Christians Having Fun...by Being Christians

Earlier today, a bunch of folks from Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan and friends had a blast...by being Christian!

This was "pick-up, sort, and deliver" day for our PPSST! Community Food Drive.

The letters, PPSST, stand for pasta, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, soup, and tuna. Here's how PPSST unfolded:

On Saturday, May 14, members of Saint Matthew distributed empty sacks provided to us by the Kroger store in Logan, with a note attached. The sacks were left at 700 Logan doorsteps. The attached note told folks that the following Saturday, May 21, sometime after 11:00AM, we would pick up sacks filled with the PPSST items.

Of course, members of Saint Matthew also added items they wanted to give as well.

After we picked up the items today, their expiration dates were checked, then sorted and boxed.

Then, we took the items to Hocking County Job and Family Services, which works with the unemployed and needy persons in our community. This dedicated government agency knows the needs of people and will distribute the collected food to persons on their clientele lists. Any additional food items we might receive beyond today will go to the Clearing House Assistance Program (CHAP) emergency food bank.

This is the third year that we've undertaken this particular servanthood project. As usual, it was a lot of fun!

This year, it acquired an additional letter; it used to be PSST! But it's still a great practical way for us to join our neighbors in sharing the love of Christ with others.

We've distributed empty sacks and picked up filled ones in different Logan neighborhoods in each of the first three years. The response has been great everywhere we've gone.

On a monthly basis, Saint Matthew members donate food items to CHAP. That, PPSST, and other undertakings are all examples of how we strive to obey Jesus' great commandment to love God and love others.

[Phyllis is a blur as she sorts items.]

[Some of the boxes filled with food taken to Job and Family Services.]

[By the way, this is some of what I had in mind when I wrote about Christians getting on with the business of living, here.]

Faith Tidbit #32

When Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment, He quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, to give a twofold answer to that question. The greatest commandment, He said, is to love God completely. A second one, He asserted, "is like it": to love others as we love ourselves. In this answer, Jesus summarized the two tables of the Ten Commandments we talked about yesterday.

Why Should Jesus' Execution Bring Salvation?

In comments earlier today, Spencer Troxell, posed an important question:

I wish I understood why it was necessary for Jesus to be crucified for the sins of the world. Can you explain this to me without saying "For the wages of sin are death, which is the answer that I'm always given, although it's not a logical answer. WHY IS IT THAT one man's murder by an angry mob somehow offers salvation to that mob?

This has always troubled me. You're one of the smartest christians I know, so hopefully you can shed some light on the subject.

First of all, I'm probably not one of the smartest Christians Spencer knows and I'm apt to prove it in what I write below.

Secondly, he's not alone in wondering about the Biblical insistence that Christ's death was necessary to bring about salvation for humanity. I think about it myself sometimes and just this evening, before our Midweek Advent worship, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor remarked, "I'm looking forward to seeing how you answer that question because it's something I wonder about."

The Bible is insistent that Jesus had to suffer and die for fallen humanity in order to bring us salvation. The Gospel of Luke, for example, says that the risen Jesus told two of His disciples, who were skeptical of the word they'd gotten from some others of Jesus' followers that they'd seen Him alive at His tomb, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”" (Luke 24:26)

But why was it necessary? There are, you should know, many theories of atonement among Christian theologians. (Atonement is a word from Old English, literally a compound word meaning at one-ment. The idea is that Christ's death on the cross brings reconciliation between God and humanity, making them one.) Honestly, all these theories are little more than informed conjecture, none of which can really tell us why God chose to use Christ's death on a cross and His resurrection to bring about that reconciliation. But that God has made that choice, the New Testament is emphatic.

Both John's Gospel and the New Testament book of Hebrews refer to the ancient Jewish custom of sacrifice of unblemished lambs in connection to Jesus. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, these lambs were sacrificed on the altar at the temple in Jerusalem. The lambs were stand-ins for people who realized that their sins, their violations of God's call to love God and love neighbor, the themes of the two tables of the Ten Commandments and later, incorporated by Jesus into the Great Commandment. The lambs bore the sins of the repentant and for yet another year, they and God were at one.

In John's Gospel, John the Baptizer sees Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).

But, the New Testament, especially Hebrews, makes clear that there is a qualitative difference between Jesus and all the other unblemished lambs who gave their lives for the sins of others. Hebrews says that all the Jewish religious rites that preceded Jesus were either faint copies of heaven or faint precursors of God's definitive action in Christ. The temple replicated heaven. The lambs sacrificed at the temple could only atone for sin for a restricted period of time. The atonement from Jesus is everlasting.

Hebrews says that Jesus was not only the ultimate sacrificial lamb, but also the ultimate high priest. It was the high priest who sacrificed the lambs on Yom Kippur. Priests had to purify themselves in order to enter the holy of holies where the sacrifice happened. Not so with Jesus because He was sinless. And this sinless sacrifice and priest, Hebrews says, "has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26).

From all of this, I think, we get an idea of the seriousness of sin. And in speaking here of sin, I'm not necessarily referring to the individual violations of God's will that are forbidden in God's law, things like false witness, stealing, or misusing God's Name. Those are sins, individual acts that result from the basic human problem of alienation from God and an inward turn to self and selfishness. If we're turned away from God, we're turned away from the source of life. Jesus, Hebrews says repeatedly, has done what all the religious rites of ancient Judaism only hinted at: obliterated sin's power "once for all." (See here).

To God it evidently makes perfect sense that a condition which threatens our eternal lives should be reversed by a perfect sacrifice on the part of an eternally righteous God Who didn't need to experience death. It must make sense to God that our sin should be exchanged for His righteousness, that His undeserved acceptance of death should bring us life.

I don't understand this. Nor can I explain it.

But I do want to suggest a different way of looking at Jesus' death. The angry mobs who cried for Jesus' death and the gutless Roman governor, Pilate, who ordered Jesus' execution were only the proximate causes of His murder. Unlike the lambs offered up by sacrifice by pious Jews on Yom Kippur, Jesus, God-in-the-flesh offered Himself up. His death wasn't really the result of the decisions of jealous priests, angry Pharisees and Saducees, disappointed crowds, or a Roman governor. According to the Old Testament prophecies and the witness of the Gospels in the New Testament, God long ago decided that Jesus would die on a cross. Jesus' death happened at God's initiative, not ours.

Luke 9:51, for example, says that Jesus, when it was time for His crucifixion, "set his face toward Jerusalem."

When Pilate couldn't get answers out of Jesus, he asked if Jesus realized that he had the power to have Jesus executed. "“You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above..." (John 19:11).

And elsewhere, while referring to Himself as "the good shepherd," Jesus asserts, "No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again" (John 10:18).

Now, what's significant in all of this to me is that it speaks to a premise of your question. Yes, my sin is the ultimate reason that Jesus went to a cross. A sinful world didn't (and doesn't) want the bother of a sinless Savior come to reclaim a fallen world. We harbor the notion that if we can kill off Jesus (or deny His resurrection or deny His existence), we can have the run of things and do exactly as we want. (See here.) But, in reality, had it not been Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, Annas, Judas, the angry mobs, or the sadistic soldiers, Jesus would have died for us anyway. God mandated it and was in control even when Jesus' murderers thought that they were. His resurrection underscored that.

I don't know why God chose to use the death of a sinless Savior to bring salvation. But when I look back on Old Testament history and when I consider the horrors that human sin unleashes--from the killing chambers of Auschwitz to the terrorist horrors recently unleashed in Mumbai, God's method of atonement doesn't surprise me. Sin is truly grave, killing business. It doesn't shock me that death would play a role in the expunging of its killing power.

In the cross, it seems, God comes into our world and shares the worst of our human experience so that all who surrender to Christ can experience the best of God's experience, resurrection and everlasting life.

I don't get it. But apparently from God's vantage point, it was necessary in order for Him to truly connect with us and take us back from the evil that threatens to take us down for eternity.

This may not be a very satisfying answer, Spencer. But for now, it's the best that I can do. Someone sharper than me can probably see and say more.

[UPDATE: Four years ago, my colleague and fellow blogger Mark Roberts wrote a fantastic series of posts on why Jesus had to die.]

"And Who is My Neighbor?"

From Luke 10:25-37:

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

From Dietrich Bonheffer, martyred by the Nazi regime for his Christian opposition to Hitler, writing in The Cost of Discipleship:

“Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbor or not. We must get into action and obey — we must behave like a neighbor to him. But perhaps this shocks you. Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do. To that, there is only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing it. It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.”

Third Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lesson: Luke 16:19-31

[Here and here are, respectively, the first and second passes at this Sunday's Bible lesson. The first link explains what these "passes" are about.]

Verse-by-Verse Comments, continued
23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.
(1) Brian Stoffregen points out:

"Hades" is a word that comes from Greek mythology that originally referred to the god of the lower world (in Roman mythology: "Pluto"). Later, it came to refer to the place of the dead (like she'ol in Hebrew). However, Luke's use of the word is in contrast to "heaven" (10:15) and to "Abraham's bosom" (16:23), suggesting that it is a place where only some of the dead may go -- or a particular part of she'ol which is divided by the deep chasm.

(2) In popular piety, the term Hades may be used interchangeably with hell. It's the place where those who have turned away from God and God's will live with the consequences of that choice.

(3) It's clear that the rich man, in Hades, finds the isolation he once craved in this life, at least his isolation from the poor, the lame, and the hungry, painful in the next.

(4) Lazarus is seen by the rich man to, literally be in the bosom of Abraham, the place of highest bliss in Jewish piety.

(5) Lazarus, who in this life would have appreciated the scraps from the rich man's table, now appears to be enjoying the great heavenly banquet that Jesus addressed in last week's lesson. (See here and here.)

24He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’
(1) In spite of his lifelong disobedience of God's commands to love his neighbor and to care for the poor, the rich man calls out to Abraham as the "Father" of his faith.

In Luke 3, John the Baptist, preparing the world for Jesus' ministry told the throngs who had come to hear him preach and to be baptized by him:

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham..." (Luke 3:7-8)

According to the Bible, there's more to being a son or daughter of Abraham than genetics. In a bitter exchange with fellow Jews intent on killing Him, Jesus acknowledged that they were the genetic descendants of Abraham. But, He insisted that by their refusal to do as Abraham had done--trust in God and not his own "righteousness"--they proved that their real "father" was "the father of lies," the devil himself. (John 8:37-47; also see Romans 4:1-8)

(2) It's interesting that in Hades, the rich man is aware of Lazarus' existence. He even calls Lazarus by name. But he also regards Lazarus as someone who can be ordered to give him comfort, something he never would have afforded Lazarus during their earthly lives. It appears thus far anyway that the rich man's experience in Hades hasn't made him any more compassionate or any less self-absorbed.

25But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.
(1) Abraham acknowledges that the rich man is his descendant. He calls the rich man, "Child." Yet, the record has been written. While living this life, the rich man refused to obey the command to love neighbor. (See also Matthew 25:31-46) When I consider how often I fail to love my neighbor, I find this parable a little frightening. That's when I cry out again, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

(2) Of Abraham's use of the term, Child, in addressing the rich man, Culpepper writes:

Being a child of Abraham...is not guarantee that one will dwell with Abraham in paradise. That is reserved for the repentant who believe in Jesus Christ.

Abraham's attitude is the same as that of God. God wants all to be saved from sin and death and to live with Him forever. But God respects our right to decide to forswear repentance or belief in Him.

(3) Abraham speaks of a great reversal of fortunes here. The rich man had received good things here. Lazarus was receiving them in eternity. Jesus says that those who insist on putting themselves first, viewing wealth, power, status, and health as entitlements, will be last in His kingdom, while those who are last will be first.

26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’
(1) Culpepper writes:

The chasm that now separates the rich man and Lazarus confirms the finality of the judgment on the rich man.

27He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’
(1) This is the first hint of concern for others shown by the rich man. Granted, it's only for members of his family. But we've never seen him look beyond his own comforts before this.

(2) But as in v.24, the rich man sees Lazarus as a servant he can summon for his purposes.

(3) It's interesting to note that Lazarus never says a word in this entire parable of Jesus. Instead, Abraham, acting as something of a stand-in for God and as the representative of authentic Biblical faith, speaks on Lazarus' behalf. Christians who have committed their lives to Christ can place themselves in Christ's hands, knowing that He'll be our advocate.

29Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’
(1) This is a telling response. Moses represents one major strand of Old Testament tradition, the Law. (After all, it was Moses who brought the Law down from Mount Sinai.) The other strand in that tradition was that of the prophets.

A major emphasis found in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ doesn't represent a strange departure from Biblical faith. He fulfills it. Check out what some New Testament passages say on this point here.

(2) Throughout chapters 14, 15, and 16 of Luke's Gospel, there's something of a polemic against Jews who repudiated Jesus. They're being told that in their rejection of Jesus, they're repudiating their own faith and God Himself.

30He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
(1) One can't help but think of the resurrected Jesus here. If God's people refuse to trustingly follow God based on the Law and the Prophets, it's unlikely that they'll do so in response to the risen Savior either. See here.