Writing is what I do. I try to observe life—both the life I live, insofar as I can see it, and the lives that others live, insofar as they allow me to see them—and then write about what I see. I am a Christian writer, by which I mean I am a Christian who writes.
My writings don’t always live up to some folks’ standards and expectations of Christian writing, by which I mean I don’t always quote the Bible, mention God, or refer to Jesus. But I can no more separate my identity as a Christian from my writing than I can separate my breathing from my existing. I write everything I write from the worldview I’ve been given over half a century of doing my best to accept and offer God’s grace, love, and mercy as I have experienced them in Jesus Christ.
The heart of this Christian writer is breaking over what I see happening in and to our nation. And I want to write about it, not just because writing is what I do, but because a writer is who I am. Writing is how I react. It is how I respond. It is how I try to contribute to a solution.
I suspect that some of you think I write what I write because I want to be contrarian or because I enjoy stirring up controversy. Some of you may also think that I write just to insist that I’m right and others are wrong or just to prove how smart I think I am. I can’t claim that my motives for writing what I write are always pure; in fact, I’m sure they aren’t.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I try my best to have love be my main motive. I look at the world, I look at the nation, I look at the local community, I look at the lives of my family members and my friends, and I try to address situations with love that shows itself in compassion and empathy. Whether I’m writing about religion, politics, or anything else, I’m trying to present ways of thinking that might lead us toward a better world, nation, and community.
I’m also an American. I love this country. I want us to always be moving toward living up to our ideals. As a Christian writer who is also an American writer, I want to write about what’s going on right now.
Out of love, I want to write about the many instances of excessive force used by law enforcement officers against young black men. I want to write about the anger, the fear, and the discrimination that fuels much of the upheaval we are experiencing in these days. I want to write about how hard it is for black parents to have to teach their children how to respond to authorities in a way that won’t get them killed.
Out of love, I want to write about our society’s deeply ingrained economic inequities. I want to write about how the ever-increasing hording of wealth by a few people and the doling out of barely subsistence wages to millions of people (many of them minimum wage-earning workers deemed “essential” during the pandemic) is an unsustainable economic model. I want to write about how frustrations over social and economic disparities can be tamped down only so long before some act of injustice causes them to erupt. I want to write about how some of the worst looting that goes on in our country is done by some of our richest people, our largest corporations, and our most powerful politicians.
Out of love, I want to write about how worried I am that we are moving toward authoritarian rule that tramples all over the Constitution and that cares nothing for anything except attaining and preserving wealth and power.
Out of love, I want to implore us to wake up, to realize how wrong and harmful the direction we’re headed in is, and to do all we can to turn things around. I want us to commit to doing the long and hard work of addressing the systemic problems in our nation that contribute to racial division and economic disparity.
Out of love, I want to pour my heart out in this column so you will know how troubled I am about where we are and where we’re headed, and so you’ll think about why you should join me in being troubled.
I believe that it is God’s love working in me that compels me to write the things I write. As best I can tell, I write what I write out of my love for you, for our nation, and for our world. You may not think that I write what I write out of love. Even some of my fellow Christians may not think so. If you’re one of them, please allow me to ask you a question: what is God’s love working in you compelling you to do?
I hope and pray that God’s love will compel us all to do what we can to overcome our divisions and to heal our brokenness.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Sunday, June 7, 2020
Time, Standing Still and Marching On (A Poem)
The Black Lives Matter march
in my hometown of Barnesville, Georgia,
on Saturday, June 6, 2020, began
at the courthouse, went through
downtown, crossed the railroad tracks
where Main Street becomes Mill Street,
turned left at the E. P. Roberts Community
Center (named for the long-time educator who
was the principal at Booker T. Washington
School before the long-awaited, way late, and
poorly executed desegregation of Lamar
County’s schools in 1970, when he became
principal of Forsyth Road School, which was,
physically speaking, the same school, but which
was in every other way much different than
Booker, and so was the first African American
principal I ever had), and ended at Myles-Wimberly
Park (named for two more prominent African
American educators: Robert Myles, my seventh
grade homeroom and math teacher in that first
year of desegregation, and thus my first African
American teacher, and Coach Oscar Wimberly,
for whom I wish to this day I’d kept playing, rather
than giving up on basketball to take an after-school
job, because even though I would have warmed the
bench, I would have learned so much about life from him).
We stood in the park for ninety minutes, steadily
warming up in the late spring Georgia heat and
humidity, listening to several excellent speakers
offer inspiring and challenging words.
To me, the most moving part of the ceremony
occurred at the beginning when event organizer
Krystal Banks (to whom much gratitude is due)
asked us to be silent for eight minutes, forty-
six seconds, the amount of time that police
officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee onto
George Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis on May 25.
It felt like a long time to stand there, being
quiet, listening to the birds' continual singing
and the neighborhood dogs’ occasional barking,
our breathing stifled just a little bit by the masks
we wore because of the ongoing COVID-19 threat.
Breathing was very, very slightly difficult in
those conditions, but it was nothing like trying
to breathe with someone’s knee on your neck,
making breathing more and more difficult
until it finally becomes impossible.
I thought about how the experience of time
passing is relative, depending on the extent to which
you are able to exercise your inalienable rights of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I thought about how much things have changed
since 1970, and yet here we are, fifty years later,
marching to insist that Black Lives Matter.
I thought about how the Barnesville march
occurred on the anniversary of D-Day, when
American troops, along with British and Canadian
forces, landed at Normandy to drive racist
totalitarianism from Europe, and yet here we are,
seventy-six years later, having to drive it
from the United States of America.
I thought about how we’ve been singing
Mr. Dylan’s song “The Times They Are
a-Changin’” since 1962, and yet here we
are, fifty-eight years later, hoping,
praying, marching, voting, and working,
so that this time, they really will.
in my hometown of Barnesville, Georgia,
on Saturday, June 6, 2020, began
at the courthouse, went through
downtown, crossed the railroad tracks
where Main Street becomes Mill Street,
turned left at the E. P. Roberts Community
Center (named for the long-time educator who
was the principal at Booker T. Washington
School before the long-awaited, way late, and
poorly executed desegregation of Lamar
County’s schools in 1970, when he became
principal of Forsyth Road School, which was,
physically speaking, the same school, but which
was in every other way much different than
Booker, and so was the first African American
principal I ever had), and ended at Myles-Wimberly
Park (named for two more prominent African
American educators: Robert Myles, my seventh
grade homeroom and math teacher in that first
year of desegregation, and thus my first African
American teacher, and Coach Oscar Wimberly,
for whom I wish to this day I’d kept playing, rather
than giving up on basketball to take an after-school
job, because even though I would have warmed the
bench, I would have learned so much about life from him).
We stood in the park for ninety minutes, steadily
warming up in the late spring Georgia heat and
humidity, listening to several excellent speakers
offer inspiring and challenging words.
To me, the most moving part of the ceremony
occurred at the beginning when event organizer
Krystal Banks (to whom much gratitude is due)
asked us to be silent for eight minutes, forty-
six seconds, the amount of time that police
officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee onto
George Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis on May 25.
It felt like a long time to stand there, being
quiet, listening to the birds' continual singing
and the neighborhood dogs’ occasional barking,
our breathing stifled just a little bit by the masks
we wore because of the ongoing COVID-19 threat.
Breathing was very, very slightly difficult in
those conditions, but it was nothing like trying
to breathe with someone’s knee on your neck,
making breathing more and more difficult
until it finally becomes impossible.
I thought about how the experience of time
passing is relative, depending on the extent to which
you are able to exercise your inalienable rights of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I thought about how much things have changed
since 1970, and yet here we are, fifty years later,
marching to insist that Black Lives Matter.
I thought about how the Barnesville march
occurred on the anniversary of D-Day, when
American troops, along with British and Canadian
forces, landed at Normandy to drive racist
totalitarianism from Europe, and yet here we are,
seventy-six years later, having to drive it
from the United States of America.
I thought about how we’ve been singing
Mr. Dylan’s song “The Times They Are
a-Changin’” since 1962, and yet here we
are, fifty-eight years later, hoping,
praying, marching, voting, and working,
so that this time, they really will.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Expertise
One piece of the COVID-19 situation that has concerned and confused me is the disdain some people have exhibited toward experts.
I was in Baltimore, Maryland a few years ago working at a conference. (Remember the old days when people traveled to conferences?) I was sitting at my table in the Exhibit Hall when I realized that the vision in my right eye had become very blurry. This would have seemed like something I should get checked on anyway, but I had recently had laser treatment to repair two retinal tears in that eye, so I was certain I should.
But my retina specialists were in Macon, and I was in Baltimore, not scheduled to return home for two more days. So I called my doctors’ office to see if they could get me in to see someone in Baltimore. They could and they did. Later that day, a friendly Lyft driver deposited me at a retina specialist’s office somewhere in some suburb of Baltimore. As I waited in the exam room, I used my functioning eye to read the diplomas on the wall. The doctor who was about to examine me had earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins.
Friends, I did not say to myself, “This doctor’s training is too good for me. Why, he probably thinks he knows more about retinas than I do. I’m going to find someone who has less expertise.” No, I said to myself, “I have hit the jackpot. I am grateful to have been sent to a doctor with such good training and so much expertise.”
(By the way, as it turned out, the Johns Hopkins-trained doctor discovered that a blood vessel had burst in my eye. It healed and my vision cleared up in a few days. I trusted the doctor’s expert diagnose. And had I needed laser or other treatment, I’d have been grateful for his expertise.)
I see a lot of posts on Facebook (usually memes, which I swore off sharing a long time ago, but I wouldn’t share one like this anyway) that say something like “Someone can have a college degree and still be dumb.” There’s a variant of it that says something like, “Someone can have a college degree and still lack common sense.” In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I have three degrees, and I had to marry someone with common sense before I acquired any.
While I’m on the subject, I’ve also noticed that often people sharing such a meme tie it to remarks about how vocational and technical education is a better route for some than going to college. I’d like to say four things about that. (1) Vocational and technical education is valuable and the careers to which it can lead are indispensable. (2) One can champion such education without denigrating those who pursue a college or university degree and/or graduate degrees. (3) Classism is classism, regardless of the perspective from which it comes, so looking down on those with university degrees is no better than looking down on those without them. (4) I find it really silly and sad that I need to say anything about this.
Let me tell you: I admire experts. I admire experts in auto mechanics, in plumbing, in electricity, in heating and cooling, in dental hygiene, in hair cutting and styling, in construction, in carpentry, and in many other fields. I appreciate and accept the expertise of people who know more than I do about important necessary things (and in many of these cases, if they know anything at all, they know more than I do).
Can I insist on living my life without taking the expertise of such professionals into account? Sure I can. But I’d be foolish to do so. Someone who has been trained to fix that thingamajig under my car’s hood knows more about it than I do. If our house’s air conditioning system goes out this summer, I’m calling the experts at Rooks Brothers Heating & Cooling (full disclosure: we’re kin, but they’re good). The fact is that my ignorance is not as legitimate as their expertise.
My point is that disdain for expertise is misplaced, and disregarding expertise is dangerous. We should take medical professionals and other scientists seriously, because the fact is that they know more than non-professionals and non-scientists know.
I don’t know where the willingness of some people to think they know more than the experts do about science and medicine in general, and about viruses and pandemics in particular, comes from. Maybe they’re influenced by the eagerness of some in high office—included the one in the highest office in the land—to dismiss and ignore the advice of experts, and even to attack the experts themselves. They do so for political reasons. Maybe some of us do too.
If you ignore and denigrate science, whatever reasons you have for doing so aren’t good enough to put yourself and others at risk.
I was in Baltimore, Maryland a few years ago working at a conference. (Remember the old days when people traveled to conferences?) I was sitting at my table in the Exhibit Hall when I realized that the vision in my right eye had become very blurry. This would have seemed like something I should get checked on anyway, but I had recently had laser treatment to repair two retinal tears in that eye, so I was certain I should.
But my retina specialists were in Macon, and I was in Baltimore, not scheduled to return home for two more days. So I called my doctors’ office to see if they could get me in to see someone in Baltimore. They could and they did. Later that day, a friendly Lyft driver deposited me at a retina specialist’s office somewhere in some suburb of Baltimore. As I waited in the exam room, I used my functioning eye to read the diplomas on the wall. The doctor who was about to examine me had earned his medical degree at Johns Hopkins.
Friends, I did not say to myself, “This doctor’s training is too good for me. Why, he probably thinks he knows more about retinas than I do. I’m going to find someone who has less expertise.” No, I said to myself, “I have hit the jackpot. I am grateful to have been sent to a doctor with such good training and so much expertise.”
(By the way, as it turned out, the Johns Hopkins-trained doctor discovered that a blood vessel had burst in my eye. It healed and my vision cleared up in a few days. I trusted the doctor’s expert diagnose. And had I needed laser or other treatment, I’d have been grateful for his expertise.)
I see a lot of posts on Facebook (usually memes, which I swore off sharing a long time ago, but I wouldn’t share one like this anyway) that say something like “Someone can have a college degree and still be dumb.” There’s a variant of it that says something like, “Someone can have a college degree and still lack common sense.” In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I have three degrees, and I had to marry someone with common sense before I acquired any.
While I’m on the subject, I’ve also noticed that often people sharing such a meme tie it to remarks about how vocational and technical education is a better route for some than going to college. I’d like to say four things about that. (1) Vocational and technical education is valuable and the careers to which it can lead are indispensable. (2) One can champion such education without denigrating those who pursue a college or university degree and/or graduate degrees. (3) Classism is classism, regardless of the perspective from which it comes, so looking down on those with university degrees is no better than looking down on those without them. (4) I find it really silly and sad that I need to say anything about this.
Let me tell you: I admire experts. I admire experts in auto mechanics, in plumbing, in electricity, in heating and cooling, in dental hygiene, in hair cutting and styling, in construction, in carpentry, and in many other fields. I appreciate and accept the expertise of people who know more than I do about important necessary things (and in many of these cases, if they know anything at all, they know more than I do).
Can I insist on living my life without taking the expertise of such professionals into account? Sure I can. But I’d be foolish to do so. Someone who has been trained to fix that thingamajig under my car’s hood knows more about it than I do. If our house’s air conditioning system goes out this summer, I’m calling the experts at Rooks Brothers Heating & Cooling (full disclosure: we’re kin, but they’re good). The fact is that my ignorance is not as legitimate as their expertise.
My point is that disdain for expertise is misplaced, and disregarding expertise is dangerous. We should take medical professionals and other scientists seriously, because the fact is that they know more than non-professionals and non-scientists know.
I don’t know where the willingness of some people to think they know more than the experts do about science and medicine in general, and about viruses and pandemics in particular, comes from. Maybe they’re influenced by the eagerness of some in high office—included the one in the highest office in the land—to dismiss and ignore the advice of experts, and even to attack the experts themselves. They do so for political reasons. Maybe some of us do too.
If you ignore and denigrate science, whatever reasons you have for doing so aren’t good enough to put yourself and others at risk.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Fifty > Forty
I’m a words guy. Math isn’t my strong suit, despite the best efforts of Mrs. Pitts, Mrs. Fambro, Mrs. Heinz, Mr. Myles, Mrs. Easton, and Mrs. Byars. Lord knows they tried.
(Full disclosure: my math grades were fine. Math just didn’t become part of the fabric of my being as reading and writing did.)
But even with my limited mathematical prowess, I know that fifty is greater than forty. (Feel free to check my math, but I’m pretty confident about this.)
I bring this up because we have just exited the season of Lent, which lasts forty days, and have entered the season of Easter, which lasts fifty days. The Easter season begins on Easter Sunday and ends fifty days later on Pentecost (which means “Fiftieth”) Sunday. So after mourning our mortality and repenting of our sins for forty days, we celebrate resurrection and new life for fifty days.
Fifty is greater than forty.
This simple math speaks great truth.
We have much to mourn. We always do, but these days, we have the additional losses of life due to COVID-19. It is particularly sad to me that so many people are dying without the presence of loved ones, who must stay away because of the virus. If we weren’t already aware of our mortality, surely we are now (despite the fact that some people seem to think they’re immune to the risk and live in arrogant ways that put themselves and others in danger).
We have much to repent of. Some folks are quick to say that the pandemic is God’s judgment on a world that rejects God. I’m not willing to jump on that bandwagon. But I do think we should be learning some lessons and repenting of our sins. We should repent of the ways we treat and mistreat one another. We should repent of the precarious position we are too willing to let the most vulnerable among us occupy. For example: people that some of us don’t think deserve $15 an hour are risking their lives to do their essential minimum wage jobs. We also should repent of our unfortunate practices of prioritizing political loyalty over embracing the truth and of cheering falsehood while ignoring facts.
We need to keep thinking about and working on our mourning and repenting, even though this year’s Lent observance is over.
But now it’s the Easter season. We are in the season of resurrection, of life, and of hope. Fifty is greater than forty. Easter is greater than Lent.
Jesus’ resurrection means that none of the realities that threaten and frighten us—sickness, pain, sorrow, suffering, and death—have the last word. It means that other, greater realities—wholeness, joy, and life—do have the last word.
I have little patience with pious platitudes, trite tropes, and clever clichés (and also with abounding alliteration). I’m talking about sayings such as, “I fear no virus, because I trust in the Lord.” The problem with such sayings is that they don’t tell enough truth (at least they don’t in my case, and if you’re honest with yourself, they probably don’t in yours). Yes, I trust in the Lord. But this virus still scares me, not so much because of what it can do to me, but rather because of what it can do to my loved ones and to the most vulnerable in society.
When I hear someone speak a pious platitude, I tend to hear them saying, “Everything’s going to be all right someday, so I don’t really need to do anything about what’s happening today.” Now, I affirm and proclaim that, because of Jesus’ resurrection, everything is indeed going to be all right someday.
But resurrection also affects the ways we live today. Living in light of Jesus’ resurrection should mean that we will do everything we can to bring about life in the midst of death and hope in the midst of despair.
The New Testament teaches that when Jesus returns, those who have died in him will be raised to new life in him. It also teaches that the power of Jesus’ resurrection brings new life to us here and now.
When Jesus returns, everything will be one hundred percent good. Life will be everlasting. Death will be no more.
We can’t make the complete victory of life over death happen before its time. But I believe that if Christians will live in light of Jesus’ resurrection, life can eke out a slim victory over death even here, even now.
But it won’t if we don’t try.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Snake Handlers and Poison Drinkers
Modern Bible translations note that the Gospel of Mark probably originally ended at 16:8. Manuscript evidence indicates that the material found in Mark 16:9-20 was probably added a few decades after the Gospel was produced. Most of what’s in those verses is found in the other Gospels.
But Mark 16:18 has something that none of the other Gospels have. It says of believers in Jesus, “They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.” Some of us might be glad to know that verse isn’t part of the original Gospel. We might say, “Well, that’s not really part of the Bible, so I can ignore it.”
I wouldn’t go that far. After all, it is printed in our Bibles, even with the explanatory notes that imply that maybe it shouldn’t be, so we have to deal with it.
But I will go this far: Christians who intentionally handle poisonous snakes or intentionally drink poison, daring God to protect them, are misguided.
It’s one thing to trust in God through thick and thin, come hell or high water, in times of plenty or times of want.
It’s another thing entirely to assume that God will protect you no matter how foolish you choose to be. It’s another thing entirely to dare God to protect you. It’s another thing entirely to act as if God didn’t give you a brain and the good sense that should come with it.
There’s a difference between trusting in God and presuming upon God.
This is why churches that keep meeting during the COVID-19 crisis are doing wrong. Their pastors and members can claim to trust in God all they want. They can claim that their continuing to meet during this pandemic demonstrates their faith and courage. But they are in fact presuming upon God’s care. Non-essential businesses that stay open in the belief that God will protect their workers and customers are being presumptuous too. They are putting God to the test, which indicates a self-centered and thus inadequate view of faith.
Jesus himself gives us the example we need. We read about it in Matthew 4:
Then the devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (vv. 5-7).
Would God have protected Jesus if he had jumped off the temple? Maybe. But even if Jesus knew that God would protect him, he also knew that he shouldn’t try to make God prove it. We can’t know what Jesus knew, but we can know that we shouldn’t put God to the test either.
Besides, there’s this business of loving one another. We’re supposed to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. If we insist on continuing to participate in large gatherings, even with a faith community, we are putting other people at risk.
A meme that’s been going around on social media helps make the point. It shows someone sitting with his feet dangling off the edge of a very high cliff. At the bottom of the image are these words: “When we have nothing left but God, we discover that God is enough.”
Amen to that.
Then it continues: “But we still shouldn’t sit on cliffs. That’s just dumb.”
Amen to that too.
But Mark 16:18 has something that none of the other Gospels have. It says of believers in Jesus, “They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.” Some of us might be glad to know that verse isn’t part of the original Gospel. We might say, “Well, that’s not really part of the Bible, so I can ignore it.”
I wouldn’t go that far. After all, it is printed in our Bibles, even with the explanatory notes that imply that maybe it shouldn’t be, so we have to deal with it.
But I will go this far: Christians who intentionally handle poisonous snakes or intentionally drink poison, daring God to protect them, are misguided.
It’s one thing to trust in God through thick and thin, come hell or high water, in times of plenty or times of want.
It’s another thing entirely to assume that God will protect you no matter how foolish you choose to be. It’s another thing entirely to dare God to protect you. It’s another thing entirely to act as if God didn’t give you a brain and the good sense that should come with it.
There’s a difference between trusting in God and presuming upon God.
This is why churches that keep meeting during the COVID-19 crisis are doing wrong. Their pastors and members can claim to trust in God all they want. They can claim that their continuing to meet during this pandemic demonstrates their faith and courage. But they are in fact presuming upon God’s care. Non-essential businesses that stay open in the belief that God will protect their workers and customers are being presumptuous too. They are putting God to the test, which indicates a self-centered and thus inadequate view of faith.
Jesus himself gives us the example we need. We read about it in Matthew 4:
Then the devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (vv. 5-7).
Would God have protected Jesus if he had jumped off the temple? Maybe. But even if Jesus knew that God would protect him, he also knew that he shouldn’t try to make God prove it. We can’t know what Jesus knew, but we can know that we shouldn’t put God to the test either.
Besides, there’s this business of loving one another. We’re supposed to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. If we insist on continuing to participate in large gatherings, even with a faith community, we are putting other people at risk.
A meme that’s been going around on social media helps make the point. It shows someone sitting with his feet dangling off the edge of a very high cliff. At the bottom of the image are these words: “When we have nothing left but God, we discover that God is enough.”
Amen to that.
Then it continues: “But we still shouldn’t sit on cliffs. That’s just dumb.”
Amen to that too.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
The Cross and COVID-19
(A reflection on Matthew 27:37-54. This post appeared originally at Coracle, the blog of Next Sunday Resources.)
When the devil tested Jesus in the wilderness, he introduced two of his three challenges with, “If you are the Son of God” (Mt 4:3, 6). In refusing the devil’s challenges, Jesus declined to prove his identity on the devil’s terms. To do so would have been to abandon the mission he had as the Son of God. To do so would have been to deny his identity as the Son of God. To do so would have been to claim the victory without going through the battle.
That was at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Now he is at its end.
Now Jesus hangs on the cross. He is dying. Now it isn’t the devil challenging him, but people. Passersby use the same words the devil used as they challenge Jesus to prove his identity: “If you are the Son of God.” He can prove it, they say, if he will “come down from the cross” (v. 40). Some of the religious leaders say a similar thing: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son’” (v. 43).
But Jesus doesn’t come down from the cross. He doesn’t because to do so would be to abandon the mission he has as the Son of God. To do so would be to deny his identity as the Son of God. Ironically, he proves he is the Son of God by staying on the cross. He proves he is the Son of God by dying.
Jesus was (and is) the Son of God. Would Jesus have still been the Son of God had he come down from the cross? Yes, but he would not have been the Son of God he was supposed to be. He would not have done what the Son of God was supposed to do. To be who he was as the Son of God, Jesus had to stay on the cross.
I think a lot these days—all days, really—about what it means to follow Jesus. When we trust in Jesus as our Savior, we commit to following him. We become Jesus’ sisters and brothers. We become children of God.
Whether we realize it or not, we are also challenged with the words “If you are a child of God…” We are constantly tempted to prove we are God’s children by thinking and acting in ways that run counter to what it means to be God’s children.
Jesus was (and is) the Son of God. He proved his identity by entering into our suffering and thereby overcoming it. We benefit from his death on the cross. As his sisters and brothers, as his followers, as his fellow children of God, we also participate in his death on the cross.
During these days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are called to live as children of God. We are called to enter into the world’s suffering so as to contribute to its redemption. Some pastors and Christians hear the world’s (and maybe the devil’s) taunts: “If you are the children of God, keep having public gatherings to prove that God will protect you from the virus.” Here’s one of many problems with that kind of thinking and living: it isn’t redemptive. It doesn’t help deal with the problem of the virus.
Jesus couldn’t come down from the cross because to do so wouldn’t have been redemptive. It wouldn’t have contributed to the defeat of sin and death. It would have ignored, avoided, and perpetuated the problem. Jesus defeated death by entering into it and thereby destroying it from the inside out.
If we could contribute to stopping the virus by gathering to worship, that would be the appropriate thing to do. But we can’t. If we insist on gathering, we contribute to COVID-19’s spread, not to its curtailment.
We can’t help stop the virus by getting sick ourselves and thereby joining our lives to those who are suffering with the disease.
We can only contribute to stopping the virus by joining in what the world is going through by staying at home.
Jesus defeated death by dying on the cross. We’ll help defeat COVID-19 by dying to arrogance, to ignorance, and to presumption. We’ll help defeat it by living in humility, knowledge, and trust.
Jesus saved us from sin, judgment, and death by staying on the cross. That’s how he showed that he was (and is) God’s Son.
We can help save people from sickness and death by staying home. That’s how we can show that we are God’s children and Jesus’ sisters and brothers.
When the devil tested Jesus in the wilderness, he introduced two of his three challenges with, “If you are the Son of God” (Mt 4:3, 6). In refusing the devil’s challenges, Jesus declined to prove his identity on the devil’s terms. To do so would have been to abandon the mission he had as the Son of God. To do so would have been to deny his identity as the Son of God. To do so would have been to claim the victory without going through the battle.
That was at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Now he is at its end.
Now Jesus hangs on the cross. He is dying. Now it isn’t the devil challenging him, but people. Passersby use the same words the devil used as they challenge Jesus to prove his identity: “If you are the Son of God.” He can prove it, they say, if he will “come down from the cross” (v. 40). Some of the religious leaders say a similar thing: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son’” (v. 43).
But Jesus doesn’t come down from the cross. He doesn’t because to do so would be to abandon the mission he has as the Son of God. To do so would be to deny his identity as the Son of God. Ironically, he proves he is the Son of God by staying on the cross. He proves he is the Son of God by dying.
Jesus was (and is) the Son of God. Would Jesus have still been the Son of God had he come down from the cross? Yes, but he would not have been the Son of God he was supposed to be. He would not have done what the Son of God was supposed to do. To be who he was as the Son of God, Jesus had to stay on the cross.
I think a lot these days—all days, really—about what it means to follow Jesus. When we trust in Jesus as our Savior, we commit to following him. We become Jesus’ sisters and brothers. We become children of God.
Whether we realize it or not, we are also challenged with the words “If you are a child of God…” We are constantly tempted to prove we are God’s children by thinking and acting in ways that run counter to what it means to be God’s children.
Jesus was (and is) the Son of God. He proved his identity by entering into our suffering and thereby overcoming it. We benefit from his death on the cross. As his sisters and brothers, as his followers, as his fellow children of God, we also participate in his death on the cross.
During these days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are called to live as children of God. We are called to enter into the world’s suffering so as to contribute to its redemption. Some pastors and Christians hear the world’s (and maybe the devil’s) taunts: “If you are the children of God, keep having public gatherings to prove that God will protect you from the virus.” Here’s one of many problems with that kind of thinking and living: it isn’t redemptive. It doesn’t help deal with the problem of the virus.
Jesus couldn’t come down from the cross because to do so wouldn’t have been redemptive. It wouldn’t have contributed to the defeat of sin and death. It would have ignored, avoided, and perpetuated the problem. Jesus defeated death by entering into it and thereby destroying it from the inside out.
If we could contribute to stopping the virus by gathering to worship, that would be the appropriate thing to do. But we can’t. If we insist on gathering, we contribute to COVID-19’s spread, not to its curtailment.
We can’t help stop the virus by getting sick ourselves and thereby joining our lives to those who are suffering with the disease.
We can only contribute to stopping the virus by joining in what the world is going through by staying at home.
Jesus defeated death by dying on the cross. We’ll help defeat COVID-19 by dying to arrogance, to ignorance, and to presumption. We’ll help defeat it by living in humility, knowledge, and trust.
Jesus saved us from sin, judgment, and death by staying on the cross. That’s how he showed that he was (and is) God’s Son.
We can help save people from sickness and death by staying home. That’s how we can show that we are God’s children and Jesus’ sisters and brothers.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
A Prayer for Use in On-Line Worship During the COVID-19 Crisis
O God,
We know you see us wherever we are. We know you are with us wherever we are. We know you love us wherever we are.
Today, many of us are in our homes, doing what we can to protect ourselves and others from the COVID-19 illness caused by the coronavirus. Some of us are at work, doing all we can to make sure people have life’s necessities during this challenging time. Others of us are serving in our roles as medical professionals, testing people with symptoms and tending to those who have COVID-19 or other illnesses.
Thank you for the opportunities we have to serve each other, both those we know and those we don’t know, during this time, whether we help by doing something or by doing nothing. Use our active and passive contributions to stem the tide of this illness.
In these difficult days, give our leaders wisdom to lead us in the right ways. Give our scientists wisdom to develop an effective vaccine and to identity effective treatments for the disease. Give our doctors and nurses wisdom to know how best to help those in their care. Give our ministers wisdom to strengthen our spirits, to encourage us to think of others, and to guide our churches to make sound decisions. Give all of us wisdom to follow the advice of experts who are trying to teach us how to protect ourselves and others.
Protect those whose necessary service puts them at risk. Protect those who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. Protect us all.
O God, we need protection from threats other than the virus. Please protect us from excessive fear, from selfishness, and from apathy. Protect us from ways of thinking, talking, and acting that indicate racism, classism, or other sinful assumptions and perspectives.
Fill us to overflowing with your love, your grace, your mercy, and your peace, so that they pour out of us and on to others.
O God, we are not together today. And yet we are together. We are together because your love, your Spirit, and our fellowship bind us even we are apart. We are together in you.
As your scattered yet united people, we praise your name, ask for your help, and seek your will.
In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord we pray,
Amen.
We know you see us wherever we are. We know you are with us wherever we are. We know you love us wherever we are.
Today, many of us are in our homes, doing what we can to protect ourselves and others from the COVID-19 illness caused by the coronavirus. Some of us are at work, doing all we can to make sure people have life’s necessities during this challenging time. Others of us are serving in our roles as medical professionals, testing people with symptoms and tending to those who have COVID-19 or other illnesses.
Thank you for the opportunities we have to serve each other, both those we know and those we don’t know, during this time, whether we help by doing something or by doing nothing. Use our active and passive contributions to stem the tide of this illness.
In these difficult days, give our leaders wisdom to lead us in the right ways. Give our scientists wisdom to develop an effective vaccine and to identity effective treatments for the disease. Give our doctors and nurses wisdom to know how best to help those in their care. Give our ministers wisdom to strengthen our spirits, to encourage us to think of others, and to guide our churches to make sound decisions. Give all of us wisdom to follow the advice of experts who are trying to teach us how to protect ourselves and others.
Protect those whose necessary service puts them at risk. Protect those who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. Protect us all.
O God, we need protection from threats other than the virus. Please protect us from excessive fear, from selfishness, and from apathy. Protect us from ways of thinking, talking, and acting that indicate racism, classism, or other sinful assumptions and perspectives.
Fill us to overflowing with your love, your grace, your mercy, and your peace, so that they pour out of us and on to others.
O God, we are not together today. And yet we are together. We are together because your love, your Spirit, and our fellowship bind us even we are apart. We are together in you.
As your scattered yet united people, we praise your name, ask for your help, and seek your will.
In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord we pray,
Amen.
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