Hopeless

Hopeless – What do you think it was like for the disciples on Friday and Saturday? On Thursday night we had our annual Maundy Thursday service. For those of you have never been, well, first, you are missing out on a truly awesome and meaningful service, but that is not the point of this short writing.
The service ends with no benediction, no Gloria, no I Am a Child of God chorus. There is nothing really to celebrate. Yet, we know Easter is coming. We can pretend all we want, that we recognize the way the disciples felt, that we know our part in the betrayal and the sadness, but we know Easter’s coming.

To bring up something that may hit a little too close to home, think back to the time you had to walk out of the hospital and leave a loved one behind. I’m sorry, I know that hurt, but think of it. For the disciples, it was all over. Jesus was done. The coming Kingdom of God was a failure. There was no one to sit on his right or his left because there would be no golden thrones for any of them. In fact, they were busy hiding out from the Romans and the priests themselves.

Now imagine taking it a step further. Imagine that you didn’t stay until the bitter end. In fact, imagine that you ran out because you didn’t want to face the end, because you couldn’t deal with it. When I was a youth pastor, I was amazed at the number of young people who were absolutely terrified of hospitals and nursing homes. If they were out with me and I suggested going by to see a patient or resident, they would sit in the car and wait on me.

OK, now if it’s possible, take it one more notch. Imagine the doctors came to you and said, “We can save your loved one! All we need is a pint of your blood, or a bone marrow transplant!” Now imagine saying “No” because you are one of those people who are scared of needles, or knives, or hospitals. Imagine, not only running out on the one you claimed such affection for, but actually failing to be there for them in their time of need, a need that really would have meant so much and cost you or I so little.

That’s what Jesus did for you and me, and that is what we did to and for him. We were Peter in the Judgment Hall. We were the group asleep when we should have been watching with our troubled friend. We were the ones who stayed away from the execution because of our fear. We might have even been the one who turned him over to his executioners. Yet, we are the ones on Sunday morning that Jesus, the Risen Jesus, comes to find, the ones he send messages to and lets us know he is fine and that he loves us. Can you imagine that! HE LOVES US!

Pastor Craig

Suffering

"For, in the same fire, gold gleams and straw smokes; under the same flail the stalk is crushed and the grain threshed; the lees are not mistaken for oil because they have issued from the same press. So, too, the tide of trouble will test, purify, and improve the good, but beat, crush, and wash away the wicked. So it is that, under the weight of the same affliction, the wicked deny and blaspheme God, and the good pray to Him and praise Him. The difference is not in what people suffer but in the way they suffer. The same shaking that makes fetid water stink makes perfume issue a more pleasant odor." St. Augustine

Suffering is never just suffering. I’ll tell you right now that I have colleagues who disagree with me. They say, “God would never allow . . . just to . . .”


My only problem with suffering as sometimes “just happening” is that it makes my pain meaningless and trivializes my agony. Granted, I have struggled with the place of suffering in my own life. I have stood beside the deathbed of members of my congregations over the years and thought to myself, “I can fathom no purpose for all this pain.” There have been hard times in my own life that occurred years ago, and I still struggle to find a sense of meaning for those events.


However, the idea of meaningless pain, of sacrifice that has no honor or nobility, no sense of courage, or benefit for some other person or some Grand Cause seems the cruelest of jokes a creator could play on creation. It IS most difficult to fathom the reason and depths of the Almighty, to claim that we have been enlightened and now understand the path a certain course of events has followed.

I believe there are times the waiting for meaning is the purpose of the suffering itself. The struggle with God has meaning. We struggle. We doubt. Yet, we hold on in the midst of that doubt, crying aloud for our Savior to hold onto us before we are swept away.


Jesus cried out on the cross to discover some sense of meaning in the crucifixion. MY GOD! MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME! This gives us the tiniest glimpse of the suffering and aloneness Jesus went through that we might have salvation.


For us, there are times the “fire” is a refining fire that burns away all that is unnecessary or deadweight. There are other times when the same “fire” refines our spirit into the finest of gold, fit only for the table of the King. The suffering of Jesus was redemptive. It purchased our salvation. My suffering and your suffering is instructive, eliminating that which only slows us down on our journey or separates us from our Creator. It teaches us patience, reliance on the Spirit, and the need for mercy that only God can give.


As you suffer in this moment, is it the straw that is consumed or the gold that is made brilliant. Either way, you are in the hands of a loving, master craftsman who is making you into his loving image.

Pastor Craig

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday – Today is Palm Sunday. It is a day we think about children. We think happy thoughts. Many churches have as a part of their worship service this morning some sort of processional, frequently involving children waving the palm branches. We tend to like those Holy Days that focus on the bright and upbeat, and we tend to try and transform those days that are darker into something a little more bright and cheery.

Palm Sunday is actually a mixture of both. Certainly, it is the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowds, including the children. Palm Sunday could be a political activist’s day as well. When Jesus arrived at the temple, one of the very first things he did was to upset the established order. He kicked out all those who were using the worship tradition at the temple to line their own pockets and only allowed the contrite of heart in to worship. The Gospel of Mark goes on to tell us that Jesus stood in the temple with his whip and would not permit anyone to use the temple court as a shortcut to get from one side to the other. Imagine, walking along, deciding to take a shortcut through the temple complex so you didn’t have to work around the massive set of buildings and coming face-to-face with a crazed looking man with a whip who threatened to use it if you put one foot in the temple!

Palm Sunday, viewed in the entirety of Holy Week, also reminds us how unfaithful we can be. You see, it was these same people who proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah on Sunday who called for his execution, or, at best, stood by and did nothing to stop it on Friday. We are a fickle lot, aren’t we? We do tend to look for the best deal. We tend to have the same mob mentality that crucified Jesus. Yes, it is quite easy to say that we wouldn’t have been part of that vile mob. Even Peter vowed to lay down his life to follow Christ, only to run away and hide when called upon to confirm that he even knew who Jesus was.

The truth of the matter is that we get an opportunity to stand up for Jesus each and every day. Many of those days we choose, me included, to remain another face in the crowd. We remember the adage of sticking one’s neck out and tend to force our necks well down into our shoulders. The Scripture is clear that to live for Jesus is to set ourselves against the world and all that it holds dear. Now, that may not get us killed, but it will, often, put us at the center of the storm instead of just one of a mob.

However, there is good news in this message as well. It is not all doom and gloom and you as a worthless, God-hater. The Jesus that road into Jerusalem on that Sunday over 2000 years ago knew he would be betrayed, knew he would be denied, knew that he would die alone on that awful hill, and he knew he had to make it to that hill on that day in order to claim you as a brother or sister of his Heavenly Father. What wondrous love!

Pastor Craig

Tradition

Tradition – There is a tradition that is not worn out and tired. There is a ritual that has not grown old and out of date. There is a sacrament that still stirs the heart of those who partake of it and touches the soul of those who draw near.

It is not the magic that has gone out of the rite, but the heart that has grown old in the celebrant. Our sin has not grown less, oh, certainly not. Nor has God’s grace flagged and diminished. We have just grown accustomed to the whole lot of it.

There was a time, when you were much younger, that you used to go outside and marvel at the stars. You wondered how far away they were. You tired to make out the constellations that the ancients saw. You looked at the full moon and saw the man in it. Somewhere along the way the wonder passed out of life for many of us. That is how we know we have grown old.

Growing old can happen at any age. My grandfather never grew old. There was a movie, yes, an actual movie, of him driving up on the tractor beside the Wisconsin farm house in which he and my grandmother lived. In the movie there is snow on the ground as Grandpa hops down from the tractor and proceeds to unload the firewood from the trailer he is pulling. He throws it through a small door into the basement where he would later have to go and stack it neatly to fuel the furnace.

When we spent parts of our summers there the four grandkids would ask to watch the movies. Grandpa would play through all sorts of them, Christmases past, weddings, birthdays, on and on they would go. He knew the one we were waiting for, the one with the tractor and the firewood. That one was our favorite. Not because of the snow, after all, it’s Wisconsin, snow is measured in feet, not inches. Not because of the tractor, it was a farm. The tractor was standard issue with a farm. No, it was our favorite because it was a movie, a real movie, not a video tape of DVD. A movie, you can run backwards!

The logs would fly out from under the house. Each one caught by my grandfather and placed back on the wagon. Then the greatest feat of all! Grandpa would effortlessly hope all the way back up in the tractor seat as if he were a hot balloon! The thing is, I think Grandpa liked that movie every bit as much as we did.

Somewhere that movie as stored. It has been many years since I have seen it. My parents talked about getting them all put on tapes, and then, later, DVD’s. But, no one ever has. I think that is because it wouldn’t be the same. You see, the movie is just an old man unloading firewood, but run it backwards, and it’s Grandpa.

Spring has come when all things become reborn. Easter is coming. Let Christ refresh you through His new life, and let wonder again be a part of your life.

Pastor Craig

Sin

Sin – It’s such a big word to have so few letters. It reminds us of so much unpleasantness. We recall the times we have been hurt, the times and ways others have wronged us. There are scars – emotional, psychological, financial, spiritual, and, sometimes, actual physical ones as well.



There are also those times we are reminded of that involve our wrongs committed against others. We would rather not remember them. It is so much more acceptable to be the wounded victim than the uncaring victimizer!


But sin has a third category as well. In fact it is this third category that swallows all the others. Sin is simply missing the mark. Think of it as being at a shooting range. The targets are 300 yards away. The mark is a circle smaller than a dime, in fact it is only the tiniest fraction of an inch larger than the circumference of the bullet. This is what God sets for you and for me. There is no second ring, only the perfect shot.


“How unfair,” you cry! And you proceed to draw other rings on the target. You draw a ring that includes all the good “church people” you know. You draw a ring outside of that one that includes all the “good people”, and another one that includes the “nice people”. Outside that there may be a circle that includes all those people who have never gotten arrested or charged with a crime. We draw lots of circles, each one getting bigger and, finally, including almost everyone we know and care about.


Now we feel much more comfortable aiming at the target. Of course, we had to increase the size of the target! It is now 50 yards high and 50 yards wide, much more comfortable to shoot at. We shoot, and our shot lands easily within the outer rings. In fact, we are only 3-4 rings from the center. Yes, we feel really good.


The problem is that God only recognizes that center ring. All of the others are standards we set up. The only mark that counts is that one in the center. In our attempts to perfect ourselves we go back to the same sin that Adam & Eve committed, the one that says if you don’t like the rules as they are, just make up ones with which you are more comfortable. Keep making the circles bigger until all our family and friends are on the inside with us.


Throw out anything you don’t like and call it enlightenment. The only problem with that is that you and I end up throwing out God’s grace as well. We disregard or disagree with anything that might make us fall on our knees and cry out, “Oh God! Have mercy on me, a sinner!” It is only when we recognize how lost we are without God’s mercy and how undeserving we are of the gift of that mercy, that we come to recognize how abundantly it has been given to us for free!

Pastor Craig