The Death of Dreams

I know this isn't a Christmas meditation. Actually, I wrote it in my NIV Noteworthy Bible last spring, on Easter Sunday, and I ran across it this past Sunday, when our pastor was preaching from John 19. But this isn't an Easter meditation; it's about trusting God, now.

The death of Jesus was the final destruction of a dream, of many dreams: of Messianic deliverance from the brutal rule of Rome, of the presence and charisma of a mighty prophet. It was, as we can see now, two millenia hence, the birth of a new Dream, a dream that was inconceivable to those hopeless mourners in those first few bitter hours, those first two days.

Without the death of Jesus those old dreams, which had to die, couldn't be laid to rest. So he gave himself up to the brutality and treachery of his enemies. He was "obedient [to his Father's will] to the point of death." All hopes had to die -- hopes of rescue, of justice, of divine intervention -- in order for God's Plan to be set in motion.

Once Jesus was well and truly dead, once all those old dreams and hopes were abandoned, God's people were ready consider God's Better and Bigger Plan -- Jesus not just alive but resurrected to a new kind of bodily life. Jesus at work not just in first-century Palestine but God's Spirit at work throughout history all over the world. A people of God made up of not just of Jews but a people "from every tribe and every language" -- all of this inconceivable so long as the Rabbi Jesus was kept from the hands of his enemies, so long as he was treated justly and humanely.

The Suffering of Misunderstanding

Jesus calls us to serve Him by the way of obscurity and misunderstanding, and He has shown us what that kind of service looks like. On the day He died, He was the only one who understood what was actually happening.

The day He died His followers saw catastrophe, and His enemies saw triumph. All of them saw the end of something, they had no way of knowing it was really the beginning of something completely new in the world. On that day only He knew what His death really meant. Part of His suffering was His willingness to be ridiculed as a buffoon or pitied as a martyr.

It is this suffering Jesus who has called us to follow Him, to serve Him in this same way, with this same willingness to be misunderstood.

This kind of suffering is not easy. There is a kind of glory in suffering while people are cheering us on, but that is the privilege of the home team. Christians are not competing in a home game; we know we are in enemy-occupied territory.

Christ-followers must be willing to suffer, in addition to everything else, the embarrassment of being misunderstood. But we would not be the first Christians to be called fools.

The Empty Or Not Empty Tomb of Jesus

All this talk of the Resurrection power of Christ would be only so much poetry and metaphor if Jesus had not actually risen from the dead, if He had not "risen indeed," as Paul puts it. Without a historical event that actually took place in a certain place and at a certain time, an event that occupies a place in the same space-time continuum that I live in, the motive power of the Christian faith is reduced to an ideal like patriotism or an inspiring notion like "the Spirit of Christmas."

But with the empty tomb, faith in this Jesus takes on an entirely different character. The empty tomb forces me to make up my mind about Jesus. Do I believe He actually rose from the dead? Actually rose? Then what does this Resurrection of Jesus mean?

• What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean with regards to His exclusive claims (to forgive sins, to be the only way to God)?
• What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean when I contemplate my own mortality? when I think about the deaths of my loved ones?
• What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean with regards to my future? the future of this planet? 

This take-it-or-leave-it character of the Easter story is obvious even to a secular perspective. As Slate's James Martin observes, "Easter is an event that demands a "yes" or a "no." There is no 'whatever.'"

He's right. This isn't simply a matter of subscribing to a comforting greeting-card philosophy that might make me smile a little. Either the tomb is empty and everything has changed, or He never rose at all and this faith is all a pathetic lie. The Resurrection of Jesus doesn't leave us a comfortable middle ground.

The Threshhold of Dismay

I suppose it would be odd to speak of dismay as a normal part of a healthy spiritual life, but it seems there is surely such a pattern in the lives of the men God has used profoundly: Abraham at the thought of sacrificing Isaac; Moses at the cantakerousness of the Israelites; David as he runs for his life from the king; the weeping Jeremiah; the suffering Paul; even Jesus in Gethsemene. All were dismayed before they saw God work mightily.

This means, of course, that we must discipline ourselves to take the long view when things seem to fall apart. We must never judge the work of God, in our lives or in the lives of those we love, while the paint is still wet on the canvas. In the timetable of God, what looks like catastrophe is often the prelude to great glory and blessing.

Christian Paganism

"Take no thought for your life" -- Jesus
"Keep your mind on the 'much more' of your heavenly Father" -- Oswald Chambers

Worry is idolatry, a kind of paganism, really. Jesus said that worrying is something "the Gentiles" do, the kind of thing people might do if they knew nothing about the God of the Bible. But worry can have no part in the life of the Christ-follower, a beloved child of the heavenly Father.

Seeing how and when God provides might be intriguing sometimes, but it should never be worrisome. If God is really the kind of Person we read about in Scripture, the ultimate outcome can never be in question. The only question is one of means, never if but how.