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God called the most bazar peace summit (Romans 6:1)

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Romans 6:1    

Whether a Gentile or a Jew, whether you live life on the wild side or follow all the rules, whether you live and let live or look down on everyone who does not live like you do, we all have waged war against God.

How can this be? First, we all sin. We can sin in wild ways. We can also sin by condemning those who do not conform to our own moral standards. In whatever way we sin, we are telling God, through our sin, that we now claim control of this world and our lives. We are telling him that he and his ways have no claim upon us.    

You could think of it like this. What happens when two parties of people claim ultimate authority over the same thing? We see this happening in Ukraine. Russia claims sovereignty over certain parts of Ukraine, which Ukraine claims as their own. When two parties say they each have ultimate control over the same thing, war breaks out. When we sin against God, we claim ultimate control over our lives and this world. We declare independence and thus wage war against God through our sin.     

Consequently, God must also declare war against us. God will not let the guilty go free without reaping the consequence any more than he will allow innocent victims to go without justice forever. God cannot look at sin and evil with indifference. He must respond.    

We are not able to end this war. Why? Because no mere mortal has ever figured out how to stop sinning. We all sin in unique ways, and we cannot help ourselves. Because none of us have figured out how to stop sinning, we cannot turn to God and say, “we’re cool, bro, right?” any more than Russia can say to Ukraine, “We’re cool, right?” We cannot create peace with God because we habitually break peace with God.    

Therefore, only one mediator between humanity and God has ever existed: Jesus Christ. When God in Christ came to earth, he was calling a peace summit. Yet, he did not say, “If you would only stop doing this, then we can have peace.” There were no “ifs” at God’s peace summit.  God simply said, “I’ll absorb the cost of the damage myself.” When Christ died on the cross, he took what was due us because of our guilt. In other words, when we receive Christ’s offer of peace born out in his death and resurrection, we are acquitted of all guilt, vindicated before the judgement throne of God, and thus have peace with God.

John wants everyone to do what he did in Jesus’ empty tomb (John 20:8)

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John 20:8  

Unlike Peter or Mary, when John went into Jesus’ empty tomb, something incredible happened. Not only did he see all that Peter saw. He believed (John 20:8). Why did John believe before the others?  

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Bewilderment preceded Peter’s belief (John 20:3-7)

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John 20:3-7  

Distraught and weeping, Mary says to Peter, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” (John 20:2) Peter and another disciple immediately run to the tomb to check things out for themselves. The other disciple outran Peter. He arrived at the tomb first.  

They would have cut the tomb where Jesus was laid into the rock of the Judean hillside. The entryway would have been low to the ground, so that the other disciple would have needed to bend low to peak in. As the sun had risen higher, enough light would have entered the tomb so that this other disciple could see what Mary could not have seen earlier. He sees the linen burial strips lying there. He does not go in. We can excuse him. This was, after all, someone else’s tomb. Laws prohibited, just as today, tampering with someone else’s grave.  

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We all, like Mary, Start in the Dark (John 20:2)

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John 20:2  

Mary, still literally in the dark, sees the stone taken away from the tomb where her beloved friend was laid. Given the low sunlight – the sun had probably just cracked the horizon – she probably could not see into his cave-like tomb. She assumes, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb…” (John 20:1)  

Mary’s assumption was reasonable enough. Imagine you were at a cemetery walking up to the grave of your loved one. You see a pile of dirt next to a hole where you know your loved one was laid to rest, but you have not yet moved close enough to peer in. What might you assume? You might assume someone took the body. Mary did. She did not know better.  

The darkness, in John’s Gospel, signifies something more than the early hour. We all, like Mary, start in the dark. We all, like Mary, start with assumptions about who this Jesus really is. In John’s gospel, people have been making all sorts of assumptions about Jesus. Some called him “the Prophet (John 6:14).” Others called him the Christ without yet knowing what that title meant (for example, John 7:31). Still others said he had a demon or was insane (John 10:20).  

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Consider the witness of Mary

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John 20:1  

In the wee hours of the morning Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of her recently deceased Master and friend, Jesus. The sun had not yet ruptured the horizon. When she arrived, the stone sealing the tomb, much to her surprise, had been taken away. (See John 20:1)  

We know from the other gospel accounts that Mary Magdalene was not the only one there. Other women accompanied her. Yet, Mary Magdalene, in all the gospel accounts, is given center stage. Later we find out that she was also the first to meet the risen Lord.  

When we take into account the culture of that time, Mary’s center stage presence at the empty tomb surprises us. A woman? Women were not even considered legally valid witnesses in a Jewish courtroom at that time. A woman like Mary Magdalene? Jesus cast seven demons out of this woman not long ago (Luke 8:2). She had a checkered past. Furthermore, if I am doing the math correctly, she was likely the youngest of this group of women who went to the tomb.  

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The way to victory is through the cross

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John 12:12-19  

The first Palm Sunday looked like people throwing a birthday party for a birthday boy they did not know. People had high expectations on the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, but the full meaning of the event would not make sense till later. (Read John 12:12-19)  

The crowd that met Jesus on the way expected a national hero. They came out to meet Jesus thinking he was the one who would lead an insurrection against Rome and return the nation’s sovereignty back to the Jews.  

Other people there on that first Palm Sunday responded in a different way. They did not lift palms or chant victory. They boiled with rage. The Jewish leaders feared an insurrection would threaten their socio-economically beneficial relationship with Rome.  

One day Jesus will come as a warrior king to palm branches and shouts of victory to claim his Kingdom once and for all (Revelation 7:9-10). However, if Jesus was marching to victory on Palm Sunday, victory started with a death march to the cross.  

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Keep Letting the Light In (John 3:19)

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John 3:19

A man might spend his whole life drinking, smoking, and eating poorly. He knows these things are killing him and that he will most likely die prematurely unless he stops. However, he loves the booze. He loves the way it numbs the pain. He loves smoking. It calms him, and he cannot imagine coping without it. He loves the fatty food. Why eat such bland food, when tastebud tantalizing food awaits? So, although he knows he will die sooner, he keeps living this way. All the while, he has no clue what life could be without his senses dulled, a wheeze in his lungs, and all that cholesterol blocking his arteries. And, though he says, “I could never live that way,” he is robbing himself of experiencing a more enjoyable life.

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How did our founders get the idea that all men were created equal?

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Genesis 1:27

No other document in American history has more profoundly shaped our nation’s sense of identity than the Declaration of Independence. Not only did our founding fathers declare independence from Great Britain with it, but the reasons they gave to legitimize such a radical declaration later came to shape our nation in the years to come.

One line in that declaration holds such gravitas that we Americans find our hearts stirred anew every time we hear it: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Neither the man who originally penned those words nor many of our founders succeeded to live fully up to those words. Nevertheless, the profundity of those words helped shape governance and jurisprudence in the infant years of our country.

But where did our founders get that idea that “all men are created equal” and that this truth was “self-evident”? One well-known rabbi said: “The striking thing about this sentence is that ‘these truths’ are anything but self-evident. Most societies at most times have held as self-evidently true that we are created unequal. […] Plato held that society was stratified into three classes: guardians (philosopher-kings), auxiliaries (soldiers), and the rest; and that whether or not these distinctions were given by birth, people should be taught that they were. Aristotle believed that some people were born to be slaves. Gradations of class were written into the structure of reality. The strong, powerful, wealthy, and highborn were meant (whether by nature or by God) to exercise supremacy over others.” Neither would Nietzsche nor the Hindu caste system hold the truth that all men are created equal to be self-evident.

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Why we need a pleading Jesus (Mark 14:36-39)

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Mark 14:36-39

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus pleaded. How do we know this? Because he kept going back and saying the same thing. In Mark 14:36, Jesus prays: “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Then, after he went back and found his disciples sleeping, Mark tells us in Mark 14:39, “[…] again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.” Did you get that? He was “saying the same words.”

Have you ever pleaded in prayer like that? Praying the same words over and over? Pleading in earnest, repetitive prayer, because the answer has not come yet? Because you do not like what the answer seems to be? Or simply because you do not know what else to do? Hospitals, court houses, prisons, refugee camps, recovery houses, military bases, orphanages, homes with lonely people, hurting people, and churches are filled with people pleading, pleading to God for some relief.

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God loved this cruel world so much (John 3:16)

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John 3:16

John 3:16 contains some of the most familiar words in all the Bible, “For God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

 God so loved a rebellious world. The gospel writer John is not talking about a world so big and full of people, but a world of people who have turned away from their Maker. God made the world very good (Genesis 1:31), but the people of the world have rebelled against God.

God loves this rebellious world lavishly. When Jesus told us to love our enemies, he was not speaking in hypotheticals. He spoke what he was at that moment actively doing.  

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