Share — The Power of Reviews
It has never been easier to share our faith with more people, yet we’re often hesitant to do it. Why is that?
Serve — Here I Am, Lord, Send Me
The words “serve,” “serving,” “service,” and “servant” appear over 1,000 times in the Bible.
The Importance of Listening and Paying Attention
Our primary way of knowing Jesus is through the New Testament, and most clearly and directly through the Gospels.
Worship and Prayer
Worship—and with it, prayer—is the first of the five spiritual practices essential to growing and maturing in our Christian walk.
The Resurrection of the Body
Today concludes our series of blog posts featuring excerpts from my new book, Creed: What Christians Believe and Why. As we have now entered into the Lenten season, it seems appropriate that we consider the resurrection and the promise of life everlasting. Today, I’m including a portion from Chapter Six, “The Resurrection of the Body.” Click here to read last week’s post, which featured an excerpt from Chapter Five. Christians believe that in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God gave a definitive answer to the existential questions of death and life beyond death. Clearly Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. His friends grieved and mourned his death. But those same friends claimed that on Sunday morning, after his death on Friday, Jesus stepped out of the tomb. These men and women claimed that they had seen him, eaten with him, touched him, and been taught by him for forty days after his death. The tomb in which he had been buried was empty; people could go and see it. Jesus’ disciples, who, fearing for their lives, had gone into hiding after his death, boldly stepped into the streets to proclaim that he had risen. In the years following, people such as Paul, who had initially rejected Christianity and had even persecuted Christians, claimed to have had encounters, visions, and profound experiences of the risen Christ. Once again, in the late 50s, Paul wrote of Jesus that “he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at once—most of them are still alive to this day” (1 Corinthians 15:6). With this confidence, Paul could affirm that for him there was no question that we survive death, and he could write, quoting Isaiah 25:8, “Death has been swallowed up by a victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). Later Paul wrote, “We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Corinthians 5:1 NIV). It’s what Jesus meant when he said, “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” (John 11:25-26). We believe in life beyond death because Jesus rose from the dead, the disciples bore witness to it, and those who came later had profound experiences with the risen Christ. Jesus’ death and resurrection were, in part, God’s way of speaking to the deepest and most fundamental human crisis: death. I love that phrase in Scripture, included in the Creed: “On the third day he rose again.” As important as Jesus’ death is for Christians, it was his resurrection that demonstrated his triumph over evil, hate, sin, and death. As Jesus said in John, “Because I live, you will live too” (John 14:19). Once again, the existentialist theologian Paul Tillich offered an important word when he wrote, “The face of every man shows the trace of the presence of death in his life, of his fear of death, of his courage toward death, and of his resignation to death. This frightful presence of death subjects man to bondage and servitude all his life.”The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is God’s answer to the “frightful presence of death,” and in one great act on Easter morning Christ liberated believers from death’s “bondage and servitude.” That first Easter, the disciples remained in hiding. They had not yet seen Jesus. They did not expect his resurrection from the grave. When the women came announcing that Jesus had been raised, the disciples thought the women were out of their minds. Then suddenly he appeared among them, saying, “Peace be with you” (John 20:21). In this simple statement Jesus was expressing, in part, what his resurrection and the promise of eternal life mean to us. By conquering death, Jesus addressed our fear and uncertainty and offered his first disciples, and us, a peace that sustains us even in the face of great tragedy and pain. I’m reminded of Thomas Dorsey, one of the greats of African American gospel music. Just days after losing his first wife, Nettie, and their son during childbirth, Dorsey wrote the beloved hymn “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home. It was Dorsey’s faith that Christ lives, that he walks with us, that there is a resurrection of the body and a life everlasting, that made it possible for him to write those words just days after laying his wife and infant son to rest. This is just a brief excerpt from Chapter Six of my new book, Creed: What Christians Believe and Why. In the rest of the chapter I consider the many aspects and implications of Christ’s resurrection, his promise that we will be raised, and what heaven is like. If you would like to know more about the book or the children, youth or adult small group study resources based upon it, click here; or click here to view the promo videos (scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Videos" tab).
The Garden and the Mission of Easter
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!
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
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
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
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.