The Jesus Box

Oh, man, am I depressed.

Haven't you heard?

They found the box with Jesus' bones in it. Twenty-seven years ago, and even though the BBC found out about it a decade ago, American TV is just now breaking the news. And on that paragon of scientific research, The Discovery Channel. Well, I expected more timely coverage from them.

At least it'll be well done, I'm sure. Hey, James Cameron is a heck of a filmmaker. He can break your heart on the Titanic, scare the bejeepers out of you with The Terminator and even bring you to tears at the awesome beauty of God's creation in the bottom of the ocean's Aliens of the Deep.

And even though I'm not familiar with the authors of the book this documentary is based on - or their qualifications - you've gotta know that James Cameron would never side up with anyone less than stellar, or pursue a project he couldn't believe in, or do something just for the money or the news coverage. And they'd never cook the books on statistical probabilities of name distribution in an ancient culture or exaggerate the implications of DNA testing. Right?

So.

The bones of Jesus. Though I hear that they were considered unimportant by those who discovered it, and were disposed of. Man, what a loss. What a story they could tell ... about being whipped, crucified, lanced and all. Not to mention resurrected and gathered to heaven.

But what made Jesus come back to Jerusalem, start a family, move mom and dad there and choose to die all over again in middle-class comfort and be buried in a fairly expensive tomb? (Did Joseph of Arimathea donate that one, too?) Or are we to believe something else implied by this incredible 27-year-old discovery?

Wow, I guess we'll never know for sure.

It sure could throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of traditional Christianity, couldn't it?

I mean, haven't we always thought that Jesus just died the one time, left an empty tomb with folded grave clothes and dozens if not hundreds of witnesses to the sham trials, the torture, the murder, the resurrected body that still featured wound marks and was capable of cooking and eating fish for breakfast?

Just the idea that the people who loved the family most would lie about all that, maybe to protect them so they could live out normal lives - would lie about it, even when threatened with death by Romans - and that the martyrdoms for the lie would continue on and off for three hundred years ... well, it's just kind of sad and pathetic, isn't it?

Especially when the story they told conformed to all kinds of prophecies from centuries before. Even when it offered hope to thousands and then millions and now billions of people. Even when people lived out lives of service and generosity to others in need, just in the attempt to be like Jesus.

Breaks your heart, doesn't it? That it was all for nothing?

All those hospitals created for the sake of showing the love of Jesus ... all those mission outreaches that brought appropriate technology like well-digging, irrigation, and brick-making to undeveloped cultures ... all pointless, because they pointed to a Jesus that lived pretty well; lived the American dream: married the girl that had been rescued from seven demons, had the family with 2.2 kids with the folks living nearby and even had a pretty nice box to be buried in when it was finally all over.

To think, all these centuries, we poor deluded Christians have labored under the delusion that you can't put Jesus in a box.

Well, the documentary's gotta be true.

Because the names are right there on the ossuary. In real Hebrew, no less. The DNA proves that two of the former occupants weren't related maternally, and therefore could have been married to each other. The odds of a Jesus being buried with a father named Joseph and a wife named Mary and not being the ones in the New Testament are, well, incalculable.

After all, statistics don't lie.

If ...

... John F. Kennedy had been a minister of the gospel, might he have said: "Ask not what your Savior can do for you; ask what you can do for your Savior"?

I'm out for the weekend, so talk amongst yourselves.

If you can do so without getting verklempt in the attempt.

The TV Don't Glow Cerulean Anymore

If you read this blog much, you know I don't watch much television; HGTV is pretty much my last addiction there, and I peruse it less and less these days.

So you'll understand part of why I applaud Dan Edelen's suggestion (prompted by the demise of his TV) in Fumbling the Torch over at his blog Cerulean Sanctum.

Once you read Dan, you'll understand the full reason I applaud both the idea and his blog - and why it's one of my daily stops on my blogging circuit.

The First Day of Fasting Went Fast

It's amazing, though, how many times my thoughts turned to a craving for sweet, carbonated, fruity-flavored water.

But it's also pretty amazing that, after only two Lenten fasts under my more comfortably-fastened belt, how easy it is to turn those thoughts to prayer, to thankfulness for how blessed I am to have sweet, carbonated, fruity-flavored water available at every turn. Some folks in the world are dying for a drink of plain pure water. Literally.

So I'm looking into ways that the money I deny the beverage-vending machines can be funneled to an outreach that's trying to provide that drink of plain pure water to the folks who need it most.

You can't just pick one on the Internet. You can never be sure, that way, into whose pockets your spare change will end up. If you have contact with one that you have found beyond reproach, I'd be glad to hear from you!

Now I have to back up and correct a possible misperception.

I didn't begin fasting at Lent in 2005.

Angi and I have fasted and prayed together and separately a number of times before that. The first time was when we began in earnest our adoption process, and the answer to our prayers was Matthew, now 14. Another time was when we filed again, and the answer was Laura, now 10.

Another time was when my father died suddenly at home but was revived too late by paramedics. While his coma persisted several weeks, even when he breathed on his own after being removed from the life-support equipment, I fasted and prayed for his full recovery. The answer was his final demise.

And I understood how King David felt when he said of his perished infant son, "He will not come to me, but I will go to him."

If prayer for some folks is the end of a rope, fasting is the end of another rope that can help tie your life back together. They're almost always tied together in scripture - with two notable exceptions: the story of Esther, and the account of Jesus' fast in the desert before being tempted by Satan.

The absence of a mention of prayer in Esther is kinda understandable; God isn't even mentioned. But He's there, all the same. The story could not have turned out the way it did had He not be an active character as every moment of the drama unfolded. So if Esther and her handmaidens were not praying in accord with their fasting, why did they bother? Were they just dieting under these extreme circumstances? Helping Esther shed a few unglamorous pounds so that she'd have a better chance that her husband the king would hold out his scepter to her; admit her in to plead the case for her people?

If not fasting and prayer, then why fasting at all?

I believe the same may be true of the other instance. The synoptic gospel writers chose, for their own mute reasons, only to mention that Jesus went out to the desert alone, and fasted. Why? For His health? Some folks may claim that total fasting can improve your health, but I can't imagine that forty days of it would be that helpful.

I believe He prayed. I believe that He knew that the Spirit was leading Him out into the desert to be tempted by the devil, and that His ministry could not begin in earnest until the two of them had faced off. I believe He knew that the best preparation was to talk directly to His Father, reminded each moment of His dependence on providence to sustain Him in every way; reminded by each pang of hunger and each moment of light-headedness and each stumbling attempt to overcome hideous physical weakness.

I believe Jesus went from a husky, strong, hammer-wielding carpenter to a gaunt, frail, dirty, nearly-powerless, suffering servant for a good reason. He demonstrated His willingness to become His Father's Son; to serve as high priest of His people. I don't think the writer of Hebrews is referring exclusively to the Passion when he says of Jesus:

"During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek." - Hebrews 5:7-10

It says "days," you see; "days" plural. Not just that last day. "Days."

I think it's quite possible that Jesus had a pretty good idea of the endgame even at this point in the desert; even before the game was afoot. He knew He needed to be prepared for what was to come - for more than the temptations Satan would prod him with at the end of the forty-day fast. There would be temptations to use His might to benefit Himself, rather than His God and His people, every day and every mile and every town and every moment.

Temptations to call down fire on the ungodly. Temptations to pay no Roman tax. Temptations to comfort a woman of ill-repute kneeling at His feet, and to do so in a more sexually satisfying way. Temptations to give it up when His cousin was murdered. Temptations to cut and run when people wanted to chuck Him off of a cliff. Temptations to heal everyone and leave no doubt. Temptations to summon ten legions of angels.

Even temptations during those forty days of fasting - unprompted by spoken devilish words - to break that fast and just get started with His ministry.

So, to me, it is inconceivable that Jesus' fasting was not accompanied by prayer.

If there were types of demons that could only be cast out by fasting and prayer, I believe He was using whatever it took to make certain there were none that would defeat Him.

There are times when prayer alone just isn't enough. So, obviously, fasting by itself can't be enough.

They're a package deal, fasting and prayer.

You can be sure that I won't be fasting this Lenten season just for the sake of fasting this Lenten season. This fast will be balanced by prayer, much prayer, and for a lot of concerns, a lot of hopes, a lot of beloved brothers and sisters.

And for a lot plain, pure water.

Kenosis

I'm not a Greek scholar, and I don't play one on TV.

However, I understand that kenosis, in New Testament Greek terms, is a word which describes paring-down, shedding excess, maybe even doing more with less. I suppose it can include fasting, if you want to read it that way, and so I choose to read it that way. I could be wrong. I've been wrong before, and survived it.

At any rate, I'm going into a season of kenosis beginning this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. I have a good example for it: a Savior who fasted in the desert 40 days while being tempted by the Accuser. (Hard to accuse Someone who's perfect; best just to play to His needs and wants.)

So I'm going to try to need and want less for the 40 days following Wednesday as I have for the previous couple of years. But this year will be a little different. My first year, I weaned myself off of my beloved Mountain Dew for an entire Lenten season. Last year I parted with soft drinks laced with caffeine. This Lent, I'm going to try to temporarily break my addiction to soft drinks entirely.

It'll just be good ol' Ozarka or Mountain Valley Water, or the chilled, filtered stuff from my refrigerator's front door.

And in the spirit of fasting preferred by Isaiah (ch. 58), I'll be tossing the unspent beverage coinage into a receptacle to benefit a far greater need than my craving for sugary beverages.

It won't stop there. I'm hoping to fast from indolence as well. I intend to find some active, physical ways to actually do some of God's work instead of just writing and talking about it. I have some things in mind, but haven't prayed about them fully yet - so they're not ready for sharing yet.

But I would welcome your prayers and support in my fast - and would be glad to challenge anyone who feels intrigued by it to join me and millions of other Christian folks in this season of kenosis.

The Really, Really Big Picture

This is bigger than any 72-inch plasma HDTV or 72-foot jumbotron. It's bigger than the color displays in Times Square or on the sides of any Goodyear blimp. It's the answer to the question, the question, the one whose answer in the Douglas Adams universe is "forty-two" and requires the ultimate computer to spend millions of years to build a bigger computer that can correctly phrase the question.

That question was originally asked as, "What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?"

And "forty-two" is a very unsatisfactory answer to the mortal mind, even if correct.

But out here in the mostly-non-Douglas Adams universe, it isn't even close to correct.

I think the answer is in Ephesians 3:8-11, where Paul seems to almost brush it aside as a footnote about why God wanted Paul - and all of us - to see the gospel as a purpose in life:

Although I am less than the least of all God's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. ... (emphasis mine)

I think that's the really, really big picture.

I'm not really, really sure I understand what it means, but I am fairly, fairly willing to take a crack at it.

Why does God create us? Why does He create us mortal? Why does He give us the choice, from the very beginning of creation, between good and evil; between selflessness and self; between living forever and dying?

I believe it has something to do with the angels - that "rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms" refers to them. That there is an eternal purpose behind creation. That it displays the manifold wisdom of God.

There have been all kinds of books written about angels, and most of their content is speculation - and the honest authors admit that. We really don't know very much about angels. We presume that they are kind of heavenly halflings: created at a point in time (or at least in eternity), and eternal thereafter. We deduce that some were given responsibilities to carry out; became rulers and authorities. (Satan seems to be referred to euphemistically earlier in Ephesians as the "ruler of the kingdom of the air," for instance.) We conjecture that something went wrong at some point further down the timeline. Some of them rebelled. Some of them remained loyal to God: recognized His manifold wisdom (that good is intrinsically greater than evil?) and continued to obey and worship Him. The rest ... fell. We don't know when. We don't know a better word for it. And Satan, the Accuser, seemed to be at the head of the pack.

For a while, Satan seems to split his time between prowling up and down the earth in search of victims like Job and showing up before the Lord to accuse them of treachery.

Are you seeing a pattern match here?

God believes in Job, as surely as Job believes in God. God knows that Job has the integrity to live out, even while suffering, his belief that good is intrinsically greater than evil and that His God is good. He will question God, challenge God's mercy and justice. But he will not challenge God's authority to do what He wills. He will not curse God and die.

It was a taste of things to come, I think.

Paul says that God's intent was to display his manifold wisdom to these rulers and authorities (All of them? Just the rebellious ones? - I don't know!) now and through the church.

Yup. You read that right, and so did I.

The fellowship of believers in Christ is the culmination of God's ultimate plan. Will they continue, even in suffering, to live out their faith in God through Christ? Mortal beings, born to die, who have never seen God face-to-face (though some of them were witnesses to His incarnation)?

The former are the folks, I'm convinced, that Jesus is talking about when he comments on Thomas' belief at seeing the wounds of the crucifixion in His resurrected body: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29b)

That's us. And I believe it puts us in a position of truly cosmic responsibility:

We are to judge angels. (I Corinthians 6:3)

Again, Paul seems to brush it off as common knowledge while upbraiding the believers at Corinth for being unwilling to wisely judge disputes among themselves; instead they filed lawsuits in pagan courts.

I don't think he means it literally; scripture is abundantly clear in many instances that the Lord is the only righteous judge.

But I still believe we have a role.

Those of use who follow Christ should lead lives that daily prove good is intrinsically greater than evil; lives of selflessness and service to others; lives that speak of Christ's sacrifice and His giving nature. If we, who have not seen, can so believe and live our faith - then for the angels who knew and saw God and His ultimate goodness yet rebelled, there can be no excuse, no pardon, no alternative than to live out the rest of their eternity in exile and the punishment of never, ever seeing Him again.

No more roaming up and down the earth. No more appearing before the throne to accuse. No more evidence will be admitted to mitigate the sentence.

Instead, the mortal believers will be changed; will become immortal; will take that place of knowing and seeing Him face-to-face and being forever blessed.

And so the angels are judged ... by us. Perhaps not us as their judges; but certainly as the standard by which they are judged. That's how the church makes known the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers in the heavenly realms.

Conjecture, I know.

Yet it is a simple answer which happens to fit all of the available facts, and I think William of Occam would be willing to shave with it.

And, for me, it's the answer to the $64 gazillion dollar question; to life, the universe and everything - and to how really, really big of a picture we find ourselves in.

Singing in Church

I sing in church. I used to sing softly because I do not have a lovely voice and I was shy. I can carry a tune in a bucket, if the bucket has a 1-1/2-octave lid and the tempo doesn't swing it too fast. I can sort of read music, about the way that I read French after taking a couple of semesters of it thirty years ago. So I used to sing quietly, mostly to myself, in church because I didn't want to spoil the experience for others.

Now I sing lustily and loudly, much to the embarrassment of my teenage son next to me.

But I think I sound better than I used to.

My voice has not improved because of some miracle drug purchased from China through an exclusive e-mail offer, nor from surgical intervention through the skill of competent physicians, nor from the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. In fact, I don't imagine it has improved at all.

However, my attitude about singing has changed.

Truth is, I don't really give a flip what people around me (including my son) think about my voice; not even when I'm singing a song of encouragement to them.

You see, my voice is a gift from God - just like Amy Grant's, or Stephen Curtis Chapman's, or Enrico Caruso's, or that sweet little old lady in the middle right section of the worship center who has never let being off-key interfere with her devotion to God or her expression of it with great volume. (Lord, I love hearing her sing! He must love it, too.)

God doesn't expect my voice to sound any better than the voice He gave me.

He wants me to sing because it's good for me. Increases the oxygenation in my lungs. Lifts my spirits, sometimes. Convicts me, at other times. It gives me a chance to participate in worshiping Him, and to do it with others who love Him.

I love singing. I always have. I can't believe I cheated myself out of the full blessing of it for so many years.

Oh, sure, there are times when I don't sing. There are times when I need to listen and be spoken to by the song; times when I am not qualified to sing it as an encouragement to others because I have not been faithful to its message. There are even rare moments when I don't fully agree, in my ticky-picky word-loving writer way, with the way a certain concept is phrased - or even the concept itself.

Most of the time I sing anyway. Because I don't want my reluctance to sing to become chronic. That would be an indication of something wrong - not with my voicebox, nor my lungs - but with my heart. And it might be serious.

Serious enough that only the great Physician could heal it.

And how would I know if He was just waiting for me to ask for that healing in song?

Or that the singing itself was the therapy He was prescribing?

The Moment That Passed

I didn't know David Wright very well. From the way his close friends prayed for him and cared for him over the long months leading up to his death last night from a brain tumor, I can surmise that he was a good man, good friend, good father. And that he will be deeply missed, as deeply as he was loved in this life.

But I will always treasure a gift that he gave me one Sunday morning during our time at the table.

He had shared a testimony that morning about the support of his brothers and sisters in Christ a few minutes before, and it had been deeply moving. A quiet and somewhat private man, David had undergone something of a personality change at that time; had become more gregarious and outgoing. Perhaps it was the tumor. Perhaps it was the insight that there were more days behind than there could be ahead for him.

So our church sat, as we always sit, while the symbols of Christ's body and blood were served: uncomfortably upright, heads bowed or gaze straight ahead, eyes averted from each other. And for the thousandth time, I wished for that moment of communion - not only with God, who is always present and welcome in my meditations - but with someone else.

With someone else who understood with me that communion is a gift to share with brothers and sisters, as well as their God.

I yearned for that moment a little like the one at the close of the movie The Right Stuff, when the Mercury astronauts were being honored for challenging outer space at a cheesy dinner, and across the smoky room they shared among themselves a look; an expression of knowing and comprehending it all for having been the only seven to actually go and be there. I wasn't hungering for the exclusivity or any arrogance attached to it; just the recognition of a kindred soul who understands.

Just about that time - while the cup was being distributed - David's head turned toward mine and our eyes met. And he half-smiled. And half-nodded.

I returned his acknowledgment, and thanked God for him.

The moment passed. Now David has, too.

But his gift to me remains precious, and always will.

The Mishnah (and Gemara) of Christ

I am truly sorry to have interrupted a decent series of posts with two others about inspiration by the Holy Spirit and a general rant about my country still being at war.

What I had really intended to write about next, after The Tanakh of Christ and its two predecessors, was The Mishnah of Christ. Now I've completely derailed my train of thought and can't seem to get it back together.

I remember that I wanted to say that the Mishnah of Judaism is the point at which the religion leaves preachin' and goes to meddlin.' Or something like that.

Maybe more accurately (and maybe not, as I am only a surface scholar of such matters), the Mishnah begins the process - 200 years after century one A.D. - of writing down all of the oral tradition of scholarly types among the Jews plus a little bit more. At least some of that is the oral tradition of legal interpretation that Jesus shot skeet-holes through while He walked this world with mortal feet.

Not all of it. Just some.

And there's probably nothing technically wrong with nitpicking God's law to the finest detail and recording it in volumes and volumes of commentary, other than perhaps the time used up doing so which might have been put toward actually living it out to the greater benefit of His children.

I do it. I admit it. I blog. I blog about the details of my interpretations of the Torah of Christ which differ from other people's views. Sometimes I wash my hands afterward, but I usually forget.

And I think I'm typical of a long, long generation of Christianity (my tribe is Restoration Movement) that has been guilty of exactly the same misdemeanor.

The problem is, a new generation is sprouting up in all kinds of Christian tribes with the recognition that it wasn't a misdemeanor at all; it was a felony. The world was left to starve and die and rot in a cesspool of what my long generation has gotten away from calling "sin," because we didn't feel it was politically correct - or that it was judgmental - to point it out.

Perhaps it is. The thing about it is, we never tried. Not really. And we never really discovered that we didn't have to. All we had to do was tell The Story - without embellishment or commentary or controversy - and Jesus' perfect life would have illuminated sin for the heinous thing it is.

So, here I am. I'm "mishnah-ing" again. I could be blogging about Christ at the old, abandoned cooperative blog What Would Jesus Do Next?. I could be doing a thousand things for other people. I could even be kneeling in prayer for some that I know and love who are hurting. I could be trying to invent ways to make their lives more blessed. I could be attempting some of them.

But it's cold outside, and those attempts take effort, and it's the end of the day, and I'm tired - too tired to think of any more excuses.

Oh, sure, I think a molecule or two of good comes from my "mishnah-ing." Occasionally. Yet far too much of all the Christian "mishnah-ing" that has been generated in the span of my tribe's existence has left preaching and gone to meddling; to differing and accusing and debating and proving and sometimes snubbing, disfellowshipping, eternally condemning and once in a while even rudeness and insult. It has gone to the Gemara level - the commentary on the commentary. (And sometimes, way beyond.)

Yup. In Judaism, as I understand it, there are copies of the Talmud whose pages contain the Torah and Tanakh, framed by the Mishnah commentary on the Torah and Talmud, encircled by the Gemara commentary on the Mishnah commentary.

And I have to ask myself: Are the things that God wants to say to us really that complicated?

Or is all our commentary just a way to avoid living and doing it?

So that's why I asked HTML to strike through of Christ: When the level of commentary hits a certain point, it's no longer about Christ or of Christ or for Christ.

At least, that's what I think I was going to say in this post. It's really been a while since it all occurred to me; before Christmas, when my train of thought first hit a snag in the rails. It was a dark time, a time of refining and discipline, a time when I just couldn't write ... when I was beginning to realize that in my life - when all was said and done - there would probably be a lot more said than done.

And, somehow, with God's help, that has to change.