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Midweekly
Reality Check:
Meditations on the Mountain
HOW LONG,
O Lord?
War will continue until the end…(Dan 9:26b). My sweet, 85-year-old mother-in-law is visiting, and she and my wife are calling on an old friend from 50 years ago who resides in a retirement home about six ridges west of our gatekeeper’s cottage at Ridge Haven. Home alone suits me fine on Memorial Day. I’m a veteran of both a hot war and a cold war, and I’m not much fun to be around, given the melancholy that always attacks me on this day. The hot war was the most traumatic for me personally. The cold war was longer by far than any hot war America ever fought, and civilization hung in the balance, but by God’s grace planet Earth was not turned into a radioactive cinder hurtling through space. I went directly from hot to cold, Vietnam to Turkey, the long way around. Christmas, 1969, at Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey was as sad and lonesome as the previous Christmas in Vietnam when a 24-hour truce was unilaterally called. It was my job in Adana to be spring-loaded to fight a nuclear war against the evil empire from the homeland of the Apostle Paul, a concept that would have boggled his mind but confirmed his divine vision of depraved mankind. It entailed hanging out with three other fighter pilots for a 24-hour shift in a modest bunkered bungalow called an alert shack, surrounded by four metal open-ended gable-roofed hangers—“barns”—all enclosed with a barbed-wire-crowned chain link fence. Each barn housed an F-100 with a sleek nuclear bomb slung on the centerline pylon, cocked for quick takeoff and held in place with spiked wheel chocks. My target in the USSR, whose WMDs—weapons of mass destruction—matched ours, was a military facility in what is now Ukraine. When the klaxon blew we never knew if it was for practice or for real until we ran and jumped into the cockpit and checked in with the Command Post on the radio. If it were for real I would have flown northeasterly across Turkey and the Black Sea as close to the ground as I had the nerve to fly—staying below enemy radar was our only stealth strategy in those days. The trick was to find all the memorized turning points while flying low and fast without getting lost enroute to the target. So we trained flying low-level a lot, a delightful way to see the world…when it was only for practice. My prayer in those days was “Dear Lord, if I have to go to war like this, please let it be in the daytime.” If my navigation came out right, the next challenge in that old-fashioned way of nuclear air war was pulling up smartly into a Half-Cuban Eight maneuver just short of the target, tossing that hell-on-earth weapon “over the shoulder” in the middle of the half-loop. Then, inverted at the top of the loop, I would pull the nose down through the horizon, roll right-side-up and head back toward the deck in the opposite direction…quickly, being very disciplined not to look back to admire the fruits of my labor. Doing so would melt the eyeballs. If the calculations were correct, my jet would not run out of fuel until I was well outside the nuclear fireball, whereupon I would prepare for flameout, bailout, and a long walk home, which may or may not have been there if and when I arrived. Praise God that I never had to be an American kamikaze. Thanks be to him life in Adana was mostly sheer boredom when I wasn’t tearing around the Turkish countryside just above the treetops with my tail on fire, scaring sheep and angering shepherds, practicing for a nuclear war that never came. By amazing grace alone the world avoided a return to the Stone Age without a shot being fired. The evil empire simply imploded. It was arguably America’s greatest victory. I have witnessed, from the point of the sword, the hand of God at two momentous turning points in the history of mankind. The world’s greatest superpower’s stunning success in the Cold War followed in the same generation as its ignominious defeat by a tenth-rate tyrant, where the sword was borne in vain and an ally was abandoned on the battlefield in Southeast Asia. It has been like reliving Old Testament history with high-tech violence, a testament to God’s providential and mysterious ways. Today WMD’s have proliferated beyond our knowing, the cycle of war has accelerated and the world has never looked more dangerous. In the first six years of the third millennium after Christ walked the earth, an unprecedented homeland slaughter by a small band of demonic zealots was followed by two lightening-quick, spectacular American victories on the battlefield—the fruit of painful lessons learned in Vietnam. More wars appear imminent. The reasons are unchanged since the prophets of old. John Winthrop and the Puritans of 1630 would consider the “city upon a hill” they came to establish on these shores to be an abysmal failure 376 years later. While our country may be the best of a sorry lot among the nations of the world, relative merit procures neither salvation nor eternal dominion by God’s decrees. Twenty-first century America looks alarmingly like ancient Israel with its ways “utterly detestable” to God (Ezekiel 8:6)—its idolatry, false prophets, corrupt leaders, rebellious spirit, religious infidelity, and legal sanctioning of abominable lifestyles. Heathens boast in their high-fashion atheism, personal ambition is the highest form of motivation, and self-trust is the only arbiter of what passes for truth. Christians are condemned as intolerant, and “tolerance is perverted into a radical secularism that is anything but tolerant,” as Al Mohler so clearly observes. In spite of its special status with God, Israel was severely punished time and again for its sinful ways, with its final horrific destruction inflicted by the Roman Legions in 70 A.D., exactly as Christ predicted in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) forty years earlier. Yet, in America annuit coeptis—God has favored our undertakings—and has thus far continued to shower his favor on a people who likewise deserve his wrath. The Lord told Ezekiel that in time a nation’s sin will so condemn it that even a righteous remnant of its citizens will not preclude the disaster he brings upon it (Ezekiel 14:12-23). If that day comes, all the heroic patriots America has ever sired will not be sufficient to make a difference. How long, O Lord? (Psalm 13:1)
A Memorial for Vietnam
Veterans
Originally delivered as the keynote
address, 7th Annual Tampa Bay Salute to Vietnam Veterans It was the twilight of the last century, and, unbeknownst to those assembled, also the twilight of a great nation, when Rudyard Kipling penned a poem for Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebration. Before a self-congratulatory crowd of nobles, lords and viceroys of a far-flung British Empire at its peak, Kipling recited these prophetic lines:
God of our fathers, known of old, We gather here today before this awesome traveling memorial lest we forget—lest we forget these men and the God who numbered their days. It was four years ago in this very place that I first visited this mobile half-scale model of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC. It had been twenty-seven years since I returned home from Southeast Asia to a life abounding in blessings. I have never had any lingering trauma from my combat missions as a fighter pilot there, nor do I know anyone who has, but I have four friends, whose names are etched on that wall, including a wingman, Robert Vince Willett, whom I watched die in an grisly midnight gunfight. There is a unique, unbreakable bond of brotherhood among combat veterans, forged in the hellish chaos of the killing crucible, and it was way past time for me to pay my respects. I came home profoundly moved and poured out my soul on paper. The Wall Street Journal published “Still the Noblest Calling,” followed by reprints in several other periodicals and today, I’m still getting mail from readers. Our brotherhood reached 30 years beyond the grave, launching my writing career. And lest we forget, as long as I have breath and my fingers can find the keys, the memory of Vince and Lance, Lynn, and Larry, four brave, selfless citizens who epitomize all the names on that wall, will not fade. These men are extraordinary heroes who answered the call of God, duty, honor, and country…and died. They are extraordinary, even among heroes, because they were willing to fight and die in a war our nation’s leadership was unwilling to win, extraordinary because the fashionable thing to do was dodge the draft, demonstrate in the streets, and ridicule those who did not. In my view the men on this wall are the greatest generation, and I’ll go to my grave in gratitude to God for having spent a season in the company of such courageous men of honor. As a grandfather, my horizon of concern now extends to another generation. Given our cultural decline and apathy about our national defense posture, historically an ominous trend, how will our grandchildren live? With international terrorism rampant, the next killing crucible could be our own neighborhood. Why do these perils seem to resonate only among those of us who know first hand the price of freedom? Kipling warned his nation:
Far-called our navies melt away Ninevah and Tyre—two great cities that are no more. Think on these things as our morality melts away amid the self-absorbed pomp of unparalleled prosperity. On behalf of my brothers-in-arms on The Wall, thank you for being here and showing that you care. And, lest we forget—lest we forget, close your eyes and etch this moment in your memory. Take a deep breath of the fresh, free air of liberty in the spiritual company of American heroes who answered the call of God, duty, honor and country. Sense the electricity in that gentle breeze that caresses your face—the ionized presence of unabashed patriotism in the highest degree. Feel the hallowed ground beneath your feet, consecrated by the blood of 58,219 selfless citizens who gave the full measure of their love for country. And silently ask the Almighty to reawaken their spirit in our nation, that selfless, passionate patriotism might be born again in America, and that we might elect similar courageous men and women of honor to lead our nation. Perhaps, then, God willing, this will not be the twilight of America, our children and grandchildren will enjoy the blessings of life in the land of the free…and these brave men will not have died in vain.
The
Psychology of Book-Birthing The lust to write for publication is a psychosis, maybe multiple psychoses. Bipolar disorder is almost assured. The mood can swing so far and so fast the head spins. Post partum depression is a given when a book is published. So is narcissism. One typo in the finished product and the author becomes suicidal. I think I’ll just stop here. This is the diagnosis in postmodern terms, but at the heart of it all a three-letter biblical word says it best: sin. It was a Friday frenzy as my next book—“No one…”—was trying to go to press in Scotland (Christian Focus Publications Ltd.). I do not know how books ever got published before the internet. CFP is a highly regarded publisher of Christian literature for world-wide consumption from offices in an old mansion called Geanies House, commanding a “glorious view of the Moray Firth,” on the North Sea coast in the northeast Scottish Highlands, 40 miles northeast of Inverness. That’s a lot of north, anyway you look at it. My office is in a rustic gatekeeper’s cottage in a remote, dizzying corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina—ask any pale guest when he arrives here. I’m not bothered by my editor’s look of exasperation from this distance—3,852 miles, if the crow flies an initial heading of 282 degrees on a great circle route. We communicated real time at a marginal cost of zero—the blessings of modern technology! Emails streaked both ways across the North Atlantic, sometimes crossing enroute, as author and editor conversed at the speed of electrons. Last minute edits kept popping up, a combination of 1.) my eagle-eyed live-in editor finding things that the professionals had missed, 2.) cross-cultural variations in generally accepted punctuation and grammar, 3.) a communication glitch between editor and cover designer, and 4) the fact that, after a few hundred readings it was all looking like alphabet soup on my screen. Did I mention author ego, perhaps the biggest boulder of all? (See “sin” above.) It was past quitting time at the end of the week in Scotland and in my mind’s eye I saw a harried editor trying to put out brush fires and get out of the office on a spring day. In the midst of it all the cover design arrived, for the first time, for my perusal, created entirely outside my domain, as is the rule for all but a handful of mega-selling authors. It hit me like a burst of flak in my face. My literary baby, after an extended gestation period, was being born cross-eyed. The cover was a silhouette of a hand the color of dried blood on an off-white background, palm out and fingers spread, as if a traffic cop was signaling “Stop!” In bold white letters overlaying the palm were the words, “No one…” What????? My little witness, containing all the passion I could proffer in 128 pages about the Son of God who loves me beyond human comprehension, was being graphically represented by a bloody hand of rejection. How winsome is that?? It was gonna be embarrassing. It would gather dust on bookstore shelves across America and the UK and who knows where else until it was sent back, unsold—the dreaded “returns” of bookselling’s bizarre way of doing business. The misery was total and immediate—my witness was stillborn through circumstances beyond my control. A few funk-filled hours later my wife came home from her part-time work as church secretary, her third volunteer job after Ridge Haven bookstore manager and my personal editor. With much foreboding I brought her into my office and showed her what was on my screen. With maybe two seconds of study, she said, “If I were browsing a bookstore I’d reach for that book.” That is, of course, the primary goal of book cover design. Well, it took a night’s sleep for me to see what she saw instantly (she shoulda spent her career in retail instead of keeping me out of trouble). “No one…” is a politically incorrect title to start with. Every modern shrink knows negative reinforcement can lead to mental illness. It can’t get any more self-evidently negative than “No one…,” but they are Jesus’ words. He used them six times as quoted in the book of John and he didn’t leave a cubic centimeter of quibble room. And it is as far removed from a negative message as the east is from the west—the gospel in pure white bold font, written on the bloody hand of my Savior, visible from at least ten feet away in a bookstore. The designer’s graphic art has precisely captured the essence of this book. God bless him. There will be many folks who will reject this book and reject the Son of God’s undeniable declarations. But one terrifying day all our thoughts and deeds and psychoses will we exposed before our Maker. Those who reject him in this life will stare into the palm of a bloodstained hand and, with eternity in the balance, they will hear the voice of The Ultimate Authority saying, “No.” With that diagnosis there will be no second opinion, no cure.
A Pernicious Pandemic
“…how great the lust to fashion constantly new and artificial religions.” These words are over 450 years old, penned by one of the greatest Christian theologians who ever lived outside the Bible—John Calvin—in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1.vi.3). Our times are proving the timelessness of this truth. I was reminded of it as I opened the May edition of Tabletalk and read all the articles about “The Da Vinci Conspiracy,” as R. C. Sproul’s lead article was titled. It’s a sad commentary on modern man that his worldview can be formed by novels and fairy tale movies. As one who has unsaved family and friends who believe in gods of their own design, my concerns were best put into words by Dr. James R. White at the conclusion of his Tabletalk article entitled “The Fool’s Folly Uncovered.” He said, in reference to the hugely popular novel’s author, “One shudders to consider what it will be like to stand before the God who authored the Scriptures to explain this kind of money-driven slander of the Word….” That is the second flavor of “neo-gnosticism” that I have tasted in the last few days. While the novel-based “special wisdom” discussed above is the most outrageous, the second bitter flavor that impacted me is the most common and insidious. Recently, in the midst of a profoundly moving missionary conference here at Ridge Haven, when my heart and soul were elevated far above the heresies of everyday life in this culture, an old friend sent me some of his writing—a brief passionate memoir—and asked for my opinion of it. Nothing is harder than wrestling with truth-in-love-candor that may fracture a friendship versus polite ego-stroking untruths. In this case I was not tempted to lie. The writing was good, but utterly devoid of any acknowledgement of the God who created him, brought him through some harrowing wartime ordeals, and mightily blessed his life. It brought tears to my eyes. I told him so and why and asked him to please read my personal invitation. My intellectual friend replied that I should relax, that his God and mine were the same, but that he had a different deal. He said his deal does not require him to constantly prop God up for all to see…he’s so powerful he doesn’t require that kind of vanity, “heaven forbid.” That is not a unique, or even a new “deal” (nor did my friend claim it was). This secular/sacred, fact/value, public/private dichotomy, tracing its origins to Descartes in the 17th century, is the pervasive dogma of the day. It’s a tactical strategy of the secularist culture to put God in a locked box in the closet and turn “the very soul into a ghost that haunts its own house” (Walker Percy quoted by Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth). Many who call themselves Christians today have been intimidated into silence about their faith, without even realizing it, by this irrational dualism. The pagan culture thinks it has won this skirmish, but the war is not over. The end was foreordained (the ultimate in power)—God wins. Two Bible passages came to my mind: For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever (Rom. 11:36), and So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). They are just two of twenty explicit references to “the glory of God” in the Bible. And the most casual reading of His Word, from Genesis to Revelation, makes it crystal clear that (as the Westminster Catechism answers in the first question ), “The chief end of man is to glorify God….” Since my personal invitation begins by asking the reader to consider the reality of hell, my friend responded that his god would never threaten him with hell for not following his commands exactly. A quick search of the Gospels reveals 17 quotations by the Son of God “threatening” hell. My friend did not mention God’s amazing grace (Ephesians 2:8-9), which is the heart of the gospel and the overriding theme of my personal invitation. I suspect he did not read that far, but he professed that his private conversations with his god were a source of great comfort. I’m haunted by the realization that I deserted the battlefield (Peter 3:15). I replied to my friend that I must have done a poor job of witnessing to the God of the Bible, and that “…I do not recognize your God.” But fearing I would forever lose his ear and his friendship, I couldn’t even bring myself to ask what informed his view of God. In my self-justification I chose to rely on John Calvin again. He said, “But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by [God-given] faith can this be known.” I would have been at peace based on Calvin’s truth had I not concluded our email conversation on politically correct middle ground: “One day we will both know the right answers.” That is a truth that does not save. May God have mercy on me. My friend has much company in our postmodern culture. George Barna, the pollster, says that 88% of adult Americans feel “accepted by God,” but “only 5% of adults have a biblical worldview.” Barna’s definition of a biblical worldview matches mine:
It requires someone to believe that absolute moral truth exists; that the source of moral truth is the Bible; that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches; that eternal spiritual salvation cannot be earned; that Jesus lived a sinless life on earth; that every person has a responsibility to share their religious beliefs with others; that Satan is a living force, not just a symbol of evil; and that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful maker of the universe who still rules that creation today.
Barna’s findings sure explain a lot about what ails America. Only 5.6% of those who think they are right with God have a Christian worldview. The rest have personally designed their own theology, taken in by the postmodern myth that truth is whatever you want it to be. This pernicious pandemic of relativism ravages the faith of our fathers. This is no time to relax! God-fearing Christians have eternity in the best of company to do that. A. W. Tozer said it well, as quoted by Paul Kooistra in Following God:
A real Christian is an odd number, anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen; talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see; expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another; empties himself in order to be full; admits he is wrong so he can be declared right; goes down in order to get up; is strongest when he is weakest; richest when he is poorest and happiest when he feels the worst. He dies so he can live; forsakes in order to have; gives away so he can keep; sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge.
With designer gods so high-fashion and absolute truth on the cultural ash heap of relevant ideas, it takes God-given courage not only to cling to this “odd” reality, the scorned antithesis of today’s secular mandate, but to integrate it into every aspect of my life. I pray that my view of God and my friend’s view are indeed closer than it appears to me at this point, and that in His providence He will one day reveal Himself more fully to him. God willing, he will taste and see that the Lord, as He reveals Himself in His Word, is good (Psalm 34:8a), and joyfully tell the world so.
Go, Send or Disobey It was early—an hour before civil twilight—when he knocked on my door, but that was no hardship for me—the coffee pot was already empty. It had been 38 hours since he’d rolled out of his bed in suburban Tokyo, Japan, and he hadn’t been horizontal since…nor had he gotten reacquainted with his luggage. Just getting to my boondocks door in the dark had taken Marine Corp flexibility and quick thinking due to time zone adjustment snafu’s and broken airplanes. I had not seen him in fourteen years, but I recognized him in spite of the front porch light reflecting off skin where blond hair used to grow. And his smile was still he-man angelic. Dan Iverson is the bravest, most obedient marine I know. Well...actually, he’s a former marine. After seven years as a Marine Corps officer, he resigned his commission, compelled by the Holy Spirit, and enrolled in seminary to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a Presbyterian preacher. I first met Dan in the early 90’s in a little Presbyterian Church in Palm Harbor, Florida, when he preached to our congregation while home on furlough from the mission field. He had been a missionary in “spiritually resistant” Japan for the previous four years and it had been like plowing concrete. His labors had borne exactly zero fruit in perhaps the most pagan nation on earth. He opened his sermon back then by reading Matthew 28:19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When he finished he paused, turned his Bible sideways and said, “I want to read to you a note I wrote in the margin on this passage. I wrote it when I was getting ready to graduate from seminary. It says, ‘ I feel God is calling me to the mission field. I do not want to go….’’’ He went. Reluctantly but obediently, good godly marine that he was, he agreed to go “wherever I can do the most damage to Satan’s kingdom and advance the cause of Christ.” After four years on the front lines he failed to advance the cause by a single soul. Undeterred, after a year of R & R behind the lines with plenty of “hot soup,” he headed back to the cold C-rations and sodden trenches of the Land of the Rising Sun, when it could be seen. Not long thereafter, by grace he conducted the first public worship of God ever held in that town where he still labors. Today there are thirteen churches in his presbytery, with a platoon of long and short-term missionaries under Dan’s command. One of his short-termers—87-year-old Plum Yancy, a live-wire-for-the-Lord, enthusiastically extolled the blessings of her missionary work as a second career to the assembled retirees considering same. Hanging out with front line warriors for God is a dangerous thing…if you’re skating to glory in your early retirement rut, especially if they are gung-ho soldiers like Plum and Dan. Right off the bat, following 90 minutes of too-wound-up-to-sleep rack time after 38 hours of globe girdling, Dan brought out the heavy artillery for anyone who takes the Bible seriously as the only infallible guide for faith and practice. He quoted John Piper saying that a Christian has three choices when it comes to fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19. You can “Go, send, or disobey’—about as blunt as a bayonet point and just as convicting. Then Paul Kooistra, Dan’s commanding officer as head of the PCA’s Mission to the World, provided B-52 carpet bombing air cover: “Satan is always trying to get you to take the easy road.” Medic, I’m hit! I’ve been lollygagging down tranquility lane for nearly five years now, so happy in this languid lifestyle that I’m guilt-ridden around real Christian soldiers. They’re all gone now, the battle-hardened veterans and the prospective second-career recruits, after a wonderful week, leaving me tending the gate of God’s R & R resort wondering why I call myself a Christian. The vets know and I know that “skating to glory” is an oxymoron—a truly grateful sinner saved by grace wouldn’t be skating. I’m rereading my favorite (after the Bible) guide—Paul Kooistra’s, Following God: His will for your life—wrestling with God about issues that are way out of the comfort zone of this former fearless flyboy. I know I am far enough from the ocean that I don’t have to worry about being swallowed by a whale. But I also know that when God points His finger at me and says, “I want you, boy,” He’ll give me the will to want what He’s planned for me, or else the will to obey. I don’t think I hear the command, but then again, my hearing ain’t what it used to be…and the hair on the back of my neck feels like something’s closin’ at my six….
The Terror of the Night There was a day when I was fearless, ripping around the wild blue with my tail on fire, dodging enemy bullets, hurling my body at the ground at 400 knots, dropping napalm just above the jungle treetops. There was a day when I was a multi-tasking demon, when my survival depended on a steel-trap mind, lightening reflexes and cool hands in a gyrating dimension never experienced by mere mortals. Only the Lord and my wife know what an arrogant sinner I was as the world’s greatest fighter pilot. This confession appearing on your screen forty years later is proof positive that God is gracious. Those days are gone forever. A little while ago I was sleeping behind a roaring waterfall. I was in a dry spot, but I was sure it could not last. My cozy sanctuary was under attack. My beloved Blue Ridge Mountains literally trembled and my ancient gatekeeper’s cottage shuddered audibly as big booming thunderclaps shook the world. Nonstop blinding flashes of lightening announced what surely must be the Son of God’s triumphant return. I sat up in bed. When my head cleared, I was disgusted with myself that I had not yet cleaned a winter’s accumulation of dead leaves out my gutters. The cascade of water overflowing the gutters outside my window was sure to cause a leak…or pull the gutters off the house…or undermine the foundation. Any minute now the phone would start ringing as one of our 120 guests at Ridge Haven would report a storm related emergency. But then maybe they couldn’t call because a tree was down over the phone line…or maybe there was no electricity and they could not find the phone in the inky blackness of a stormy night in the mountains. There was a time when I functioned best in a pressure cooker. I liked nothing better than racing the rats down Wall Street, LaSalle Street and foreign streets you never heard of, but that era is over also. The forty-eight hours proceeding my night sweats had been high stress. A water line above the conference center dining room broke two nights ago. By the time we discovered it the torrential rain falling in the dining hall matched what I was hearing in the night. Dump trucks loaded with lumpy bread dough—soggy drywall—drove down the mountain past my house as our harried staff struggled to quickly improvise some kind of dining accommodations for our weekend guests. Then my new obligations as Elder at church imposed themselves, tasking to the max a mind that had gotten lethargic in the bucolic, laid-back life I live. They demanded my immediate attention with long, intense meetings, multiple phone calls, and agonizing efforts to recall Generally Accepted Accounting Principles long dormant in my mental archives. And it is on-going as I write this. It came at me like unexpected bursts of flak, exploding all about me in the midst of a particularly consuming, critical phase of my responsibilities with our church Pulpit Search Committee, demanding more phone calls, discussions, clear-minded, focused decisions and a calm, confident façade masking a mind that was struggling to keep up with reality. It, too, is ongoing as I write this. I have handled none of it well so far. One more thing on my plate and the contents would start falling on the floor. It arrived by email. A pdf file of the final proofs of my next book announced itself through my computer speakers, demanding a quick turn-around after hours of staring at an over-familiar manuscript starting to look like alphabet soup on my screen. And where, in all of this mental chaos, was I going to find time to come up with a topic for this week’s blog. Here it is Saturday already and I haven’t a clue what to post next Tuesday evening…and little time to think about it. I need a rough draft now so I can sleep on it—my sentences need at least 3 days to age into coherence—then I can rework them to make them presentable to the world. (If you think what you’re reading is sophomoric drivel, you should read the first draft….) All of this overlays an even greater anxiety on an issue I can share with no one that was already causing sleepless nights of sinful worry. For the first time in many years my face felt hot, an infallible sign that my anxious heart was over-pressurizing my vascular system, meaning I was at the edge of my performance envelope. Nobody is shooting at me—none of these issues are life-threatening. How dumb is this…? Well…I did what I always do at wit’s end in the middle of the night. I sat up on the edge of the bed amid the sound and light show, stared at one-inch-high red digits in the dark that read “2:45” and groped around for my clothes. I dressed, started the coffee—Starbucks Sumatra these days—and sat down with the only surefire source of solace in all creation: God’s Word. To the roar of rain on the roof I read, You will not fear the terror of the night (Psalm 91:5)!!! Reading a passage of scripture, whatever is scheduled for the day in my devotionals, that just happens to be precisely the antidote I need for my anxiety de jour, happens to me so often it has become commonplace. May a merciful God forgive me for ever calling His Amazing Grace commonplace…or doubting the security of his palm (John 10:28). The balm of scripture was applied by C.H. Spurgeon’s devotional reading for evening, April 22:
If we give way to foolish fears we dishonor our Lord and lead others to doubt the reality of godliness. We ought to be afraid of being afraid, lest we grieve the Holy Spirit…. It may be night in the soul, but there is no need to fear. The God of love does not change.
The night is almost over now, the rain has stopped and the thunder is a distant rumble several ridgelines east. On my back porch the freshly washed woods, filled with the new green of spring, smells wonderful. Tranquility reigns. The wood thrushes have also risen early and their vocalized ecstasy is infectious. Twilight approaches and soon the sun will be up, but God’s Word has already illumined the dark night of my soul and warmed the depths of my heart. The gauge says my blood pressure is less than that of a hibernating bear. My vegetative existence may have putrefied my people skills and caused my multi-tasking brain cells to atrophy, but God’s grace is undiminished. I know God’s blessings unceasingly fall in torrents on me, my Redeemer lives and I shall see His face. I am indeed a blessed man, overwhelmed with gratitude. I wonder how the pagans get through the night.
O HOLY DAY I’m driven to post the MRC today because I’m a sunrise fanatic, and no dawn of the year moves me like Easter morn (Jeremiah 20:9b). It’s always been that way. The earliest, happiest memories of my youth on a Midwestern farm are of Easter. When I think of Christmas as a child, the booty under the tree sadly dominates, but Easter was all about going to a sunrise service at that Swedish Lutheran Church my grandfather helped build in a little Illinois village. Filed in my grey matter is an indelible picture of the Good Shepherd above the altar, glowing in massive stained glass backlit by the rising sun. And the meaning was always clear, at least in my memory. That Good Shepherd with his lost-but-found lamb in his arms—me!—had risen from the dead on this day a long time go. Surely His resurrection was divinely planned to happen in the spring, with God’s nature clad in all its new life green. The four Wetterling kids were decked out in new duds, too—it was part of the annual rite. New clothes have never felt so good since. Many were handmade, some from livestock feed sacks in bright print fabric. It sounds so “uncool” now, but it was a big hit fifty years ago with creative farmers’ wives. It was Mom’s labor of love through many a long winter day over a rocker pedaled foot-powered sewing machine. The symbolism was a big help in making Easter so memorable. The extraordinary resurrection from the dead of the Son of God—the heart of Christianity—without which, as Paul said, our “faith is in vain” (I Cor. 15:13) is celebrated just as the earth is quickened with newness of life. Our new Easter clothes, which we kids neither earned nor bought ourselves, are symbolic, though poor imitations, of the “fine linen, bright and pure” of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us—totally unmerited—with which we will be clothed at that heavenly “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:8-9). Beginning in the early ‘90’s I performed a dramatic monologue, with appropriate costume and beard, on Good Friday: Judas as I imagined he would have tried to justify his reprehensible deed. Memorizing 25 minutes of dialogue is a major task for one not practiced (to my regret) at memory work. I spent hours working on it, as well as much research and imagining of the scene in first century Jerusalem that historic week, in order to get in character. A song which helped immensely in that regard was Watch the Lamb, by Ray Bolz—it is amazing how poetry and music can paint the most vivid pictures in the mind. I nearly wore out the recording. Now that my beard no longer looks like that of a young middle eastern radical and my thespian aspirations have expired, I’ve converted the monologue into a TV news manuscript (see last week’s blog). But the recorded, five-senses videos in my mind are recurrent every Easter. I see a naked man scourged beyond recognition, hanging in unfathomable agony on a cross, then the pitch blackness at midday, the earth shaking violently, rocks splitting, people screaming, the 4-inch thick, 30-foot high temple curtain tearing from the top down, long-dead preachers walking the streets, the stench of sweat and garbage at Golgotha, the sour taste of wine gone bad, the mind-numbing pain of hanging on nails, the desperate fight for every breath, the mental anguish of taunting remarks, of perfect innocence brutally punished, and worst of all, the holy wrath of his Father…all for my sins. My favorite Christian wordsmith, C. H. Spurgeon, says its best:
My sins were the scourges which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorn those bleeding brows; my sins cries out, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” and laid the cross upon His gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for eternity, but my having been His murderer is more, infinitely more grief, than one poor fountain of tears can express.
This has been my focus this holy week for the last several years, when I have had ample time to be alone in these Blue Ridge mountains. From a mountaintop, nine-ridgeline, four-state view to the tiniest wildflower at my feet, the whole earth declares the glory of God. I learned long ago that I am not a hermit, but on a solitary walk in this wilderness cathedral, where the hand of God is apparent in the minutest magnificent detail everywhere I look, the Psalmist’s admonishment to “Be still and know that I am God….” requires no conscious effort. Praying without ceasing, with my eyes open, in my great outdoors prayer closet, seems as natural as breathing. And during this week especially, when I grievously recall the large and small sins in my life that make me complicit in Christ’s murder, I’m filled with the kind of self-loathing that pagan psychiatrists would call unhealthy. Spurgeon understands…and so does the Savior who loves me so much he died for me 2000 years before I was born. Then—O Holy Day—nearly two millennia ago this Easter morning, the same sun that is shooting spectacular sunbeams through reawakening trees into my gatekeeper’s cottage window, shined down on a quiet middle-eastern cemetery garden and a woman—Mary Magdalene—weeping near a mysteriously empty tomb. Surely the psychological aftershocks of all the trauma of the last few days were still being felt by her and the disciples. But with four words from the Son of God, the mystery of the empty tomb is solved and the elect of depraved mankind are forever redeemed from their desperate, hell-bound dilemma. Jesus announced his victory over death and the devil with a question: Woman, why are you weeping (John 20:15)? Can you imagine yourself in Mary’s skin for a moment? She was present with Jesus’ mother at the foot of the cross—a scene too gruesome for nearly all the terrified disciples to witness. She had come with spices at sunrise to anoint his corpse. So sure was she that he was dead that she did not recognize his voice or his face through her tears, until he spoke her name—Mary. A startling thunderbolt of miraculous, world-changing reality beyond human reason…! Mary must have spent the rest of her life marveling at all its meaning and implications, as do I and everyone who has been divinely quickened by the Holy Spirit to know Christ crucified. He is risen! He lives, and by His grace I look forward to more happy seasons hiking in the holy company of my Lord and my God, followed by eternity with Him in heaven. My best efforts at gratitude can never match the gift. These are not facts that you will ever be able to wrap your intellect around, no matter your IQ. Flesh and blood cannot reveal this gospel to you, nor can you do it by working yourself into an emotional frenzy. It takes a miraculous, unmerited work of the Holy Spirit in your heart to grasp this saving knowledge—the wisdom of the ages. Before He died and rose again, Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die. He told his disciples, Because I live, you will live also. Just as his miracles proved his truth claims—I and the Father are One—and his atoning crucifixion proved his amazing love, his resurrection is ultimate proof his promise will be fulfilled. There is no greater promise on which to rest your immortal soul than the immutable promise of Christ our RISEN Savior. Because I live, you will live also. NO ONE and NOTHING can separate His elect from His love. If the thought of that doesn’t make Easter the most joyful Sunday of your year, then you need to reexamine your heart with fear and trembling. Isaac Watts penned the best response that human hymnody can convey to Christ's atoning death and resurrection. He wrote, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.” May God open your eyes to His truth, and grant you the ability to give your soul, your all, with eternal gratitude, to the risen Savior—the Lord of your life. In His name, Amen.
INTERVIEW WITH JUDAS “Welcome to Channel XVI evening news, reporting tonight from Jerusalem. Jesus of Nazareth, controversial itinerant preacher, alleged miracle worker and nemesis of the Jewish religious authorities, was crucified today. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, the ruling council came up with an unprecedented midnight—some experts say illegal—conviction just five days after he received a tumultuous welcome to the city by thousands of jubilant Jews. In an odd twist of fate, the man whom John the Baptist called ‘the lamb of God’ died just as the Jews were sacrificing their paschal lambs on the great temple’s altar, a centuries old ritual. Details of an extraordinary day follow these words from our sponsors.” * * * That’s how it might have sounded if network news existed in the first century Roman world and a TV reporter was in Jerusalem to cover Passover the year Christ was crucified. This holy week nearly 2000 years later, millions of people worldwide commemorate this last chapter of the central event of history, the most amazing act of love the world will ever witness. Jesus Christ, God’s son, intentionally suffered and died like a sacrificial lamb as an atonement for the sins of his people. He died as our substitute because, since Adam’s fall, we are all inherently incapable of meeting God’s requirements of holiness and righteousness. According to a plan designed in detail in the throne room of God before time began, a sinless Christ, our Savior, was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities…and with his stripes we are healed, as Isaiah prophesied 700 years in advance. And because Jesus rose from the dead on Easter, all who have faith in him and his work on their behalf can look forward with certainty to a similar great resurrection morning—though he die, yet shall he live, by Christ’s own promise. This is the gospel no human mind could conceive or invent, so straightforward and simple it is mind-boggling in its divine execution, the best “good news” that could ever enter the mind of man. A critical part of this passion week drama concerns a man named Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples, who betrayed the best friend he could ever have. Judas, a sinner not unlike you and me, turned his back on eternal bliss for cold, unsatisfying, transitory cash; Judas, a master of self-delusion, as is everyman, convinced himself the wrong thing was the right thing to do; Judas, an impatient, egocentric man, just like the rest of us, forsook waiting on the Lord and took matters into his own hands. We do not know all the details and we can only surmise the thoughts that ran through Judas’ mind, so I have taken what is known from the biblical record and filled in the blanks with my imagination based on a lifetime of Bible study. I cannot know the heart of another, especially a traitor like Judas, but sometimes I think I know my own heart, and I confess I am appalled. My thoughts are sinful all the time, and when my words and deeds are not, my motives are. And I know that, absent the sustaining grace, the utterly unmerited favor of God who loves me beyond my comprehension, I could have been a Judas. It’s not just my personal problem, it’s a universal problem of mankind’s existence—human depravity. Listen carefully to the anguished excuses of Judas Iscariot—his last words before stubbornly dispatching himself to eternal damnation—and ask yourself, “How much of Judas is there in me?” * * * When the commercial was over the screen faded back to the Garden of Gethsemane, outside the city’s eastern wall on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives. It was just 24 hours after Jesus’ was arrested there. The on-the-scene reporter continued. “It was a day full of fearsome occurrences that this city will not soon forget. From noon till three p.m., while Jesus and two other men were writhing on their crosses, it became dark as midnight and torches had to be lit. No one is calling it an eclipse. It was eerie in the extreme. I was at the scene of the crucifixion on Golgotha and, just as Jesus cried out and breathed his last, an earthquake shook the darkened city. Large rocks split apart like dropped melons. The taunts and jeers of those watching the gruesome spectacle turned to cries of alarm. Some thought the world was coming to an end. I overheard the centurion in charge exclaim to his frightened guards, ‘Surely, he was the Son of God.’ Across town at the temple thousands of terror-stricken worshipers fell to the ground as the earth shook violently under them. The massive 4-inch thick, 30 by 30-foot curtain screening the Holy of Holies ripped apart with a deafening noise that drowned out screaming women and children on the temple mount. A visibly shaken priest on duty, who witnessed it, told me it tore in two from the top down, ‘as if by some invisible giant hand.’ Amazingly, no other damage was reported to that architectural marvel. And if that were not enough panic for one day, numerous sightings were reported, unconfirmed at this hour, of known dead holy men come to life and walking the city streets. The man who, according to eyewitnesses, last night led authorities to Jesus of Nazareth right here where I am standing, was one of his closest associates, a man named Judas Iscariot. According to those who knew him best, none of whom were willing to talk to this reporter on the record, the betrayer was an enigmatic sort, a mixture of altruism and selfishness, devotion and duplicity, idealism and egotism…a pretty typical citizen, actually….” Something stage left, off camera, caught the reporter’s attention. A distraught, disheveled looking man, deep in thought with a coil of rope in his left hand, was wandering aimlessly through the garden. “I believe that is…yes it is.” The reporter realized excitedly that he had the news scoop of the ratings season and quit reading the teleprompter. “Cameraman, if you could pan to my left, here he is now. Judas…Judas Iscariot!” The man looked up, startled at the sound of his name. “Judas, you look like a tormented man…and for good reason, I hear. Here’s your chance to justify your traitorous act before the world. Speak to us.” He walked over to the man and held the microphone in his face while the man stared back angrily. “Speak…you want me to speak? No matter what I say you’ve already condemned me. You’re a sorry sounding sinner with that holier-than-thou tone of voice. Who gave you the right to judge me? “Judas, the world is watching. You’ll never get a better chance than this to justify yourself.” Judas stared at the ground and sighed as he pondered his options, then dropped his rope and wrung his hands. He began in a pleading voice full of self-pity. “Do you know what it is to long for recognition? For acceptance? Do you know that awful, lonesome feeling of an outsider? You know, in my whole life no one ever said to me, ‘Judas, it’s good to see you.’ I wanted so badly to be somebody special. Am I so strange? Haven’t you had longings like that? I bet you didn’t get where you are without them. With me it became an obsession. I’d pay any price…any price whatsoever.” He paused and took another deep, quavering breath and rubbed his bewhiskered face with both hands. “Okay, here’s the story. I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m beyond forgiveness. Let my life be a warning. There is not a viewer out there who is not capable of doing the same terrible thing I did.” As he talked he shook a pointed finger right into the camera, then stopped, dropped his hand to his side like a dead weight and looked up into the branches of the olive trees. With another uncomfortable pause, he resumed. “It all began so well. I was born in Kerioth, in Judea. Home of God’s chosen people, home of this holy city, home of Almighty God’s magnificent temple. I alone was a true Israelite—the rest of the disciples were from Galilee. Galilee…whose only claim to fame is that nothing good ever came from there! And I was the only one of the bunch who had a resume worthy of the job. That’s why Jesus made me treasurer.” With that he threw his shoulders back and thrust out his chest. “Like all Jewish parents, mine were so happy at the birth of a baby boy. My father proudly announced that my name would be Judas. That means ‘praised of God.’ Did you know that? Judas, praised of God!” An ephemeral smile crossed his countenance as he stared into space over the head of the interviewer. “I was raised like all Judean boys. I was taught to fear God and to await the promised deliverer. That’s what attracted me to Jesus the first time I saw him. He had that aura of authority. I heard him on several occasions and he stirred me like no teacher ever had. Then that amazing day came when he delivered that sermon on that mountainside. Wow! I was sure that the kingdom he kept talking about was the promised kingdom we’d all been waiting for. At the close of his sermon I stood there starry eyed…transfixed. And he came right up to me, looked deep into my eyes and said, ‘Judas, follow me.’ And I did! He was irresistible! “Jesus chose me!” He looked incredulous at the thought, but his tone of voice was prideful. “He chose me, along with a few others…and I had the purest, noblest intentions when I shouldered my knapsack that day.” “Why did he choose you, Judas?” He hesitated for a moment, then replied, “Why would he choose you? Only he knows.” “In those early days we were such great pals. We hung on every word that came out of his mouth. Then, out of his presence we were always trying to guess when his revolution would begin. “How do you explain the change that came over you that led you to do such a thing, Judas?” “I…I don’t know if I can. It was a gradual thing. You know we lived like vagabonds and paupers, and somehow dissatisfaction and impatience just crept in. With the passage of time…what an awful lifestyle…and no move on his part to declare his kingship of Israel, I just grew more and more disenchanted. My old greedy ways returned. As treasurer I found myself filching coins, telling myself I’d pay them back…but somehow never did. Jesus saw the change in me. He warned me. ‘Judas, beware of covetousness. A man’s life is not measured by the things he has, Judas. There is nothing hid that shall not be known, Judas.’ “But as terrible as my greed was, it was nothing compared to my desire for recognition. I hungered for that more than I hungered for food. And yet people laughed at us, called us names, chased us out of town. I had given up everything for Jesus and they made me feel like the scum of the earth! And the folks we hung out with—down-and-outers, lepers, cripples…. Poverty-stricken hordes dogged us day and night. And when we complained to Jesus about it he always said, ‘My job is to do the will of my father.’ How can you argue with that?” Judas stared at the reporter as if he were looking for agreement. He pressed on with increased intensity. “Well, finally I got up my nerve to make my move. You see…I figured that if he really was the Messiah, then his legions of angels would protect him from anything. And if he was not who he claimed to be, well…then…he deserved to be exposed, and the man doing the exposing would be proclaimed throughout the land. Judas Iscariot! I would be somebody!” “What about the money, Judas?” “The money…? The Sanhedrin sat on a hoard of money. What they were willing to pay for information was chicken feed to them. And it was chicken feed compared to what I gave up these last three years to go with Jesus. And they would have caught him anyway…sooner or later. He even predicted they would….” “So I set it all up with the Chief Priests for his capture, then joined the others in the upper room for the Passover Meal. I was so nervous…. I had never done anything like that before…. Just before the meal was served, Jesus did the most demeaning thing imaginable: he washed our feet. You know in our part of the world showing the sole of your foot to another person is the most insulting thing you can do to him. Servants wash feet,” he shouted indignantly. “When he was done he said, ‘All of you are not clean.’ I knew who he was talking about. He added, ‘One of you will betray me.’ Just like all the rest, I said, Is it I, Lord? I might have fooled the others but I didn’t fool Jesus. My heart was beating so hard I feared everyone could hear it. So when he leaned toward me and said, ‘Do it quickly,’ I got out of there. The man was reading every thought in my head. “Well…you know the rest of the story. Jesus allowed himself to be condemned in a trial that was the biggest travesty of justice Israel has ever seen. Then he let them kill him in the most hideous way they knew how. They scourged him—ripped the flesh off his bones till he was unrecognizable and nearly dead—and then crucified him…and he went like a lamb to the slaughter…and I knew…I had made a big mistake.” Tears were running down his cheeks into his beard. “Jesus was forever preaching about repentance and forgiveness…and I know have sinned and need to get down on my knees and repent…but I cannot bring myself to do it. I have betrayed innocent blood—I have killed the Son of the Most High God. I can’t forgive myself. How can I ask anyone else to forgive me? I took the cash back and threw it in their faces, but my guilt…and my despair have consumed me…and I can’t stand it any longer.” Judas was almost incoherent now. He buried his face in his hands and great choking sobs were broadcast to the world. He spun away from the camera for a moment to compose himself, then he slowly turned back and said with resignation, “Hmmph. I have my recognition now. The world will never forget my name….” Judas picked up his coil of rope and studied it for a moment. A demonic look came over his face. He turned and resolutely walked off through the trees. “Well, you heard it here first, folks. More details on XVI News at eleven. Back to you in the studio, Brutus.” * * * The Bible states that Judas hanged himself outside the city in a field called Akeldama, the Field of Blood. To this day, when you go to Jerusalem, tour guides will show you where he took his own life rather than ask a merciful God for forgiveness. This Holy Week consider the sins of Judas, and where he spends eternity, and remember that Christ died for the sins of those who believe in his life, death and resurrection and are sincerely repentant. There is no sin so great that Almighty God cannot forgive a truly contrite heart but for the asking, nor will the smallest unconfessed sin in thought, word or deed be overlooked on Judgment Day. Human effort will never be perfect enough to earn admittance to the perfection of God’s heaven. Christ has finished the work. Faith alone in his atoning act of love alone, is our passport to eternal glory with him. Blessed is he whose…sins are covered. The night Jesus was arrested, his disciple, Peter, was so frightened he denied even knowing Jesus. A few weeks he later declared to the same authorities who crucified Christ, with a boldness that astonished them: …Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead…has become the cornerstone…there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. It was a resounding affirmation of Jesus’ own glorious proclamation of his “gospel in a nutshell.” For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16) This Easter don’t be a stubborn rebel like Judas. It is a futile thing to rebel against God. He will subdue you…by grace or by judgment. So why not take refuge in his amazing love? With faith and repentance, receive freely what God offers for nothing. It’s the only basis for peace and Christ’s own joy in the human soul.
The Highlight of Human History It was a barbarous age, an oppressive age, a corrupt age. The yoke of Roman bondage weighed heavily on the neck of little Israel as Jesus and his disciples came over the mountain called the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, just as the day was dawning. From their higher vantage point they looked down upon the holiest of cities on the holiest of weeks—Jerusalem at Passover—less than a mile away across the Kidron Valley. It was a view that had been taking the breath away from weary Jewish pilgrims for centuries. The densely populated city was situated on a finger of land reaching out of the foothills, a semi-flat-topped plateau with three steeply sloping sides rising 300 feet from the valley floor. At the top of that natural near-wall was a manmade wall another 100 feet high—impregnable, even to the Roman legions forty years later. That manmade wall was about a mile long from Jesus’ vantage point. It was part of the massive temple that Herod had built for the Jews. It dominated the view of Jerusalem. From their height Jesus and his disciples could look down into the courtyard—called the Courtyard of Gentiles—four football fields long by three football fields wide, paved in variegated marble and surrounded by arched, colonnaded walls. Its length took up over a quarter of the city skyline. Even at that hour the courtyard was filled with people and pens of oxen and sheep and cages of doves for sale to Jewish pilgrims for the Passover sacrifice. The most breathtaking part of the entire panorama, just left of center in the courtyard, was the temple itself. It rose 15 stories into the air in magnificent white marble with gold trim, 75 feet wide at the base and tapering slightly as it went up. Built on a foundation that was already one of the highest points in the city, it was three or four times higher than anything else in sight. Can you see in your minds eye the early morning sun reflecting off that white marble monument to almighty God ascending above the city, reaching into a crystal clear blue sky, making it look like a giant fluorescent candle—the light of the world—towering above the multi-shaded brown low-rise structures of the city of Jerusalem? In the rising ground northwest of the city, Jesus may have been able make out the outline of a skull on the horizon—Golgotha—the dirty, blood-drenched garbage dump where he would suffer and die a common criminal’s death five days later. We have an indication of Jesus’ thoughts as he surveyed his city and his Father’s magnificent house. In Chapter 19 of Luke's gospel, verses 41-2 we read: As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace--but now it is hidden from your eyes.” Jesus knew in detail all that was to take place in the next hours, days, years, centuries, and millennia. He knew that the same people who would welcome him as a conquering king in the next few minutes would, before the week was out, be calling for his blood. He knew that his Father’s magnificent house, an architectural marvel in any age, would come crashing down 40 years later in a fiery holocaust, its massive stones exploding like bombs in the great heat. He knew that conquering Roman soldiers under General Titus would walk the streets of Jerusalem and their feet would never touch the cobblestones because of so many dead bodies. And he knew that the beautiful holy city, with his Father’s house gleaming majestically in the morning sun, would look like a plowed field with just a portion of the wall and a handful of towers left standing, as Rome’s warning to the rebels of the world. As Matthew Henry says, Jesus wept not for himself at the miscarriage of human justice he was about to endure, but for those lost souls among his beloved Jews who were blind to the truth. Henry said, “They are marked for ruin…because they will reject him….” We weep, too, for those who saw the Savior in the flesh, who witnessed his miracles, who felt his commanding presence as he spoke in a way never before heard, who sensed eternity as they gazed into his eyes, and yet they knew him not. We weep as we contemplate the inferno that so completely destroyed the holy city and the House of Our Lord. And we weep for our own sins, as much responsible for this scene of extraordinary divine suffering as that of any contemporary of Jesus. As Jesus surveyed the scene through tears, all the roads in all directions were clogged with Jewish families converging on Jerusalem for Passover. Historian Josephus put the Passover crowds at 2-3 million people in a city of 600,000 permanent residents within a walled circumference of 4 miles. Can you imagine? Some historians think Josephus was exaggerating, but even at half that size it was a mob scene, even by today’s standards. It consisted of men, women, children, and the unblemished lambs that families brought for the Passover sacrifice, the one who had lived with them as a family pet for the last year. A low cloud of dust enveloped the roads as millions of feet and hooves shuffled merrily along. It was a festive crowd, as always, for the Jewish high holy season. Can you see the road that Jesus was on? It was also clogged with humanity, but the crowd made way for him as word spread ahead at the speed of sound that Jesus, the miracle man, the prophet who raised people from the dead and healed the sick, who was claiming to be the Son of God, was coming up the road. Can you hear the buzz…? Can you feel the positively charged ions in the air? Young men climbed palm trees and cut palm fronds and lay them on the road for Jesus' donkey colt to walk on, the one his disciples had fetched from the city at his direction, finding it right where he told them it would be. Others took off their cloaks and laid them on the road—a poor man's red carpet. Here was the man they were calling the Messiah, the King of the Jews, riding a young donkey, his feet nearly dragging on the ground, surely humble, even awkward looking, yet it was a powerful message to those who knew their scripture. It was the fulfillment of yet another Old Testament prophecy, one of over 250 Old Testament prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, this one from Zechariah 9:9: See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Perhaps that is what led the crowd to shout “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Literally translated, Hosanna means “Save us now,” though it had become a cry of joy or a shout of welcome by this time in Jewish history. In Jesus case, they may well have meant Hosanna in the original meaning, and they were acknowledging Jesus as their savior, the fulfillment of all their expectations for deliverance from the cruel hand of Rome. But, sadly, they wanted him as a literal King of Israel who would rule over a political kingdom. Think about the fear this reception by the crowds must have put in the hearts of the Roman rulers. Soldiers of the world’s most feared army assembled in Fortress Antonio to monitor the temple area crowds from its northwest corner. Two to three million volatile Jews converging on the capital city and in their midst is an itinerant preacher riding on a donkey whom they are proclaiming as their next king. Both Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator of Judea, and Herod Antipas, the governor, were in town for the occasion, though neither lived there normally. Both ruled with an iron fist and were hated by the Jews and by each another. It was a tough job trying to rule those stiff- necked Jews, and it had not gone well for either Herod or Pilate. All security forces were on stepped up alert. It was important for both these men to keep control of this holiday hoard if they were to have a chance of moving up in Roman government circles. And of course we know the fears of the Chief Priests and ruling Sanhedrin of the Jewish community, as corrupt a bunch of church leaders as history has ever known, concerning this carpenter's son, raised in the boondocks of Galilee, from whence nothing good had ever come. Every Jew in the city was talking about him, saying he's the man who can save us from Rome. The place was in a frenzy. The Chief Priests were so alarmed they were plotting Jesus’ capture and execution. A few days later, on the afternoon before the last supper in the upper room, Peter and John, at the direction of Jesus, joined the milling multitude of temple worshipers for the evening sacrifice. Men and boys were packed like bundled kindling before the altar, 15 feet high and 50 feet square at its base, in the slaughterhouse that was the Court of Priests, immediately in front of the awesome tower of the temple. There was the stench of animal entrails and feces, sweating human body odor, burning salted lamb fat and wood smoke stinging the nostrils, the cacophony of the chanted Hallel and the soulful bleating of dying lambs, their blood flowing like a river around the gutters of the altar. This Holy Week, commencing with Palm Sunday, keep this scene for the ages, with its eternal consequences, in mind as you meditate on the hardness of your heart that led your loving Lord to do such a courageous, gracious act 2000 years before you were born. It’s a week Cecile B. DeMille, Stephen Speilberg, and Mel Gibson combined could never adequately recreate, nor Michelangelo capture on his best day. All that blood and the millions of animals sacrificed over the centuries of Israel’s history are but one red drop in the ocean, a precursory shadow on a moonless night compared to the significance of the sacrifice that would take place on Good Friday, when the Lamb of God, our Savior, God’s only begotten Son, would die, not quickly like a lamb when his throat is cut, but slowly, with agony of body and soul too awful for the mind to grasp, utterly unjustly, so that his elect—unworthy, depraved sinners—might spend eternity with him. Such love, such grace, demands our eternal gratitude, our utmost prayer and praise and worship this Holy Week and always and forevermore.
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