Author Archives: Dave

The divisions into days aren’t necessarily given in the Scripture, here…I’m actually taking them from a scholar’s division, and that may be wrong, because some of the references in these two chapters that are attributed to Tuesday seem to encompass more than one day.

In any case, if we believe that this all happened on one day, then today we find Jesus teaching. We also find the religious leaders trying to trap Him, catch Him saying something contradictory, only to find that He always answers them in a way that they cannot refute. Jesus has a couple of long oratories in these chapters. The one that weighed most heavily on me this morning was the last one in Luke 21. Some scholars call this the “apocolyptic discourse,” because Jesus was talking about the “end times.” I’m not going to bore you with all of the debate that surrounds this passage, because in the end its all a bunch of theological junk. But what really hit me this morning was that Jesus knew what was coming. He knew He was going to die in a few days. That was the whole purpose of His coming, and He was focused on telling those who would listen what to expect.

When we claim to follow Christ in today’s culture, we’re looked down upon. We tend to call that persecution, although that really is an insult to people in other countries who actually die because they’re Christ-followers. In America, we’re frequently laughed at and referred to as “intolerant.” Jump across the pond, and people are tortured and killed for claiming the Christian faith. American Christ-followers really can’t call what we endure persecution.

That was what He was telling them was going to happen. Many of the members of the first church were killed. In fact, of the twelve original apostles, history records only one who wasn’t martyred for his faith.

There was so much more at stake then. In our culture, we lose our passion for anything so quickly. I was talking with someone about that last night. I get bored incredibly fast. I’m constantly changing things in my day to day life just to shock myself awake. If I feel myself begin to fall into a routine, I change it immediately. I think a lot of Believers get locked into routines, and lose their passion way too quickly. They get tired of following a cause.

Isn’t that the problem, though? We’re following a Person, not a cause. If I accomplish anything this week, I would like to get in touch with the Person again, instead of allowing this fall back into the trap of religious repetition.

In Luke’s Gospel, this day is accounted for in only four verses. They are striking verses, though, because Jesus pitches a fit. He goes into the temple to find people selling and doing business there, He basically accuses them of being theives, and He kicks them out. Then He hangs out all day teaching, and the religious leaders of the day are really, really wanting to make Him go away, but all the people that were there were way too interested in what He was saying for them to be able to get by with it.

I wonder, if Jesus came into any of our churches today, if He would be that upset? After all, He writes the letters to the churches in Revelation, and the problems of those churches can be said to be symbolic of our junk today. So I wonder what that junk would be, specifically? We can’t generalize or stereotype, because certainly every community has its own struggles. But, don’t you think, in general, that we have a lot of problems in our church culture? Like the fact that we run it as a business? That we advertise? That we have the Jerry Falwells of the world who get on television and say stupid, judgmental, ignorant things that show hate instead of Christ’s love? That we love to isolate ourselves in our precious little glass bubble and not interact with people? That we argue about stupid, petty theology instead of loving, and giving, and sharing?

That we somehow think that church is a place we go to instead of something we are?

I have to think that He would be disappointed with us. All of us. Because we claim to know what He said, but we don’t do it. And worse, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that we do when we are in fact doing the opposite.

I’m glad He’s not as judgmental and hating as we are.

I had a cool idea this week. Most Easters I really don’t observe anything up until Easter Sunday. Sometimes I pause and reflect on Good Friday, but that’s about it. Karen has been to some Maundy Thursday and Ash Wednesday and Good Friday observances, but I honestly haven’t. I have done the occasional (and way too traditional) sunrise observance of Easter Sunday, but that’s just too freakin’ early, and, to be honest, even God doesn’t want to put up with me at 6 a.m. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m really not into ritual or religious observances of the holiday (imagine that), but, since I recognize it as (arguably) the most important holiday to my faith, I thought I would spend some time doing some sort of spiritual excersize this week.

So what I came up with is this: I’m going to walk through Holy Week as recorded in the Scripture, and meditate on what Jesus did that day, and on just that day. I’m going to post my reflections on here, so, if this isn’t your thing, you might want to ignore the next 5 or 6 posts. This is an experiment for me (I tried it once about three years ago, but I was learning too much theology to be able to focus on God), so this week I’m doing it for real.

(Of course, I’m posting this one a day late, so just pretend that it was posted yesterday, okay?)

This Sunday is called Palm Sunday because of the palms that the people of Jerusalem waived and saluted Christ with and threw on the ground for Him to ride upon as He entered the city that observance of the Sabbath day. I’ve read this account literally a thousand times. What hit me as I read it this year, though, is really different.

At the beginning of Luke’s account (I arbitrarily chose Luke to read this week, because his is the most detailed of the Synoptic Gospels), Jesus tells some of His disciples to go into the nearby village (Belphage or Bethany? It doesn’t really indicate), and that they would find a colt waiting for them. Their instructions were to untie it and bring it back for Him to ride on, and, if anyone asked them, they were to just tell that person that it was for “The Lord,” and they would then be permitted to take it. So, as Scripture records, the men do just that, and indeed they are stopped, and they tell the owners just that when they are stopped, and the owners are suddenly cool with these strangers walking off with their colt.

Honestly, I find that more difficult to get my brain around than the whole crucifixion/divinity thing. And I paused to wonder why that is. Why, if I believe countless other miraculous accounts that are recorded in Scripture, do I have difficulty believing that? How is it that I can believe the wildly out-there miraculous things, but I have trouble with the miracles of in-between intensity?

Perhaps that’s the issue of having “faith like a child.” Madeleine L’Engle refers to this frequently. She states in Walking On Water that, as a child, she used to be able to float down a certain set of stairs at her grandmother’s beach house. After she had lived away for a while, she returned, to find that she no longer had that ability. She had forgotten that she didn’t know it “couldn’t” be done.

Children are so much more open minded than we are, especially after we’ve had a few years for our culture to crush our dreams and passions and attempt to conform us to its industrial machine. What would it look like if we held onto our belief while still growing in intellect and in faith? What would our culture look like? What would our art look like? What would our lives look like?

I guess the more important question is, how do we get back to that? I have to believe that it is possible.

So, it seems I’m having quite the succession of spiritual experiences lately.

Yesterday I was putting together a vita for a teaching position I’m applying for, and I was digging back through the list of theatre productions in which I had been involved in college. To say that the list is long would be an understatement…I literally was involved in shows I don’t even remember. But, as I was rummaging through an old trunk full of stuff in order to find the information I needed, I also discovered a ton of stuff I had saved. Some of it I had saved just for its sentimental value, some I had kept to do something with later and had never gotten around to it.

I found some poetry that I had written at that time, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I was much more depressed during my college days than I remember. I also found an short story I had written based upon an extremely difficult relationship I found myself involved in during those years. I think that relationship was the source of my depression, and God knows I had the whole “tortured artist” thing happening at that point, but it caused such a flashback that I just sat in the living room floor forever, absorbed in reading those old words. Had Karen not been engrossed in the second Eragon book, I think she would have been concerned.

After reading the vacuum that was in my soul when I penned that poetry, I’m not so sure I was a Believer at the time. There was no redemption in what I wrote, no light at all. I held only despair and darkness. I suppose it fits, because I flirted with such a gothic image during those years that that’s what everyone else thought, anyway.

Well, I suppose my obsession with Edgar Allen Poe probably helped.

But I think I held a much more clear perspective on what God wanted me at some level, because I was in touch with that creativity, for all the angst and despair that came with it. And that, in its truest form, is what I was hard-wired to be, even if I was failing to view it through the lens of Him at the time. I find it ironic that I forsook that creativity for years, fleeing it as unrealistic, focusing on building a career and worrying about retirement instead. I felt that I had been distracted by unimportant things during that period of my life.

Ironically, I find now that I had become distracted by unimportant things when I chose to flee it.

Makoto Fujimura recently said that artists wrestle with both demons and angels. It is our curse, and our blessing. We have to be experience the pain and despair of life in order to write or paint or sing. Certainly I think we have to experience the joy and love of our Creator as well, but, ultimately, both are necessary.

I just find it odd that we can become so distracted. Perhaps its just the process of maturity.

I was staring at Louise McClary’s Christ Dies this morning in the current issue of Image Journal. It’s an acrylic on paper, almost cartoonish in appearance. Honestly, not the type of art I usually get caught up in (the essay attached to the section describing her style helped). But there’s a lot of red in this piece. A lot of blood. A lot of pain. A lot upon which to meditate.

And for the first time in my life I made sense of a dream almost two years old now.

The dream was vivid, and was the second in a set of disturbing visions. It was at the end of a set of chaotic dreams, none of which I remember, but as I literally ran out of them, I was confronted by a black landscape and an enormous cross. The cross was huge, heavy, violently real. My course of running would have taken me around it, but I couldn’t go around, and as I staggered back (I think I actually fell to the ground) I realized that the cross was drenched in blood. Soaked. Dripping. And I screamed.

I woke up that moment, screaming out loud, swearing in fear. It took forever to get back to sleep.

Periodically over the last two years, I’ve tried to discover a meaning to that dream. I’ve prayed for an answer. I’ve analyzed it psychologically and theologically to no avail. But this morning as I focused on the pain of the Christ depicted on that page, I think I finally understood. I had been trying to run around that cross in my dream, and I couldn’t. It was too large, too imposing. The only way to move on was to go through it. Which means accepting what it is. Getting soaked in that blood as I move through, as I go over. The only other option when confronted with that obstacle is to retreat the other direction, to move backward.

I think that’s a critical picture of this thing we call faith.

“…punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds” (Isaiah 53:5b, HCSB).

I’m not saying I’m doing a good job of moving through, but at least I’m consciously trying not to move backward any longer.