Category: Fear

Other Words: Four More Cries from the Cross

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

The last word my mother ever spoke to me was “No.” She spoke it repeatedly as she lay in a hospital bed. Her cry was a spontaneous act of resistance, an expression of outrage against the impending dissolution of death. The last thing my father said to me was, “I love you.” He, too, was in a hospital bed, and his words were also a reflex of sorts. Despite his discomfort, it was an automatic response of parental affection. I don’t think either of them realized that these would be their last words to me. Frankly, I am not certain they even knew what they said. They were too busy trying not to die to think about it.

Jesus’ last words before his death were different. They were not spoken as a reflex. Rather than being spontaneous, many of the things he said fulfilled prophecy. What was not prophetic was deliberate. He knew he was dying. He also knew what he was saying.

Not everything Jesus said on the cross was addressed to the Father. Jesus also spoke to one of the two men who was crucified along with him. The Gospel of Mark uses a word that means “robber” or “rebel” to describe them (Mark 15:27). It is the same word that John employs to refer to Barrabas (John 18:40). We know only two things about these men. One is that they were guilty of the crimes for which they suffered and that initially, they had both heaped insults on Christ (Matt. 27:44).

A Change of Heart

Although both were rebels, Luke reveals that one of them experienced a sudden change of heart while on the cross. The other thief continued to bait Jesus, saying, “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the repentant thief rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:40–41). After this, he turned his attention to the dying Savior and said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).

With this request, this anonymous criminal voices what may be our most basic fear. It is the terror of being overlooked. To say “remember me” is also to say “do not forget me.” This is what  Joseph said to Pharaoh’s cupbearer while still in prison (Gen. 40:14). It was the prayer of the prisoner Samson when the Philistines stood him between the pillars of their temple (Judges 16:28). Hannah prayed this as she wept before the Lord in Shiloh and begged for a son (1 Sam. 1:11). Nehemiah, Job, and the Psalmist all prayed these words (Neh. 5:19; 13:14, 22, 31; Job 14:13; Ps. 25:7; 106:4).

But few have had as little warrant to make such a request as this thief did. He epitomizes the last-minute change of heart. Luke doesn’t say what brought about the change. It is not hard to speculate that it was motivated by Christ’s prayer of forgiveness. Jesus, however, does not ask him for an explanation. Or for anything, for that matter. Instead of telling the thief that the faith he has expressed is too little too late, the Savior assures him: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42).

It is never too late to turn to Christ for mercy.

The thief on the cross has served as a beacon of hope ever since. He is the prototype for all deathbed conversions. Jesus’ assurance that such a person would be with him in paradise is a reminder that as long as there is breath, there is hope. As long as we are able, it is never too late to turn to Christ for mercy.

A Word to His Mother

Jesus also addressed his mother, Mary, and the apostle John from the cross. John tells us that he was standing “nearby” Mary. John’s description of the incident may suggest that Jesus was searching for them among the onlookers. To watch Jesus suffer from the foot of the cross must have been painful enough for Mary. For their eyes to meet in that moment had to pierce her mother’s heart like the sword Simeon had predicted in the temple court (Luke 2:35). To Mary, Jesus says, “Woman, here is your son,” and to John, “Here is your mother.” From that time, John says, he took her into his home (John 19:26–27).

Given the circumstances, Jesus’ words to the two of them are almost too mundane to be believed. They are, in a way, purely human words–the words of a dying son who must put his house in order. That Jesus gave this responsibility to John is something of a puzzle. Jesus had brothers and sisters (Mark 6:3). Why didn’t he place her in their hands? For that matter, why did he even feel that it was necessary to say anything at all? He could have let matters take care of themselves. None of this is explained to us by John,  who merely records the charge but does not tell us what made it necessary or whether it had other significance.

Yet Jesus’ words at least imply a fundamental shift in his relationship with Mary. After the cross, Jesus will no longer relate to Mary as a son. That role will be entrusted to John. I doubt that this came as a surprise to Mary. Jesus had already hinted that such a change was coming (John 2:4). On one occasion, after being told that his mother and brothers were outside asking for him, Jesus looked at those seated before him and replied: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:34–35).

In the Magnificat, Mary observed: “From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name” (Luke 1:49). But the title she chose for herself is less exalted. In her own eyes, she was merely a servant (v. 48). Her relationship with Jesus must change once he completes his earthly task.

Jesus was not diminishing Mary when he commended her to John’s care. His words reflect love, not only for his mother but for John as well. Into who else’s care would we expect Jesus to entrust his mother, if not to “the disciple whom he loved” (John 19:26)? At the most painful moment of Jesus’ experience, his concerns are turned to the needs of others.

Two Observations

Between the cry of dereliction and Jesus’ final prayer committing his spirit into the hands of the Father, Jesus makes two observations. They are both statements of fact that pertain to his suffering. Their only ambiguity is their audience. Are they addressed to the Father or those watching him suffer? Is Jesus talking to himself?

There is a certain irony in the simple statement that the apostle records in John 19:28, “I am thirsty.” It is tempting to look at thirst as the least significant of the physical sufferings Jesus experienced. Yet you could hardly choose a statement more suited to underscore the reality of his humanity. Food and water are essential for human life, yet we can survive without food longer than water. This cry is a reminder that it is the man Jesus who hangs on the cross. He is the God who became flesh (John 1:14).

On the Cross, the one who is the source of the water of life suffers from thirst.

Jesus’ complaint is especially poignant, appearing as it does in John’s Gospel. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us this is the Gospel in which the Samaritan woman is promised that Jesus will provide her with “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).[1] It is John who tells us that on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus stood and in a loud voice declared, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37-38). Yet, on the cross, the one who is the source of the water of life suffers from thirst.

John did not put these words in Jesus’ mouth. They are things that Jesus actually said. But as the most poetic of the Gospel writers, John is the one who noticed this theme in Jesus’ teaching and highlighted it. As a witness to the suffering of Christ, he could not help but see the irony of Jesus’ thirst. Yet John also saw beyond the irony. He pointed out that Jesus said this, “knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled.” Jesus spoke these words to set in motion the actions that would fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 69:21, “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”

A Shout of Victory

Jesus’ other statement before his final prayer of surrender is just as brief: “It is finished” (John 19:30). This is the “loud cry” that Mark mentions but does not articulate in his Gospel (Mark 15:37). This statement seems to be combined with Jesus’ final prayer. Perhaps it is part of that prayer. Although John does not include the prayer in his account, it is implied in the statement at the end of verse 30, which says that after Jesus said this, “he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

Jesus’ suffering ends with a loud cry, but not a cry of despair. “‘It is finished’ is not a death gurgle,” Stanley Hauerwas observes. “‘It is finished’ is not ‘I am done for.'” “It is finished” is Christ’s shout of victory.[2] We know this, Hauerwas explains, because just before he breathed his last, Jesus committed his spirit into the hands of the Father.

These are indeed the words of a dying man. But they are not the words of someone who is passing into darkness and the unknown. Jesus’ last word is not even a sigh of relief. It is a cry of triumph from one who knows he has successfully finished his task (John 19:28). The hardest work is done. What remains is resurrection and restoration.

Although Jesus’ last words before his death were not his final words, they cannot help their air of finality. They signify the completion of an experience shared by all who must die but one that is also singular and unrepeatable. Like the rest of us, Jesus passed through the valley of shadow. But unlike us, Jesus did not go there unwillingly. “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again,” Jesus said. “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father” (John 10:17–18).

Jesus’ seven last words were those of a victor, not a victim. They are the words of one who knows he is death’s master. Death has not disappeared. Anyone who has watched a loved one die knows all too well why the apostle calls death the “last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Cor. 15:26). But when Jesus said, “it is finished,” he declared victory and sounded the death knell for death itself.

[1] Stanely Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ, (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004), 73.

[2] Ibid., 83.

Three Prayers from the Cross

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Some have called Jesus’ seven statements from the cross his “last words.” The label is striking but somewhat misleading. They are not individual “words” but a collection of sentences or phrases. Neither are they technically the last words of Jesus but merely the last things he said before his death and resurrection. It turns out that Jesus still had much to say. After the resurrection, he showed himself to be alive to the disciples and spoke to them over the course of forty days and beyond (Acts 1:3).

Still, there is something unique about these sayings. For one, there is a starkness to them. The dying, as a rule, are not talkative. If they are not unconscious, they are too uncomfortable to be chatty. Dying is hard work, and those engaged in the task are usually too preoccupied to be loquacious. Jesus’ words are as terse as one would expect from someone entering the final throes of death.

The First Prayer

Among these seven sayings are three prayers, of which the first is, in some ways, the most astonishing. In this prayer, Jesus asks the Father to forgive those who crucify him (Luke 23:34). This is poignant but especially so coming between Jesus’ warning to the daughters of Jerusalem of a terrible judgment yet to come and Scripture’s observations about the scorn of the watching crowd. Luke’s description paints a picture of callous disregard blended with pride. Jesus hangs naked between two criminals as the religious leaders sneer. “He saved others,” they taunt, “let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One” (Luke 23:35).

The soldiers do their work with the brutal indifference of soldiers. They pound nails in Jesus’ hands and feet and haul him up. They parcel out Jesus’ clothes. Instead of water, they offer him wine vinegar. The soldiers point to the sign Pilate has ordered to be placed above his head and say, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” Yet instead of asking for justice, Jesus pleads with God for mercy on their behalf. More than mercy. Jesus asked God to absolve them “for they do not know what they are doing.”

But they do know what they are doing. At least, they think they know. The crowd, which has been swept up in these events, watches it all unfold. Some with ghoulish interest and others with sorrow. The soldiers are only following orders. The rulers, likewise, are just doing their job. They believe they are acting responsibly by ridding the nation of a dangerous person. Yet it seems that Jesus is right after all. They are all of them ignorant. None of them has any idea what is really going on.

Jesus’ request that God forgive is not a dismissal of the cruelty of their actions toward him. This is not the kind of false forgiveness we sometimes offer, saying, “Oh, it was nothing at all. Think nothing of it.” Rather, Jesus’ petition acknowledges that he knows what is happening. Jesus is not a victim. He is acting as a high priest, praying for the sins of the people. But Jesus is doing more than praying. He is also offering the sacrifice that gives him the warrant to ask for forgiveness on their behalf. It is the sacrifice of Jesus himself (Heb. 7:27).

The Second Prayer

Jesus affirms this in the second prayer he utters from the cross. If Jesus’ first prayer from the cross is astonishing, his second is disturbing. Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:45–46 reveals that Jesus spoke these words in darkness at three in the afternoon. This sharp cry is separated from the petition for forgiveness by at least three hours of suffering.

Some find these words of Jesus’ troubling, interpreting them as a moment of doubt or maybe even despair. But they are something else. They are a quote from Psalm 22, which is also a prayer. Acting as both priest and sacrifice, Jesus utters a liturgical prayer: “He reached up for a word of the eternal God and sent it back up again.”[1] Jesus’ words do not reflect a loss of confidence in God, but they suggest that there is more going on in this moment than merely a symbolic act. Something is happening between Jesus and the Father that is deeply distressing to the Savior. If we take Jesus at his words, it is a separation. Somehow, the unity between Father and Son that existed since eternity past was broken at that moment. Philip Jamiesen explains, “The cry of dereliction reveals that the Son has lost His direct access to the Father even as He calls out to Him as God.”[2]

It is easier to explain what happened than to precisely describe what Christ experienced. 2 Corinthians 5:21 explains, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Those who stood by the cross watching did not recognize it but were seeing themselves at that moment. Jesus was sundered from the Father because he had taken upon himself the “sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Acting as both priest and sacrifice, Jesus utters a liturgical prayer.

The Third Prayer

The third prayer Jesus uttered proves that this cry of anguish was not a cry of despair. It is Jesus’ last statement from the cross. Luke 23:46 says, “Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ When he had said this, he breathed his last.” On the heels of his cry of anguish, Jesus makes this remarkable confession of trust and commits his spirit into the hands of the Father, whose presence he can no longer feel. This is the prayer of someone who knows that he is dying. Yet, it is also more. This is the prayer of someone who trusts the hands into which he has fallen. In Jesus’ experience, it is a leap into darkness but not a blind leap. Jesus knows where he is going and how this story will end.

The Methodist preacher William Sangster pointed out that, without the cross, Christians would have nothing to say to those who suffer. Jesus speaks to us, not only as one who was himself wounded. He speaks by his wounds. “To all those whose minds reel in sorrow; to all those who feel resentful because life has done to them its worst; to all those tempted to believe there is no God in heaven, or at least, no God of love, he comes and he shows them his hands,” Sangster declared. “More eloquently than any words, those pierced hands say, ‘I have suffered.'”[3]

The Gospel

Yet the mere fact that Christ suffered is not enough. What does it matter that Jesus’ suffering outstripped ours, if all it means is that he suffered too? If all the gospel has to say is that Christ feels our pain and understands our experience, it is no gospel at all.

Jesus’ three prayers from the cross help us to place the suffering of Christ in a larger context. Jesus shared our humanity, “so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14). Sympathy was certainly one motive for this but only in part. The ultimate reason was so that Jesus could die on our behalf. “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way,” Hebrews 2:17 goes on to explain, “in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”

This is the power of the cross and the reason for Christ’s suffering. He came not only to die but to rise again on our behalf. It is the key that unlocks the mystery of Jesus’ words from the cross. Solomon observed that love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6). But in Jesus Christ, we see a love that was even stronger.

[1] Helmut Thielicke, Christ and the Meaning of Life, trans. John Doberstein, (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1962), 44.

[2] Philip D. Jamieson, The Face of Forgiveness: A Pastoral Theology of Shame and Redemption, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2016), 99.

[3] William Sangster, “He Dies. He Must Die.” In Classic Sermons on the Cross of Christ, compiled by Warren W. Wiersbe, (Grand Rapids: Hendrickson, 1990), 32.

Keeping the Cross in View

~ John Koessler ~ 4 Comments

According to Charles Dickens, after being visited by three spirits, Ebenezer Scrooge was a changed man. Terrified by the specter of his death, Scrooge made this solemn promise to the ghost of Christmas yet to come: “I will honor Christmas, and try to keep it all the year.” At the close of his tale, Dickens says that Ebenezer Scrooge “knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man possessed the knowledge.”

For some reason, we never talk this way about Easter. When Christmas comes around, we remind ourselves of the need to observe it all year like old Scrooge. We celebrate the Christmas spirit, but we seem to know nothing about the Spirit of Easter. Christmas is magical. But Easter is just a memory and a somber one at that. Christmas, even though it comes in winter, is all warmth and firelight. Easter arrives with spring, and like spring comes with a different quality of light. It is colder somehow.

If you doubt this, look at how artists have depicted each event down through the centuries. Their portraits of the nativity have a coziness that Easter lacks. We are charmed by the sight of the mother and babe, surrounded by animals and rough shepherds who bend their knees in adoration. The artistic vision of Easter is more spare somehow. Our observance of the two holidays also reflects the difference. Christmas announces its approach for weeks with colored lights, a mountain of gifts, and endless parties. We are sad to see it go. Contrast this with Easter, who arrives suddenly with a sheepish grin bearing only a ham and a few jellied candies.

Part of our problem is that we tend to separate the Nativity and Easter in our thinking. We know they are both moves in the larger story of Christ’s life. But to us, each has its own distinct atmosphere. In the church’s message, however, they are inseparably linked. Each was necessary to accomplish Christ’s purpose. If we remove one of them, they both cease to have meaning. Galatians 4:4–5 tells us that: “. . . when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law. . . .” The birth of Christ sets the stage for Good Friday. Without the incarnation, the work of the cross would be impossible. To redeem, Christ must first die for our sins. And to die for our sins, He must first be made like us.

Christ’s true humanity was necessary to our salvation because Jesus came not merely as a role model but primarily as a replacement. He came to die on our behalf as the only sacrifice that God will accept for sin. As Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” But Christ’s birth and death were not enough. The nativity did indeed set the stage for Good Friday. Yet Good Friday without Easter is as meaningless as Christmas without the cross. Paul describes the blunt necessity for Christ’s resurrection this way in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “. . . if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” The resurrection is proof of Christ’s divinity. It is also evidence that God has accepted Christ’s payment on our behalf.

Still, the cross has a unique place in the church’s proclamation of the gospel and the believer’s life. Indeed, we might say that the key to living the Christian life is the secret of keeping the cross in view. Paul told the Corinthians that he had not come to them with eloquence or human wisdom as he proclaimed to them the testimony about God: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Even though Paul’s gospel included the birth of Christ and the resurrection, he labeled it “the message of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18).

The cross has a unique place in the believer’s life.

More than this, Paul assigned the cross of Christ a critical role in enabling believers to live the Christian life. He pointed to the cross as God’s solution for the guilt of sin and its practice. “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin,” he explains in Romans 6:6–7. The cross is a historical event that exerts a kind of power in the believer’s life. But the power of the cross does not work on its own. It is the Holy Spirit who brings the cross to bear on our sinful nature. We do not overcome the pull of sin by relying on willpower but something far more potent. Those who have “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” also “live by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

Through the cross and the Spirit’s enablement, we find a permanent solution to the problem of sin. It begins with forgiveness. The blood of Christ shed on the cross pays the penalty for all our sins. The word that we sometimes use to describe this is atonement. Atonement is a payment that satisfies God’s wrath, and the only price that God will accept for sin is the one He has made Himself. Christ “has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). The result is a change in our relationship with God and a change in our nature. Instead of being God’s enemies, we become His friends and children. As 1 Peter 3:18 says, Christ “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” We also become different people, or as Scripture puts it, “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:16). The Holy Spirit empowers those who receive Christ’s righteousness, enabling them to put that righteousness into practice. The word that we use to describe this aspect of the Christian life is sanctification. It is God’s work of making us holy.

How, then, do we keep the cross in view? It starts with something that the apostle Paul calls “reckoning” ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God (Rom. 6:11–12). This is an act of faith, where we take God at His word and accept as true all that He has said about our relationship to sin. Keeping the cross in view also calls for a response whenever we find ourselves drawn by the desire of sin. This response involves a conscious turning away from sin and a corresponding turn to Christ. Instead of allowing sin to rule over us as it once did, we offer every part of ourselves to God as an instrument of righteousness (Rom. 6:13). Paul describes this as a kind of death. He tells us to: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). This is simply the act of saying no to ourselves and our impulses where sin is concerned. It is an act that assumes that Christ’s death has made a difference in us. We really can say no.

The Dickensian world of Scrooge appeals to us because it suggests that all we need to deal with sin are good intentions and noble effort. This message appeals to our human vanity and spiritual pride. But painful experience has shown us otherwise. Such an approach only leads to the kind of seasonal change that Dickens envisions in his tale. It is not deliverance from sin, but at best, a brief holiday. The cross promises something more. Here is the great difference between Charles Dickens’ notion of “keeping Christmas” and the Bible’s message of new life in Christ. For Dickens, Jesus Christ was primarily a moral example. To “keep Christmas” was to remember His goodness and try to imitate it. The forces at work in Ebenezer Scrooge’s fictional transformation are mostly guilt and fear. But the change that comes through the gospel operates on a very different level. It is a real, not a fictional change, that works through faith and hope instead of guilt and fear.

Gospel transformation begins with faith in Christ’s death and resurrection as the basis for our hope that we can live a different kind of life. Nowhere in Scripture does Christ tell us to “keep Christmas.” He doesn’t tell us to “keep Easter” either. What He does tell us to do is to remember the cross. This is not something we only do on Good Friday. Nor is it limited to the church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper. We keep the cross in view every time we say “yes” to God and “no” to sin.

Holy Week’s Trajectory of Hope

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

The seven days from Palm Sunday to Easter have a rhythm. It is one that moves from anticipation to fulfillment. The week begins with the crowd’s shout of acclamation for Jesus and culminates in His stunning victory over death on Easter morning. Between these two are the Last Supper (sometimes commemorated with foot washing on Maundy Thursday) and Christ’s suffering on Good Friday. These two events strike an entirely different note, providing a counterpoint to the upbeat mood of the two Sundays that bookend them. The difference in tone is often reflected in the church’s observance.

Yet even during those sober moments, there is still a trajectory of hope that mitigates what would otherwise be impossibly gloomy. This sense of direction enables believers to move through the awkwardness of Maundy Thursday and the gloom of Good Friday with a sense of expectation. We know how this story ends. That was also true for the original participants. Jesus told His disciples how it would all turn out. But their actions make it clear that they had either forgotten or had refused to believe what He had said. “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” Jesus would later say to them (Luke 24:25).

Our Interrupted Hope

In the Scriptures, the Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday is a day of silence. The Bible does not really say where the disciples were or what they were doing on that day. When Jesus appeared to them on Sunday evening, He found them behind locked doors and afraid (John 20:19). This description resonates, especially now that the spread of COVID-19 has disrupted the church’s normal rhythm of Holy Week observances. We too are huddled together in our homes. For many fear ear grows along with the body count.

When we pass through a crisis like this, we often feel a burst of energy at the outset. Maybe its adrenaline or just shock, but it propels us through an impossible situation. That drive empowers us to act, sometimes in heroic ways. This initial burst of energy generates a kind of optimism. You can hear it in the way people talk. They say things like, “We’re going to beat this thing!” or “I’m a fighter.” Spiritually oriented people talk about God doing a miracle. But if the crisis wears on, something changes. Those first heady days of optimism may give way to weariness and lethargy. What was once disorienting starts to feel like a new normal. The days become marked by silent waiting. Because we are busy with the work of survival, we are no longer as vocal about our expectation of coming out of it. God, for His part, also seems to be silent. The hope that God would resolve everything in short order is set aside, at least for a time. We are no longer sure what God is doing or even how things will turn out. For the moment, the trajectory of hope that we felt we were on has been interrupted.

Upon closer inspection, however, the comparison I am trying to make here seems to break down and in a rather spectacular way. For one thing, the disciples’ time “in-between” lasted only a day or two. At the most, they were confined from Friday to Sunday. Then they understood that what had seemed like a tragedy to them was actually something else. I’m not saying that they understood everything completely. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). When He was done, they still had questions.

Peace, Prosperity, & Safety

Our expectation during the COVID-19 crisis is also somewhat different from theirs. For the disciples, the expectation was the hope that Jesus would redeem Israel and usher in the Kingdom of God. Our aspirations are more modest. We would like to return to our jobs, our churches, and our friends. We aren’t looking for utopia. We just want everything to go back to normal. Yet such workaday ambitions may not be that far from the initial hope of Jesus’ followers as we might think. Before Jesus’ death, their vision of the kingdom had a decidedly earthly flavor. We sense it in the lament of the two who spoke with the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus. “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel,” they said (Luke 24:21). But what did that mean to them? Before Jesus’ death and resurrection,  their understanding of Israel’s redemption was primarily a vision of peace, prosperity, and national safety.

This Messianic vision was roughly equivalent to an ambition to “Make Israel Great Again,” a view of the world with Israel on top and all its enemies subdued. The law would go out from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Everyone would sit under their own vine, and no one would be afraid anymore (Micah 4:1–5). None of these expectations was outside the realm of what Jesus promised to do. The disciples’ mistake was an error of timing. During the forty days between Christ’s resurrection and ascension, they asked, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” In His reply, Jesus never said that they were wrong to expect such a thing. Instead, He told them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).

Jesus’ disciples had also underestimated the scope of what Jesus came to do. They were right in thinking of Jesus as the redeemer of Israel. He was the Messiah. But from the very start of His ministry, Jesus gave indications that He had come to do more. John the Baptist captured the full extent when he called Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29; 1:36). John’s declaration, which Jesus later affirmed, contained two surprises. One was the expansion of this kingdom promise from Israel to the whole world. The other was the means by which its victory was to be accomplished. Unlike all others, this kingdom would come not by the sword but by sacrifice.

The Lamb of God

One can only imagine how unsettling it must have been for John’s disciples to hear him describe Jesus in such terms. To us, the lamb metaphor has a certain charm. Lambs are tame creatures. They are soft and cuddly. We think of lambs as pets. But for John and his contemporaries, lambs were for food and sacrifice. John’s contemporaries bred lambs for slaughter. Their presence on the temple altar was a continual reminder of a plague far more deadly than the coronavirus. To say that Jesus was the Lamb of God was to say that He was under a death sentence. To call Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is to say that we too are under a death sentence and that He is the only remedy.

If there is a gift in the COVID-19 crisis, it is not in the heroic effort of nurses and doctors, as admirable as those are. Nor is it in those spontaneous acts of goodwill we see taking place between our neighbors. If there is a gift to be found in the current crisis, it is the stark gift of forcing us to face up to the collateral damage of the world’s greatest pandemic. Death always does this, though we are skilled at suppressing its message. Now it is as though the suffering of every nation on earth shouts the warning of Romans 5:12: “Just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.”

The death of so many is a great tragedy. But perhaps it is not a mistake that such loss should also coincide with the week that many in the church commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The humility of Thursday, when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, and His suffering on Good Friday, are both in keeping with the redemptive trajectory of Christ’s final week. They are the pivot points that make the acclaim of Palm Sunday and Easter’s shout of victory meaningful. “Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,” Hebrews 9:27–28 says, “so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”

This is the gospel. It reminds us that, in these days, as the death toll continues to rise, the last enemy to be destroyed will be death itself (1 Cor. 15:26). It is a reminder that even though the normal rhythm of our Easter celebration has been interrupted, the trajectory of hope still holds. God’s message to us has not changed since that first morning when the disciples rushed back from the empty tomb to declare, “Christ has risen!” To which, we can only reply, “He has risen indeed!”

Love and Fear in the Year of the Plague

~ John Koessler ~ 7 Comments

A  popular meme I often see asserts that times of crisis reveal one’s true character. Posts like this are supposed to appeal to the better angels of our nature. Unfortunately, they have the opposite effect on me. It is not my better self that answers but the irritated version. Perhaps it’s the fault of the medium. Computer nerds invented social media as a forum for talking about girls, and it soon evolved into a helpful tool for posting photos of whatever you happen to be eating or drinking. In time social media acquired a personality. That personality proved to be much like some people’s mother-in-law. It developed the capacity to offer unsolicited advice in a moral tone that falls somewhere within a narrow band that ranges from gentle condescension to outright contempt. In other words, social media learned how to nag.

If it’s true that crisis reveals a person’s true character, it also seems to bring to light aspects of one’s personality. Like birth order, the interaction between social media and the global pandemic seems to separate people into distinct personality types. Here are a few that I’ve noticed since the COVID-19 crisis began:

Skeptics

Early on some questioned the seriousness of the threat. These were often conspiracy buffs, who viewed reports of the exponential danger posed by the corona virus as a smokescreen. They claimed that the crisis was manufactured. They said it was a ploy by the Democrats or the Republicans or the Russians or the Chinese or maybe even the Templars in their quest for world domination. I confess that I leaned toward this view, until the spread of the virus became too large to ignore.

Spiritual Directors

Others take a more spiritual approach. A lot of the posts that I read about the pandemic offer spiritual advice. They want me to view my confinement at home as a kind of monk’s cell. I get the feeling from these posts that I am supposed to view this whole disaster as a spiritual retreat. “It’s not a plague; it’s a blessing,” they seem to say. I’ve tried to write a few of these posts myself but find it hard to maintain the proper balance.  To be successful they require just the right mixture of cloying optimism mixed with spiritual condescension. When I can’t stand to read what I’ve written, I conclude that I have either failed miserably or hit the nail on the head.

Comedians

A lot of us are telling jokes and posting funny memes. I get it. When I am nervous, I gravitate toward humor. It can be a great relief. But it also leads me to make inappropriate comments at awkward moments. I wanted to be funny too, but all my jokes sound lame to me. Perhaps it is because there is a dark edge to most humor, and the ordinary news seems dark enough already. Besides, one can only listen to so many toilet paper jokes before they become tiresome.

Road Warriors

A few try to ignore the whole affair. They post what they have always posted, gracing the internet with their snapshots or railing against the same old causes. Of course, with the so many restaurants shut down, there are fewer pictures of hamburgers, which I suppose is a kind of blessing. But these have been replaced by photos of all the cute things that our children have been doing during the incarceration. To be fair, their parents probably would have posted those pictures anyway, whether there was a pandemic or not. I know I should be charmed by them, but their example of perfect parenting gets on my nerves and leaves me feeling like a failure. When it comes to road warriors, I can’t decide if their decision to act as if the virus doesn’t exist is brave or just a case of denial. I tried acting like there was no pandemic but couldn’t resist the urge to log into my retirement account to see how far it had fallen.

Disease as Dis-Ease

By now, you have probably figured out what took me longer to conclude. The problem really isn’t with the people who post such things. As an old girlfriend once said, “It’s not you; it’s me.” I am just nervous and sad. This is what often happens to people during a health crisis. There is a reason illness is called a disease. “Health, as we may remember from at least some of the days of our youth, is at once wholeness and a kind of unconsciousness,” Wendell Berry observes. “Disease (dis-ease), on the contrary, makes us conscious not only of the state of our health but of the division of our bodies and our world into parts.”

As Berry notes, there is more to disease than a disturbance of the body. It also disrupts our sense of community. Any family that has had to face a major illness knows that this is true. One member may be sick, but it is the whole family that is in upheaval. In our current crisis, the effect is exponential, like the spread of the virus itself. Not only is the nation on edge but the whole world. It doesn’t help matters that preventive measures require that we isolate.  Despite all the jokes about the COVID-19 quarantine being an introvert’s paradise, one of the ordinary conditions of health is the unconscious comfort that comes from participation in community life. The loss of that sense of community is more than an inconvenience, it is a grief.

Disease is more than a disturbance of the body. It also disrupts our sense of community.

What is more, it doesn’t take a government-enforced quarantine to divide our social world into parts. Separation and isolation are often part of the collateral damage that attends any sickness. Because healthy family members and friends feel uncomfortable in the presence of those who are ill, physical distance grows and along with it emotional distance. Healthy members may be less likely to hug or touch the one who is afflicted. The social compact of family life shatters further when shared stress boils over into anger. Fights break out as family members argue with doctors and nurses about the treatment or with each other. We are looking for someone to blame.

We are seeing the equivalent as government officials argue over the best way to approach this modern plague and as we scold one another on social media. Admittedly, the divide we are experiencing was not created by the conditions of quarantine or even by the virus itself. The fault lines were a preexisting condition. The arrival of COVID-19 has merely exacerbated them. What separates the current political climate from the one we were in only a few months ago is both the gravity and scope of the problem. This is combined with a shared sense of helplessness that is mixed with mistrust. We suspect that our future well-being is tied to the decisions our leaders are making. As someone said to me the other day, “If government exists for anything, surely it exists for something like this.” Yet we do not feel confident that our leaders always have our best interests in mind. More accurately, we do not feel convinced that the other party (or perhaps either party) has our best interests in view.

Our political mistrust complicates the problem by introducing a competitive dimension to the search for a solution. Not only do we worry about ourselves and those we love. We fear that the other side will co-opt the response to our national crisis and exploit it for their own purposes. There is even some measure of competitiveness in our spiritual interactions. Many of the posts I read on Facebook and Twitter seem to designed to show that the writer is above it all. Others seem preachy and smug. “I’ve got this,” they seem to say. “What is wrong with the rest of you?”

The World of Flesh and Blood

But outside the digital realm, in the world of flesh and blood, I find a different spirit. The experience of quarantine seems to have made us more aware of one another’s presence. Neighbors inquire after one another’s welfare. Those who seek respite from isolation in a brief walk appear to brighten when they see another living soul approach them on an otherwise empty street. I don’t mean to sentimentalize. There are still empty shelves in the grocery store from selfish hoarders. Hedonistic berserkers on beaches in Florida and California are intent on turning their tanned bodies into biological weapons. The coronavirus has not ushered in the Millenium. Far from it. But neither has it hurled us into the dystopian nightmare that many movies, television shows, and novels predicted. Our encounter with COVID-19 has battered the bulwarks of common civility, but it has not breached them.

Nor has our collective trauma yet matched the level of suffering that our parents and grand-parents experienced during the Great Depression. Despite the daily comparison we hear on the nightly business report, the distance between these two catastrophes is still quite vast, at least for the majority of people. We worry about how long the drive-through line at McDonald’s will take. They wondered whether they would eat at all. It is possible, of course, that our worst fears may yet come to pass, and that our misfortune will equal or even surpass theirs. But we should not rush to meet such troubles before their time has come due.

The problem we now face is not imaginary. The threat we feel is real, dangerous, and ongoing. All indications suggest that we will still be dealing with this virus and its collateral damage long after the initial quarantine has ended. But we are not the first to suffer such things. Many who have suffered the like have discovered that they did so under the eye of heaven.

The Comfort of Christ

One of these was Helmut Thielicke, a theologian and pastor who lived through the Nazi terror, and preached to his congregation as the allies bombed Stuttgart. During that time, Thielicke delivered a remarkable series of sermons based on the Lord’s Prayer. On more than one occasion, the church service was interrupted by the scream of air-raid sirens as terror rained down on them from the skies. As he watched his flock dwindle and its members succumb to the horrors of war, Thielicke reminded them that their only hope in such times was to look to Jesus.

“The sufferings of all the world converge in him, Thielicke said. “His eyes reach out to the farthest corner of the earth, wherever there is suffering. He hears the sobs of the lonely and those bereft of every tie of family and possessions. He is wounded by the dread of the dying and those in mortal peril. He hears the sighs of the prisoners behind their bars and electrically charged barbed wire. He bears upon his shoulders the cares that are cast upon him every hour and every minute from every square mile of the inhabited earth. He does not merely see this whole confused world situation in the large; he is not content with the divine perspective of a total view. No, he comes, as he did in the days when he walked the earth to the individual, to the nameless one who lives forsaken in some back alley. He knows the little cares of children and the grisly hallucinations of the insane that no word can describe and no heart can understand. Yes, he also knows the joy of life in a sparrow and the exultation and trembling fear of little creatures that live their lives far beneath the level where we human beings pursue our interests.”

As Thielicke notes, the comfort of Christ is not merely a comfort expressed from a distance. It is the comfort of one who has been tempted in every way, as we are but without sin (Hebrews 4:15). His comfort is that of a high priest who can sympathize with our weakness and who understands our failure. Even better, Jesus does more than provide us with a better moral example. He does not simply urge us on to better behavior from the throne of heaven. By taking our sin upon Himself, He puts us right (2 Corinthians 5:21). This fact places our current troubles in a very different light because it reminds us that the coronavirus, as destructive as it may be, is only a symptom of a more deadly condition.

I suppose the saying really is true. Times of crisis reveal our true character. They show us that no matter how good things seem, we are living in a world that is still in bondage to decay (Romans 8:21). Our response in such times shows that we are not as good as we would like to think. It shatters our denial by proving that our character is deeply flawed and our souls are broken because of sin. If COVID-19 were to disappear today, along with every other disease that afflicts the world, we would still be desperately sick. Because of this, to say that sin is the problem is not a contrivance. It is a diagnosis. And like every diagnosis of a deadly condition, it is hard to accept. To say that our only hope in such a time is to look to Jesus is not a cliché. It is simply the truth.

Faith, Anxiety, and Sloth

~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a form of cancer and was treated. The treatment was successful, but I found it hard to enjoy that success because I was afraid my cancer would return. Once a year I am required to take a blood test to make sure that my condition hasn’t changed. During the weeks that lead up to the test, I always find it hard to concentrate. I feel agitated and unfocused. I am busy but not productive. In Luke 21:34 Jesus warned: “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.” According to Jesus, we can waste our energy in worrying just as easily as we can on carousing. This anxiety is a peculiar form of sloth.

The stereotype of sloth is a lazy person. Someone who won’t get off the couch or get out of bed in the morning for work. But sloth is much larger than the stereotype. The way of sloth is a path of ill-conceived short-cuts and ignored responsibilities. Sloth practices neglect under the guise of simplicity and mistakes apathy for ease. Sloth is a sin of omission, but that does not necessarily mean that sloth is inactive. Sloth is a sin of rationalization. Those who ignore responsibility always have an excuse for not doing what they are supposed to do.

Sloth is a sin of omission, but that does not necessarily mean that sloth is inactive.

Sloth exerts the minimum required effort and would prefer to exert no effort at all. When sloth makes an effort, it is usually under duress. Sloth is listless and half-hearted. Imagine the worst stereotype of the sort of service we receive at a bureaucratic hub like the division of motor vehicles and you have a picture of sloth. Sloth seems like a pretty harmless sin compared to the sort of things that others do. We kind of admire it. That is until we have to depend upon a slothful person. Or are put into a position where we have to work with them. Or are waiting in line.

The sin that the ancients called sloth includes laziness, but it involves more. Sloth can manifest itself in many forms. At times it looks like ennui, an immobilizing lethargy that leeches away our interest in those things that ought to concern us. But sloth can also be active and profligate, causing us to squander our time and energy on meaningless trifles at the expense of other obligations.

Sometimes sloth is the person who can’t get up off the couch, but it is also the person who won’t sit down. When sloth manifests itself as agitation, it is filled with the kind of empty activity that fails to provide results, rest, or even pleasure. The agitation of sloth is to work what junk food is to nutrition. It burns hot but adds no value. We are busy but busy with the wrong things. In its agitated form, sloth is a particular form of dissipation, squandering our energies in empty pursuits. These may be pursuits of the flesh, the concerns of ordinary life, or even misguided spiritual pursuits. 

Sometimes sloth is the person who can’t get up off the couch, but it is also the person who won’t sit down.

Sometimes this agitated form of sloth is situational. It is the result circumstances. Some situation comes into our lives over which we have no control: a family crisis or a medical diagnosis. Things change at work, and we are uncertain how it will affect us. Suddenly we find ourselves in a new normal that is a cause for worry. In other cases it is result of temperament. Some of us have a natural tendency to worry about things that are purely hypothetical. Our anxiety does not spring from things that might take place. It does little good to remind ourselves that none of these things has happened to us yet. It is possibility that grips us not the actuality. In these cases sloth is not so much a matter of laziness as it is paralysis. Anxious sloth can also have the opposite effect so that we exhaust ourselves in an attempt to prepare for all the possibilities and ignore the bread and butter concerns of daily life.

I have learned from painful experience that anxiety adds no value to my life. The anxiety I feel will not change the outcome of the test. Nor can it prepare me to face a relapse of my cancer, should it come pass. Anxiety only drains my energy and distracts me from the things that I need to do. Anxiety creates an environment where sloth can flourish by pointing out our helplessness without pointing us in the direction of God’s loving care or powerful support. Anxiety whispers in our ear each night but not in reassuring tones. Its counsels are counsels of despair.

We think that the solution to this problem is more power or a change in our circumstances. But Jesus points us in a different direction. He urges us to view our powerlessness through the lens of faith. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” Jesus says. “Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:25-27)

The implied answer to Jesus’ first question is yes. We are much more valuable than the birds of the air who are cared for by our heavenly Father. The answer to His second question is no. Worrying cannot add a single hour to your life. In Luke’s version, Jesus adds, “Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” (Luke 12:26). The impossible thing for us is a “very little thing” to God. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that God will always give us what we want. What it does mean is that God will always have our back. What does this truth mean for those of us who sometimes suffer from the paralysis of worry? It means that the God who gives us our life as a gift will sustain that life until it is time for Him to reclaim it.

The God who gives us our life as a gift will sustain that life until it is time for Him to reclaim it.

I know that the day is coming when my body will eventually fail me. My cancer may never come back. Indeed, I hope and pray that it doesn’t. But sooner or later, my body will betray me. My heart or my lungs will give out. Some unexpected disease will claim me. Or my aging body will call it a day and quietly shut down. My body will betray me, but God never will. The fact that we are not in control does not necessarily mean that things are out of control, even when things are at their worst.

Os Guinness has said, “Sloth is so much the climate of the modern age that it is hard to recognize as a deadly sin.” Guinness calls sloth, “the underlying condition of a secular era.” He might also have said the same of agitation. Agitation is so much the climate of the modern age that we don’t recognize it as agitation. It is simply the environment in which we live. It is also the underlying paralysis which keeps our culture in a perpetual state of motion but which does not deliver us to any satisfying destination.

Our agitation is actually pretension.  It is a disguise we wear for our own benefit, a mere affectation we use to persuade ourselves that we have more power than is truly the case. And in my own case, it is a kind of sedative which I use to distract myself from the fear I feel. Because, in the end, it is not cancer that I fear but death. And the only remedy for death is Jesus Christ. He is the one who shared our humanity “so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15). Even though I cannot always feel the truth of this promise, I have staked my life on it. And my death.

John’s latest book Practicing the Present: The Neglected Art of Living in the Now (Moody Publishers) is now available. Order your copy today.