We put a premium on freedom. It’s kind of what we are all about. Many have sacrificed to ensure freedom for us; countless men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice by giving their lives to ensure that freedom. But despite this and even though we live in the land of the free, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are free.

Central to the Christian faith is freedom. We get saved, we are free, we are forgiven, we have peace, joy; there is love in our hearts and it feels good. We eventually make it to church, maybe invited by the person who introduced us to Christ. But a funny thing happens, it seems that the joy and freedom we have experienced is eroded away by those who tell us all the things we need to do now that we are Christians. All the things we need to do to be acceptable Christians. The life that starts out in freedom, that starts out as a gift is now somehow bound by duty and obligation. To live in freedom takes courage and is somewhat more difficult to walk in because we are shaped by the fear of what people might think or say about us. So we try hard to conform so as not to be rejected by our new brothers and sisters in Christ.

The freedom we discover in Christ is nurtured by grace. The word grace in the Greek is charis and simply means gift. But we don’t know how to handle receiving a gift. We immediately turn it into an obligation. We treat gifts from an economy of exchange. If you buy me a gift for my birthday, then I am obligated to buy you a gift on your birthday. Not only that but one which reflects an equal amount of thought, care, sentiment, and money.

And because we presume to know what grace is, we almost always treat God’s grace to us as yet another (albeit much grander) economic exchange. We react to God’s grace as though we are obligated to give back to God since he has given to us. We do this often by denying ourselves, working to live moral lives, dutifully making ourselves better people. But as Paul says in Galatians 1:7, “that is no gospel at all…” NIV

The whole notion of a gift is that it is 1) unmerited; 2) there is no obligation; 3) there is nothing expected in return. It is a gift, a grace, charis. The only legitimate response to a gift is gratitude, and it is this gratitude, which is meant to be the dominant attitude and posture of the Christian. It is the garden where love springs forth from … loving gratitude.

Have you ever wondered why the New Testament doesn’t teach about tithing? It’s because the New Testament teaches we give from a heart of gratitude and not from the burden of obligation. When we perceive the gift we have been given, our gratitude will far surpass the offering of a tithe. Everything about our life from the air we breathe to the salvation we have been granted is gift, and if we move away from hearts of gratitude, we drift into a life of duty and obligation…the world of ‘shoulds’. I should be nice, I should go to church, I should…..you can fill in the blank. This is our ‘default’ setting, to borrow a term from technology.

Living concerned of “what others will think” or a life of “I should…” is not living freely; instead it represents a life of duty and obligation, not an expression of freedom. Consequently, we are not living in the freedom Christ paid for. So in loving gratitude let’s receive fully the gift of Christ in us.

It is the end of a long day. It was a good day. There is no other day like it on the calendar, no greater day in church history or for that matter in all of history. Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate Christ’s resurrection!

Paul writes to young Timothy in 2Timothy 2:8: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel! Pretty simple, definitely not complicated, yet nevertheless quite radical!

Christianity is not some sort of mind numbing philosophical narcotic to help us manage our lives better; it’s a radical relationship with the very alive Jesus Christ, a relationship with the living God! Jesus Christ was Crucified, he died a horrible and violent death for our sin, then rose from the dead! He’s alive! He is physically alive! He is not some sort of disembodied spirit, like a ghost. He has risen as a human being, exalted and sits at the right hand of the Father! This is the cornerstone of our faith that somehow we push to the margins of our lives.

This is radical stuff! There is nothing religious about this at all! The idea of God dying on a cross is sheer foolishness,? Preposterous! How could he? Why would he? How dare he? This is utterly scandalous! What kind of God is he who would die on a cross? What kind of god would choose to be crucified to show his love for us?

Let’s change gears for a moment. For resurrection to happen, what must first take place? Of course, in order for resurrection to take place there must be a death. Something has to die in order to be resurrected and of course that’s the rub. We don’t want to die.

There are many types of death. There is physical death, which is our greatest enemy, but there are other types of deaths as well. It is a type of death when our dreams go unfilled; it is a type of death when a relationship disintegrates; it is a type of death when we experience rejection…. when we are misunderstood and judged;

It is a type of death when we experience shame, and failure, when life doesn’t turn out how we had planned. It is a type of death when you face the unknown, when you leave the security of the familiar for waters unchartered. And of course there is a death because of our sin.

We do everything in our power to keep from dying. We resist dying, we try to hang on, to preserve our lives…but the truth is, grace is only understood when you have died. Without the cross there is neither grace nor resurrection.

Like a sponge Christ has absorbed our sin. We have been set right with Christ not because of being so morally stellar in our relationships or by our impeccable obedience to a set of rules! We have been set right because of Christ’s faithfulness, not ours. Christ not only died for me, on my behalf, but he died because of me as well. He was crucified because of my sin. It is my sin that killed him. Harsh, but true.

And when you owe your life to someone … it changes how you live and the only appropriate thing you can do is say thank you.

Part 4: The Agony of the Cross

It is interesting that the four gospels have nothing to say about the physical suffering of Christ during his crucifixion. The gospel writers wanted us to focus on something else. We ask the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” But a really good question that is seldom asked is, “Why did Jesus have to be crucified?”[1] Why was crucifixion the manner of death chosen by God…

Isaiah 53:1   Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?… 3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, striken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed… 10 Yet it was the LORD’S will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. NIV

The first phase of a Roman execution was scourging. A Roman soldier would use a whip made of leather cords with small pieces of metal and bone tied into the cords. The one being scourged would be stripped naked, there would be no loin cloth. The idea of scourging was to tear into the skeletal muscles. This would not only cause enormous pain, but also cause extreme blood loss and often set the stage for circulatory shock.

The person crucified would be paraded through the streets to maximize shame. At the crucifixion site the prisoner would be thrown to the ground exposing the torn flesh to dirt, rock, and debris. With arms in a bent position, the nails would be driven through the wrists between the ulna and radial bones to the crossbar. Once they were nailed to the crossbar they were hoisted up on to the post. The crossbar would be attached to the post by mortise and tenon, and then with the legs bent the feet were nailed to the post.

Once crucified, people could live for as long as three or four days and though the pain was excruciating what actually killed them was the inability to breathe. The only way to gain a breath would be by pushing oneself up from the legs and feet, or by pulling oneself up by the arms, both of which would cause intense agony. Now add to this horrendous pain, uncontrollable bodily functions, insects feasting on wounds, thirst, muscle cramps, bolts of pain from the severed medial nerves in the wrists, and the lacerated back scraping against the wooden posts with every breath.[2] Tortured, the one crucified dies from the weight of his own body as he suffocates.

So back to our question, “Why did Jesus have to be crucified?” “Why was crucifixion the manner of death chosen by God?”[3] Why did he choose the most torturous, shaming, and agonizing manner of execution devised by man for his death? The answer? What better way to show his love for us!

1John 4:9  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 75

[2] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 95

[3] Rutledge, 75

Part 3: The Shame of the Cross

 As we approach the Passion Week, our thoughts naturally gravitate toward the crucifixion and the resurrection. We identify the cross as a religious symbol, but it was not so in the early church. The cross was shameful, ugly, degrading and no one in Paul’s time would have ever thought of wearing a cross or hanging a cross in their home or putting one up in their place of worship. The cross was despicable and to die on the cross was grotesque and inhumane.

If you recall from our last entry that in 1 Corinthians 1:23 the word for stumbling block in the Greek is scandalon; it is the word we get scandal/scandalous from and it can also be translated as the word, offense, as in Galatians 5:11. The cross is at the heart of the Christian faith and it was scandalous and offensive… and it still is.

If we think that Jesus’ crucifixion was simply a tortured death then we have missed one of the most important aspects of the cross. The crucifixion was designed to be the ultimate insult to personal dignity. It was meant to be the most shaming, humiliating, and dehumanizing action ever conceived of by man.

We think of the crucifixion generally in terms of atonement, the legal means of our justification and this is a most powerful and important truth. But sometimes in our attentiveness to the atonement we neglect the idea of the cross as being scandalous and the awful stigma of crucifixion in the Roman Empire.

Crucifixion was an execution designed for maximum public exposure.[1] The victims were completely stripped, naked and exposed to the elements, and left to be picked at and eaten by insects and birds until they died by suffocation. Those who were crucified were subject to vicious ridicule because they were less than nobodies, their lives didn’t count, their lives were considered less than meaningless. The victims were thoroughly and completely rejected from the brotherhood of humanity. That was the whole purpose of the cross.

 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The meaning of the cross lies not only in physical suffering, but especially in rejection and shame. God let himself be pushed out of the world (and) on to the cross.”[2]

So now I want you to ponder the cross in your life. It has most likely caused you shame. It has probably broken your heart and has caused you a fair amount of disillusionment. It may anger you that it doesn’t seem fair or that God won’t take it away. It’s not that you must somehow enjoy the feeling of shame; Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus despised the shame but endured the cross because of the joy of what was to come. In no way do I wish to trivialize your suffering, but please hear me when I say that Jesus understands the shame you feel. It is a facet of the cross, but it doesn’t define who you are.

The cross brings you to that place where you feel all alone and rejected and that you have failed… worse than having failed, that you are a failure. The cross is that place where your dreams and desires die. And the work of the cross is death, public and humiliating, torturous and painful. The cross is that place you would never choose to go, so Jesus leads you. It is the place where you discover that everything has been peeled away, stripped away from your life. And what you are left with is Jesus.

The way of the cross is the way of Jesus; it is the way of the gospel; it is the way of the church; it is the way of sacrifice, and if the church doesn’t embrace the way of the cross, it isn’t a very safe place to worship.

[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 92

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 98.

Part2:  When We Are Weak

You may ask why we are talking about the cross and what that has to do with church being a safe place for imperfect people (sinners) to gather in humility and worship God. Church is meant to be a place where we can come just as we are without having to pretend we are something that we aren’t and experience acceptance when we feel tired and confused. It is the place where God’s people come and are reminded of God’s grace and mercy. It is the understanding of the cross and its work in our lives that allows this to happen in the church.

The cross represents weakness and death. We have a natural aversion to weakness and all that death represents. I mean who boasts in one’s weakness? In fact, we elevate those who shamelessly promote themselves. We are looking for power and strength! Consequently, we don’t hear a lot of preaching about the cross and its way. We would much rather hear about ways to improve ourselves and something that makes us feel uplifted. But there is no avoiding the cross in one’s walk with Jesus. Let’s read what Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

2Cor. 12:9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I never hear anyone boast in their weaknesses. When was the last time you heard someone glory in his or her weaknesses? It is all about strength, success, and achieving.

I never hear anyone boast in their weaknesses. Generally, we are moaning and complaining about our weaknesses.

I never hear anyone boast in their weaknesses. Instead it is about denying their weaknesses, avoiding the acknowledgement of their weaknesses, pretending that they don’t have weaknesses, anything but to face them and embrace them.

We work hard trying to be strong, powerful, and successful or at least giving the impression that we are. But Paul writes: it is in my weakness that I am strong. Somehow, we don’t really believe that! The church doesn’t really believe that. As we gaze upon the cross and allow it to do its work in our lives, we become more gracious around others, our private kingdoms and agendas grow strangely dim, and we find we are more focused on what is truly important to God and His kingdom instead of trying to convince God of our purposes.

And when a congregation captures this, it is a safer place to be, a kinder and more accepting place to be. So let us not run from the cross in our lives, but turn and allow the cross to do its work in our lives.

Part 1: Our Aversion to the Cross

Our premise has been that church is meant to be a safe place where we discover the mercy and grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ. However, for many this has not been the case. Instead, too often church has become a place where we must put our best face on and pretend it is all going well. Church can become a place, where instead of being included and feeling understood, we feel excluded and misunderstood. I believe one of the reasons for this comes down to something that is suspiciously missing in much of the church: the preaching of the cross. The following is part 1 in a series entitled The Road Less Traveled.

The mere mention of the cross can make us somewhat uneasy because we want a gospel that makes us feel powerful, that makes us feel stronger, that underscores our personal strength and ambition, and that enables us to exert our will and shape life the way we see fit. We want a gospel that lifts us up and makes us feel better about ourselves. We want a gospel that exchanges our weakness for power, our hardships for comfort and our suffering for prosperity. We want a gospel that erases our limitations. We want the resurrection without the cross. We want Sunday without Friday. What we want is a religion. But the cross is not only non-religious, it is irreligious. The cross is scandalous.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth: For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. … For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. 1 Corinthians 1:18, 22, 23 ESV

The word in 1 Corinthians 1:23 for stumbling block in the Greek is scandalon; it is the word we get scandal/scandalous from and it can also be translated as offense as in Galatians 5:11. The cross is at the heart of the Christian faith, but to both Jew and Greek it was scandalous, it was offensive, yet for different reasons. For the Jew, death by hanging was the outward sign in Israel of being cursed by God. (Deuteronomy 21:23) It meant that the person hung had broken the Mosaic Law, and this law-breaking brought both curse and punishment. For the Gentile, the stumbling block, the offense of the cross was that the whole notion of the cross was foolishness. That God would ever allow himself to be pushed out of the world and suffer the humiliation of crucifixion was completely absurd. The cross was reserved for political insurrectionists, criminals and slaves. Why would God ever allow himself to be crucified as a common criminal or slave?

It is really no different today. Religious people are offended by the cross because it represents weakness and powerlessness and is the exact opposite of what they expect from God. For the religious man it is all about if he does it right enough then he will not suffer, will not face hardship, will not experience weakness or disappointment. And of course the secular mind is looking for proofs and data and arguments. Interestingly enough neither one wants anything to do with the cross, but here is the rub, even though we want to avoid the cross in our lives, “It is in the crucifixion that the nature of God is truly revealed,”[1] and without the cross there is no grace. I’ll put a comma right here and continue my musings next week. Thanks for taking the time to read them. Until then….

[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 44

Last week I wrote that most people fail to grasp that the church is made up of sinners. I am focusing here on people who attend church because they are looking for a safe haven, a place of comfort in difficult times, a place to worship from the heart – they are looking for Jesus. However, they are often taken aback to discover people who are rude and controlling, bitter and unforgiving in the church. They are surprised when people are dealing with abandonment issues, are fearful, or struggle to trust. People think that church is filled with people who have it all together – who are like Christ: without sin. Now, as a pastor (though you don’t need to be a pastor to be aware of this), this notion could not be further from the truth. People in church can be petty, insecure, angry, greedy, ambitious, hungry for power, self-centered, selfish, prejudiced, judgmental and unforgiving. But, they can also be magnanimous, profoundly secure, gracious, generous, selfless, kind, loving, accepting, forgiving and merciful. Church is a mixed bag.

We expect Christians to be just like Jesus: sinless and perfect. However, walking with Christ, being transformed by his presence and work in our lives, is a process. When we put our trust in the faithfulness of Christ, the Spirit of God works in such a way as to transform us to be more like Christ – not Christ, but more like Christ than we were when we first met Him. Keep this in mind with any church you may attend. The real problem arises when we as Christians deny our sinfulness, are indifferent about allowing the Spirit to shape our lives, and are foolish enough to think no one can see our dysfunctions.

I have often wondered why Twelve Step Programs and programs such as Celebrate Recovery have such a freedom in their gatherings. I believe it is because everyone is working from the same premise – an acknowledgment of their powerlessness over an addiction, their powerlessness over sin. There is no sense in pretending or posturing as though his or her life is together – everyone already knows it’s not. Their mess is in the open; there is no hiding. The repercussions of this type of honesty can be humiliating, but it can also be liberating. When a person is finally honest about their sin, it allows them to see how deep the love of God is for them and how powerful it is to be truly accepted just as you are. Also, they find themselves being able to extend the very grace given to them by God to others who are struggling with their own issues.

Over the years, I have learned that one can only love to the depth they have experienced being loved. The same is true of grace – one can only extend grace to the depth they have experienced grace. A loveless and ungracious brand of Christianity stems from not understanding or experiencing the depth and breadth of God’s love and forgiveness. For those of us who share the word it is helpful to heed the words of the pastor Johnny Ray Youngblood who said, “God sends sinful men to preach to sinful men. I’m just another beggar, tellin’ other beggars where to find bread.” [1]

Until next time…

[1] Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2015), 22

Last week I wrote that I believe church is meant to be a safe place where we come and refocus, get some room in our soul to breathe, as we re-center our lives on Jesus. I believe church is meant to be a place where we are reminded of God’s mercy and his love for us, and where our thinking is reshaped by the truth of the scriptures. So why isn’t this always the case for us? Why isn’t church the place we want to be when life isn’t working for us? Why is the landscape of America littered with so many people who have been hurt or wounded by the church? Why are there so many that once attended church and participated in the life of the church no longer attending? Obviously this is a complicated issue and I am not necessarily qualified to answer for the entire church, but I do have a perspective that I don’t think folks who have been marginalized and disillusioned by the church may have heard.

There are three fundamental areas that we who make up the church seem to be quite lacking in understanding about. They are:

1. Sin: How deep it runs in us and how dishonest we tend to be about it. It is interesting to note that it is only sinners who qualify for salvation.
2. Our genuine lack of understanding about the cross. There is a natural avoidance of the cross and its message, but without the cross there is no grace available.
3. Just what Good News the gospel really is, how amazing the grace, the gift we have been given in Jesus Christ.

I believe when we do not understand these aspects of the Christian life, it then becomes impossible to love others the way Christ has loved us.

Please keep in mind that this is not a seminary lecture series but a 350-500 word blog. I am not attempting to be exhaustive in my treatment of any of these aspects of the Christian life but rather to give language to some of the things you may have experienced or thought about. There is obviously much more than can be said about each of the topics I will be discussing but that is for a different format.

One last thing – I don’t think everyone involved with the church, from leadership to the first time visitor, always realizes that everyone who makes up the church is broken and that we bring our own dysfunction to the gathering of the church. Another way of saying this is that the church is exclusively made up of sinners. Pure and simple – from the pastor to the janitor, from the worship leader to Sunday school teachers, from small group leaders to the parishioners sitting in the pews. The church is made up of sinners…who are hopefully being saved by grace. It is important that none of us lose this perspective because once we forget about the grace we need to sustain us we will cease extending it to those around us.

Church: The Way it’s Suppose to be

I have pastored for nearly 35 years now and over the last 25 years of ministry I have come to believe that church is meant to be the safest place in the world. It is something we have worked hard to ensure at the church I pastor because the church is meant to graciously love, to build up, encourage, and affirm the believer in their relationship with Christ so that when we go out into the world we live in we might accurately reveal Christ to those around us.

The church is meant to be that safe place we can come when we’ve made a mess of our lives, when our faith has failed, when we have lived selfishly making costly mistakes and poor choices, when we feel like we have failed God, ourselves, and those we love, when life is kicking us in the teeth, whether it is because of our own failures or the failures of others.

Church is meant to be that safe environment that nurtures our faith when we have more questions than answers. It is meant to be that safe place we can come when we’re tired, depressed, overwhelmed, confused, and have little strength. It’s the place we can come and find rest and peace from the demands of the world that is constantly evaluating us on our performance. Church is meant to be that safe place we can come when we don’t have to have it all together in a nice neat package, pretending life is grand when it’s not.

Jesus asks, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get       away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matt. 11:28-30   The Message

Church is meant to be that safe place where we see Jesus in the lives of others; where we encounter His love, acceptance, and mercy through the lives of those who would gather in his name. Church is meant to be a refuge for us as we follow Christ because quite frankly, life at times can be tragic and hard and the burdens we bear can be crushing. Church is meant to be that safe place where no one is keeping score because Christ has settled the score on the cross.

But that’s not necessarily our experience with the church. Too often church is the last place we want to go when we aren’t doing well, when life is crashing down upon us. I believe there are several reasons for this and my hope is to shed some light on some of these as I see it. Until next time…

I am starting a new blog this year entitled Howling in the Desert. I took this title from a manuscript that I started several years ago and never finished. It still sits on my desk under a stack of papers with the thought that someday I will rework the idea and finish it.  The idea of naming the blog “Howling in the Desert” comes from a passage in Matthew 3:3, where the ministry of John the Baptist is described as:

“A voice of one calling in the desert,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make straight paths for him.’” NIV

I was preparing for a sermon on the above passage and was reading a commentary by Frederick Bruner on the book of Matthew. Frederick Bruner translates the word “calling” as “howling”. Citing Rabanus, Bruner writes people speak loudly for three reasons: when others are distant, deaf or angry – and the human race is all three.[1] I believe this to also be the condition of the church today.

I hope to cover a wide range of topics that will help people flesh out their faith in the earthiness of everyday life. I hope that this blog is not only helpful for those in our congregation but somehow finds it way to those who for whatever reason are estranged from a local body of believers.

Over the past few years, I have noticed a growing dissatisfaction amongst churchgoers.” Something I have noticed over the past few years is that there is a growing dissatisfaction amongst those who attend church. This has led to an increasing number of people leaving traditional expression of the church. The church these people are leaving is often the congregational assembly that constitutes a visible expression of the body of Christ in the local setting.  Some of these people who are dissatisfied and leave these churches then form house churches but most simply stop meeting with believers all together. A few even leave the faith.

The decision these people have made to leave the church, and in many cases to give up on the church, deeply saddens me. There are many reasons cited why people are abandoning the church. Though some of these reasons are understandable and legitimate complaints, the decision to give up on the church is a grave mistake. In the following weeks I hope to explore this thorny and often emotionally charged issue from a biblical perspective. I hope to bring to those who have been hurt by the church a sense of being pastored and cared for. I hope to bring to those who are disappointed and disillusioned with the church a sense of renewed vision and purpose. I am deeply troubled and saddened by those who have become isolated in their faith, and my prayer is that God would draw his people into the sacramental communion with Himself and His people.