Holy Week

As I reflect on this Holy Week, my thoughts are fixed on Jesus' last supper; this would have been Thursday night (Maundy Thursday) and that agonizing scene just before being forcefully taken from the garden. Imagine His having been betrayed by one of his own disciples (ouch!) He was subjected to the cross as a sinless man yet His life was not taken from Him. He willingly and lovingly gave it to redeem mankind from the effects of the fall.

Think about this: Jesus bears our judgment by being pushed out of the world by our judgment and onto the cross. The crux is forgiveness. God in all His goodness sent His Son on our behalf and reversed things bringing upon us a judgment of grace. (WOW) Think on that. A judgment of grace...

The church in general has developed a weak immune system. She flops and twists with the current of the culture trying to draw in numbers. THEN those numbers can deceive them (think: David taking a census) into thinking they have a transformative church!

As Jesus forgave us and defeated satan at the cross (yes I meant to give him a lower case letter) that forgiveness is for those that will receive the free gift of eternal life, placing their future in His hands to mold and shape, making themselves available to advance the Kingdom of God [in this very present dark and evil age].

Think of the woman that anointed Jesus with the costly ointment in Luke 7:36-50. She was able to lavish her love on Jesus because she had known great forgiveness. She wasn't anointing him to receive forgiveness but rather was able to love so greatly because she understood having received forgiveness.

I think that can be harder for people to grasp. Actually understanding and receiving forgiveness from God and others.

Understanding the reality of what Jesus did on the cross on Good Friday informs our forgiveness. More important than learning to forgive is learning to be forgiven. Understanding our relationship with God in this forgiveness begins our journey toward wholeness.

Forgiveness is not earned it is received and extended. Jesus was crucified and three days later rose from the grave just as the Bible prophesied; not because we asked Him to go to bat for us - He died, rose from the grave and walked the earth for 40 days before ascending into heaven before the multitudes because we couldn't redeem ourselves into eternity with Him any other way! (Go God!)

Remember your past well as it helps steer your future. If someone tells you to "Forgive and forget" they don't know a hill of beans about the theology of forgiveness. There is no cheap grace or cheap forgiveness. Discipleship is costly. There was nothing "drive thru" or "dollar store" about Jesus' painful crucifixion. He acted as the final atonement - the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

It was brutal.

Christians need to unlearn the practices of their former way of life and learn to walk the Christian path of freedom; freedom from sin. That empowerment in freedom is endued upon believers by the power of the Holy Spirit - because of the cross.

I hope you will ponder on the magnitude of Jesus completed work on the cross this holy week. I want to leave you with these words from Genealogies of Religion by Talal Asad:

"Learning the Christian life is not only a matter of acquiring the right kind of knowledge or cultivating the appropriate sorts of passions or acting in particular ways, though it involves these things; more fundamentally, it requires our full participation in practices whose disciplines of the body are necessary for the transformation of our souls and minds".

And from L Gregory Jones:

"If, as Augustine and Aquinas rightly insist, individuals become habituated to wickedness so that it is both no longer a struggle that we worry about and also something in which we actually, perversely, learn to 'delight' in doing, then forgiveness needs to become a habit that transforms - by God's gracious love - our sin and evil into signs of communion with God, with one another, and with the whole Creation."

Church - we need to see the world and our lives truthfully. We do this in the context of Christian communities whose ultimate hope is sustained in the practice of reconciling forgiveness. The real refuge of The Church is providing forgiveness of sins. That is eschatology dynamically in action.

The Kingdom of God breaks through the world in the people of the church, transforming and bringing wholeness in the process. Thank Jesus this week; don't be tempted to gloss over the fact that this week is, indeed, a holy week in the realm of history.

Grace and peace to you as you reflect this holy week.
Heidi