A Holy Week Reflection for March 28, 2013

”I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:20-26)


This morning I received an email from a major department store alerting me to THE COMFORT I DESERVE. It was an ad for pillows and comforters for a bed. They looked very nice. I just didn’t know that I deserved them. I also didn’t know what I had done to deserve such comfort. But the department store people seemed to be convinced that I was a deserving person. They must be very kind.

In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, there isn’t anything about deserving. His prayer is about giving—giving the love of God the Father to the people around him, giving himself to God and to others, giving the oneness that he shares with God to those who will receive it.

He prays not only for those in the room with him, but also for us. He speaks of those “who will believe.” If there is any comfort to be had, I find it knowing that Jesus prayed for all who would come along later, including Paul, Augustine, Teresa, Calvin, Wesley, King, and us.

But is that a comfort we deserve?

No, it is a comfort that results from the generous love of God. And if Jesus’ words are to take root in our hearts, then we are not able to think of deserving—that is, de-serving. We can only think of serving, and doing so in the way of Jesus.

This is such a different prayer than the so-called Lord’s Prayer, the one that Jesus said was to be prayed “this way.” Maybe we are given such a simple prayer for ourselves because, as in John 17, Jesus prays the prayers we cannot find the words to prayer.

It’s a lot more than we deserve.

A Lenten Reflection for March 5, 2013

For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. (Jeremiah 7:30-32)

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. (Psalm 78:2-3)

If there was ever an apt description of Hell, the valley of the son of Hinnom—or, Gehenna, as it was called in Jesus’ day—would be it. The ancient Hebrew people joined in with the idol worshippers in the local area and sacrificed their own children to a fire-filled god in that valley. In the time of the Roman occupation of Israel, Gehenna had become a flaming garbage dump, where refuse and the bodies of executed criminals rotted and burned day and night.

The account of this tragic failure of the people of God says something about the nature of evil. Some might say that God is in control, that he is sovereign, and all things come from his hand—good things for blessing, bad things for discipline and punishment. After all: Either God is in charge or he isn’t.

But in some ways, God isn’t in charge, at least not in that way. God may be sovereign, the rightful ruler of all things, but the realm over which he is king is a broken, distorted realm. The ancient Hebrew people embraced an evil that was of their own making, and it was an evil that had never entered God’s mind—we are told that he never commanded it. The people took upon themselves a sin that would mark them for generations to come and bring a curse upon the land where their children’s ashes were scattered.

And yet, God did not give up on the people. The psalmist writes, “Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; often he restrained his anger, and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and does not come again (78:38-39).”

I am amazed that this dark episode wasn’t edited out of the Bible. It’s the dirtiest of all laundries and you would think that people would just want to forget it. But they kept the story alive for generations, reminding their descendants that the people of God are a broken people and capable of the worst evils imaginable. The most astonishing thing that would be passed on to each generation was that, in the midst of human failure, God remains faithful. God remembers our frailty. We might suffer the consequences of our embrace of evil, but God still forgives.

I wonder if the first 10,000 years or so of eternity is spent in abject amazement as people are confronted with the pure reality of both evil and forgiveness. We see them now abstractly; then we will see face to face.