Convenient Lie about Jesus Christ

The best lie is a half-truth. To negate it, is to negate the truth it contains, while to affirm it, bolsters the lie. The greatest lie in our culture is: “Jesus was a simply a great teacher.” I wish I had a nickel for every polite (but wrong) agnostic or atheist who has ever said this to me.
It’s wishful thinking because it’s not true. Read the gospel of Mark and select only the teachings of Jesus, you will find the gospel to be pitifully slim. Or read the gospel of John, which is known to be content-laden with conversation. If you read it wide awake, you will find a good deal of direct instruction to his followers--the apostles. You also find much of the conversation to be prayer to His Father. Yes, there is some teaching in the gospels--but there is a lot of simple exhortation. No one ever says, "Jesus was a great teacher, and he said the Son of God." Somehow the big points in his teachings go missing.

In fact, in the gospels Jesus more noteworthy as
 1) a rabble-rouser who also created problems with most religious leaders
 2) a miracle-worker – of all kinds of miracles
 3) a living fulfillment of many Jewish prophecies
 4) the only man in history who got up from a brutal death and ascended into heaven, as witnessed by more than 500 people. (Why doesn’t this make the Guinness book?) C. S. Lewis adds: “...He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”

Marked by Ashes

   Marked by Ashes

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
   halfway back to committees and memos,
   halfway back to calls and appointments,
   halfway on to next Sunday,
   halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
   half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
 but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
  we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
   of failed hope and broken promises,
   of forgotten children and frightened women,
  we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
  we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
  some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
  anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
  you Easter parade of newness.
  Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
   Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
   Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
 Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
  mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

• Walter Brueggemann

The Potency of a Good Story: True to its Character and to the Boundaries

“God will be chary of indulging in irrelevant miracle(s)...
He will not…convert without preparing the way for conversion, and His interferences with space-time will be conditioned by some kind of relationship of power between will and matter.
Faith is the condition for the removal of mountains; Lear is converted but not Iago.
Consequences cannot be separated from their causes without a loss of power;
how much power would be left in the story of the crucifixion, as a story, if Christ had come down from the cross[?]
That would have been an irrelevant miracle, whereas the story of the resurrection is relevant, leaving the consequences of action and character still in logical connection with their causes.
[The willing sacrifice, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ] is, in fact, an outstanding example of the development [of the proper story].
[It illustrates] the leading of the story back, by the new and more powerful way of grace, to the issue demanded by the way of judgment, so that the law of nature is not destroyed, but fulfilled.”

• Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, “Free Will and Miracle”

Revolutionaries!

“…the Church from its beginnings, and perhaps especially in its beginnings, was not so much a principality as a revolution against the prince of the world. This sense that the world had been conquered by the great usurper, and was in his possession, has been much deplored or derided by those optimists who identify enlightenment with ease.

But it was responsible for all that thrill of defiance and a beautiful danger that make the good news seem to be really both good and new.
It was in truth against a huge unconscious usurpation that it raised a revolt, and originally so obscure a revolt.

Olympus still occupied the sky like a motionless cloud molded into many forms; philosophy still sat in the high places and even on the thrones of the kings, when Christ was born in the cave and Christianity in the catacombs.

In both cases we may remark the same paradox of revolution; the sense of something despised and of something feared. The cave in one aspect is only a hole or corner into which the outcasts are swept like rubbish; yet in the other aspect it is a hiding-place of something valuable which the tyrants are seeking like treasure.

In one sense they are there because the inn-keeper would not even remember them, and in another because the king can never forget them. …this paradox appeared also in the treatment of the early Church. It was important while it was still insignificant, and certainly while it was still impotent.

It was important solely because it was intolerable; and in that sense it is true to say that it was intolerable because it was intolerant.

It was resented, because, in its own still and almost secret way, it had declared war. It had risen out of the ground to wreck the heaven and earth of heathenism. It did not try to destroy all that creation of gold and marble; but it contemplated a world without it. It dared to look right through it as though the gold and marble had been glass.

Those who charged the Christians with burning down Rome with firebrands were slanderers; but they were…far nearer to the nature of Christianity than those among moderns who tell us that Christians were a sort of ethical society…martyred in a languid fashion for telling men they had a duty to their neighbors, and only mildly disliked because they were meek and mild.”

• G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

The Son (from A Litanie)

The Son



O Son of God, who seeing two things,
Sin, and death crept in, which were never made,
By bearing one, tried'st with what stings
The other could thy heritage invade;
O be thou nail'd unto my heart,
And crucified again,
Part not from it, though it from thee would part,
But let it be, by applying so thy pain,
Drown'd in thy blood, and in thy passion slain.

• John Donne, Part II, from A Litanie

Holy Week (Isaiah 53, verse 4)

Ah, Holy Jesus

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast Thou offended,
That man to judge Thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by Thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty - Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee.
'Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee!
I crucified Thee.

For me, kind Jesus, was Thine incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life's oblation;
Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
For my salvation.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;
For our atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay Thee,
I do adore Thee, and will ever pray Thee,
Think on Thy pity and Thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving.

• Lyricist: Johann Heermann 1585-1647 (Translator, Robert Bridges)

• Composer: Johann Cruger

• Tune Name: HERZLIEBSTER JESU Music Date: 1899