John would feel the need to tell us the type of branch that was used? But hyssop wasn’t just any branch. Listen to Moses’ instructions to the elders of Israel on the night of the first Passover: “Go pick out one of the flock for your families, and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood that is in the bowl, and touch the beam above the door and the two doorposts with the blood in the bowl.” (Exodus 12:21b-22a) Hyssop was used to ensure that the children of Israel wouldn’t die, even as they were being delivered from slavery! Once again, John is seeking to make it clear that Jesus came to liberate us and save us from death, and the hyssop branch is one of several clues and symbols John uses to that end. But there was another use of hyssop in the Old Testament: hyssop branches were used in rites of purification (see Leviticus 14 and Numbers 19). It became associated with God’s work in cleansing his people. Thus David would say, “Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7). We find two things happening at the same time in John’s version of the story. Jesus the Passover lamb sets us free from slavery, and Jesus the King sacrifices himself to purify God’s people and to save them (us!) from sin and death. We look at the cross and ask: Exactly how does this work? How can someone who died two thousand years ago save us from our sins? It’s okay to scratch your head. I certainly have at times in my life. Sometimes you’ll hear Christians say they’ve got it all figured out. They have a theory of atonement that explains it all, sort of like an equation in math. The sum weight of the world’s sin is x. Jesus’ righteousness is y. So x minus y results in our being forgiven. I don’t think Jesus’ death works like that. To me, it’s not math; it’s more like poetry or a divine drama. The way we see the cross of Christ changes, like a kaleidoscope, at different times in our lives and affects us differently. At times his death is primarily about our need for forgiveness and his willingness to purify us. At other times the cross will convey God’s power to liberate us from what enslaves us emotionally or spiritually. At still other times the cross becomes a reminder of the selfless love of our King, who laid down his life for his people. Today’s post is an excerpt from John: The Gospel of Light and Life. To find out more about this best-selling book and small group study, click here.  

Jesus’ Crucifixion in the Gospel of John

David Burns on March 23, 2016

During this Lenten season, we have been reading through the Gospel of John together. I hope this Challenge has been a blessing to you. As we begin Holy Week, we now turn to Jesus’ final days leading up to and including his crucifixion. Each day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from my latest book, John: The Gospel of Light and Life.   In many ways, John’s account of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion parallels the one found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But I want to focus on several differences regarding what one might think to be minor details. Remember, the details matter in John, and when there’s a divergence from what we might call the normative tradition (the story as it came to be told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke), we may want to pay particular attention. Allow me to point out just a few of the details that are unique to John’s Gospel. Notice that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when Jesus is sent to be crucified he is unable to carry his own cross, hence Simon of Cyrene is pressed into service and forced to carry it instead. But in John we read, “The soldiers took Jesus prisoner. Carrying his cross by himself, he went out to a place called Skull Place (in Aramaic, Golgotha). That’s where they crucified him” (John 19:16b-18a). Why did John emphasize that Jesus carried his own cross? Once again John seems to want us to see Jesus as the strong and dignified Son of God. In crucifixion, the vertical portion of the cross, called the stipe, was kept at the site of the crucifixion. But victims were forced to carry the horizontal portion, a seventy-pound crossbeam, which in Latin is the petibulum, and it became the instrument of their own torture and death. In John’s Gospel, Jesus picked up the heavy crossbeam with strength and intentionality, changing it into an instrument of salvation. It’s as if Jesus was saying, “This is not only the instrument of my death but also of the fulfillment of my mission.” Again we return to John’s text: “It was about noon on the Preparation Day for the Passover” (19:14). In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus was crucified on the first day of the Passover in the morning. But John tells us Jesus was crucified at noon on the Preparation Day, one day before the first full day of Passover. As always in John, the differing details—in this case date and time—turn out to be important. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Passover Seder is the Last Supper, and the lambs have been sacrificed and prepared earlier on the Day of Preparation. But in John, Jesus is crucified on the Day of Preparation. Why does John tell us that Jesus was crucified as the lambs were being slaughtered? Because he wants his readers to see Jesus as a kind of Passover lamb. In John 1:29 he has already introduced this theme when John the Baptist looks at Jesus and announces, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” On that first Passover, the lambs were slaughtered not to take away sin but to spare the firstborn of the Israelites from death. From that time on, the lambs were slaughtered at Passover as a visible reminder of God’s deliverance of the Israelite children from death and of the Israelite people from slavery. This is part of what John wants his readers to see: Jesus, by his death, delivers us from slavery to sin, and he frees us from the fear and power of death. How are we slaves to sin? The Apostle Paul captures it well when he writes, “I’m sold as a slave to sin. I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate” (Romans 7:14b-15). Sin seems to “own” us. But, like the death of the Passover lambs and the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt, the death of Christ is intended to free us from slavery to sin. John wants us to understand that Jesus, like the Passover lamb, liberates us from slavery and bondage. And Jesus frees us from death. There are many metaphors in the New Testament by which the apostles sought to explain the significance of Jesus’ death, but for John this idea of liberation is essential. To make further sense of it, we’ll take a closer look at John’s account of the Crucifixion in tomorrow’s post. Today’s post is an excerpt from John: The Gospel of Light and Life. To find out more about this best-selling book and small group study, click here.  

The Trials of Jesus

David Burns on March 22, 2016

During this Lenten season, we have been reading through the Gospel of John together. I hope this Challenge has been a blessing to you. As we begin Holy Week, we now turn to Jesus’ final days leading up to and including his crucifixion. Each day this week, I’ll be posting excerpts from my latest book, John: The Gospel of Light and Life.   Unlike what is described in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in John’s Gospel Jesus did not appear before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. He appeared briefly before Annas, the former high priest, and again before Caiaphas, the reigning high priest, but very little is said about these trials except that the priests apparently agreed Jesus should be executed for claiming to be the Son of God. Then Jesus was bound over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Pilate’s job was to maintain the peace of Rome, making sure Rome’s power was exerted in the land of Judea. The charge the high priest made against Jesus was insurrection—that he was claiming to be King of the Jews in rebellion against Caesar. Insurrection was a crime punishable by death. This charge sets up the theme of Jesus’ kingship. In John’s account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate and his crucifixion, the word king or kingdom is used fifteen times. Pilate went back into the palace. He summoned Jesus and asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others spoken to you about me?” Pilate responded, “I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus replied, “My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here.” “So you are a king?” Pilate said. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:33-37) John’s account depicts Jesus as a King whose Kingdom is not like those of this world. It is a Kingdom that transcends geographic boundaries and even time. It is a Kingdom made up of all who believe in him, follow him, and seek to love God and neighbor. It is a Kingdom of truth, light, and life. When John describes Jesus as King, his hope is to persuade his readers to accept Jesus as their King—for us to accept him as our King. His kingship comes before our earthly political allegiances. In Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate, again and again Pilate said he found no basis for putting Jesus to death. But the crowd, including the religious leaders, demanded Jesus’ crucifixion. Would Pilate do the right thing, or would he do the politically expedient thing? Pilate knew that the right thing was to release Jesus, but he didn’t do it because he was afraid. What would it do to his career? What would it do to his stature? In this account, Pilate represents all of us, because at some point in our lives we will face this trial and this test. What will we do when given that choice? Is it Christ or career? Christ or status? Christ or money? What is the trial you face? Of course, in a very real sense this wasn’t Jesus’ trial at all; it was the trial of Pontius Pilate and the religious leaders. Pilate stood in conversation with the King of kings, sensed that this man was more than he seemed, and referred to him repeatedly as a king. Yet because of Pilate’s concern for himself, he sent Christ to die. He may have helped his political career, but he failed the test. Today’s post is an excerpt from John: The Gospel of Light and Life. To find out more about this best-selling book and small group study, click here.