My Crucifixion ... My Attraction

With the Great Feast just hours away Passover Pilgrims milled around Jesus. They were hoping for an announcement. This Man’s miracle working power had reached its pinnacle in the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. Many of them were convinced that He was their Messiah. They reveled at the thought of His Revelation on that High Holy Day.

When He spoke His words were mixed. “At this moment,” He said, “the world is in crisis. Now Satan, the ruler of this world, will be thrown out. And I, as I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me.”

People were perplexed. They knew He was talking about His death. “We heard from God’s law that the Messiah lasts forever,” they protested.

Just minutes ago they’d “stampeded after Him.” Lazarus’ resurrection was the “deal breaker” for them. This had to be Messiah. But Messiah doesn’t die!

How, pray tell, can one’s crucifixion; being “lifted up from the earth,” on a cross; a death stake; attract any one to its victim? Everyone?

There’s nothing attractive about an emaciated, brutally tortured mass of breathless, wretched, gory flesh.

Perhaps vengeful onlookers feeling they’re being avenged would find consolation in it. Attractive?

No!

But He said, “everyone” will be attracted. They will “gather … around me.”

There’s no doubt in His voice. His words are as strong as those of any Prophet. Something about His being “lifted up from the earth” on a cross would ultimately make him the “center of attention.”

Could it be His compassion for others while in the throes of personal pain unlike any other pain? He arranged for His Mother’s care from that cross. He prayed for His tormentors when they’d impaled Him there. He prayed for their forgiveness. He prayed for the forgiveness of all humanity there under the “record of broken laws and commandments,” which indicted everyone of us. When a fellow victim asked to be remembered, He said, “today you will join me in Paradise.” What kind of love is this? Gets your attention wouldn’t you say?

There are the things He said to His Father while hanging there between Heaven and Hell. “Why have you forsaken me?” He cried. Then, as He breathed His last breath, He trusted Himself to that same Father, praying, “Father I place my life in your hands.” Unfailing love for His Father would not relent, even in a moment of impenetrable darkness

Then He cried, “with a loud voice – mega phone” – “It is finished!” and promptly died! No asphyxiation. No hours of soldiers’ vigilance. No broken legs to hurry the suffocation. Like a man in charge of everything; commanding His own death as if it were a triumph, He died. At that same moment the massive curtain in the great temple of Jerusalem was torn “right down the middle.” The unapproachable Presence of the Most High God was accessible for the first time since the flaming sword barred the entrance to Eden.

The Roman Officer overseeing His execution was dumbfounded! Never has a victim died like this Man! “This has to be the Son of God. He just quit breathing!” Could this be the “Lord of Life?”

Over the millennia since, literally billions have gathered around Him. Their testimonies are unique. Yet, in all of them, in one way or another, their praise is for His “Love!” His “sacrificial,” “reckless,” “Love!” Has drawn them to Him.

Hasn’t it you?

It has me!

Again today it has me!

Seeing What You Can't See

The Passover Pilgrims have all been celebrating, as have Jesus and His Friends.

Thanks to John, who recounts what went on during that last Seder with Jesus, we know what happened around their Table.

Without question the most mind-altering thing Jesus said, out of every sobering word He spoke, was that God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – would be with His Followers. Our Trinitarian, Almighty, eternally loving Creator God would soon be “in” these Followers.

Such things are most difficult to understand. His Friends didn’t understand them. “What’s He talking about?” they asked.

Some time ago Jesus had a conversation with someone just as perplexed. The man was a “prominent Leader among the Jewish people.” Like these men around the Table with Him that Passover night this man was finding it difficult to understand Jesus teaching. The Master’s response was pretty much “in your face.” “If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can’t see, the things of God?”

Here, again, at the Seder Table, Jesus is speaking about “the things of God;” “Heavenly things.” By His own admission such things “can’t” be seen. So He simplifies what He’s trying to get through to His Followers. He goes back to what is as “plain as the hand before (their) face.” “The Friend,” He says, “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you.” He – the “Spirit of Truth, will guide you into all the truth there is.”

Bewildered as they were that night, John and the others finally got it. “At last” they exclaimed, “You’re giving it to us straight, in plain talk … Now we know that You know everything – it all comes together in You.”

“All the truth there is.” That is “Jesus.” He’d just said, at the very same Table, that same night, “I am the Truth.” If the “Truth” speaks those who hear … hear truth. When they’ve heard all that the “Truth” has said, they’ve heard “all the truth there is.”

John’s description of what went on and what was said this night in the “Upstairs Room,” is a fulfillment of Christ’s promise. He remembered the conversation they had in perfect detail. Fifty or sixty years later he wrote it down. Clearly he was inspired. The Spirit of Truth gave him Supernatural recall. Reading, now, his account, we too are hearing “the Truth there is,” because we’re hearing from Him, who is the “Truth,” the very things He taught.

So we too know “truth.”

We know that God is with us; “in” us.

Christ’s first Post-resurrection Sovereign Act was to give the Holy Spirit to His Followers – the Church. God Himself now lives in us; His “temple.” His primary work in us is to “teach.” And so He sets to work stimulating our minds, the deepest regions of our hearts, our wills, and values, tempering our feelings and unruly emotions; refining our conscience. He takes everything Jesus taught His First Century Students; things He’s reminded them of and inspired them to re-tell for us. He enlightens us through these instructions. Many of His Words are convicting. At the same time they’re compelling. We’re inspired to take the Way His words map out for us. As we step out in faith to walk with Him we discover that the Spirit of Truth is also an enabler. “The Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead, dwell(ing) in us, bring(s) to our whole being new strength and vitality.”

With that we commence becoming “like” Him who “is” the “Truth.” People notice that we “have been with Jesus.” Folks see “goodness” in us. They notice that we are “Spirit-filled;” “Special Representatives of a new Humanity;” “tried and true;” the “invisible” “visible.”

The Place Where God Lives

After Jesus has promised that the “Father … will provide,” His Followers “with another Friend … the Spirit of Truth,” who will “even be ‘in’” them, He makes a further, startling promise.

“I will not leave you orphaned. I'm coming back. In just a little while the world will no longer see me, but you're going to see me because I am alive and you're about to come alive. At that moment you will know absolutely that I'm in my Father, and you're in me, and I'm in you.”

With that He takes the promises to a whole new dimension. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make Our home with them.”

The Spirit of God – the Spirit of Truth – will be “in” Christ’s Followers. Christ, Himself, will be “in” them. The Father and Jesus will “come and make (their) home,” with those Followers.

If these promises are kept, as we love and follow Christ, we can expect amazing possibilities to materialize. The Spirit of God Himself will come alongside us and “be in us.” Jesus will “be in us.” He, and the Father will be making their “home in us.”

Something else bursts into brilliant light there in that Upstairs Room, and in us, reading John’s memories of that night. God comes into us in three dimensions. The Spirit settles in us. Jesus is “in us.” He and the Father “make their home in us.” Three distinct persons, step-by-step settling into those who “love” them; who “follow” them as they follow “Christ.”

Through this marvelous teaching Jesus reveals to the men with Him that night, and us who read their Story of it, that God is One yet Three. Suddenly it makes sense. When God says, in Genesis, “Let us make ‘humankind’ in ‘Our’ image,” it was a conversation. Father, Son, and Spirit making plans. It wasn’t until Christ, the Ultimate Word from God, to us, explained this Partnership that night that these lights were turned on. Now we know.

What was about to happen in Jerusalem over the next several hours would bring the “rule of God” in His entirety, among our Race and within each individual who turns with incontested, wholehearted love to Jesus.

The potential is limitless!

“All the preliminaries have been taken care of. The rule of God is now accessible to everyone. Review your plans for living. Base your lives on this remarkable new opportunity.”

(Jesus of Nazareth – Mark 1: 15 Paraphrase)

“LOVE the Lord, your God, with all your HEART, SOUL, MIND, AND STRENGTH …”

With God, loving God, “nothing is impossible!”

A Supreme Companion

As someone who loves Jesus reads the things He said to His Followers on the night before He was crucified it is difficult, if not impossible, to miss the paradox of it all. He’s preparing these Men for His death. At the same time He’s setting the stage for an entirely new and phenomenal era. He’s told them that, as they “trust” Him, they will find they’re doing what they’ve seen Him do and on a new level. “If you love me,” He said, “you will obey my commandments.”

Obviously the things He’s describing are superhuman if not supernatural. What kind of love is it that holds someone as Great as He is so dearly that it gives rise to a life completely like that of the beloved? Certainly not any variety of human love we know about.

But we needn’t hesitate. What He promises next unveils the most important truth of His Message. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth.” The gift of the Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that what He promises will take place in and through us. This person, the Advocate, is none other than the Spirit of God Himself. We first met Him at Creation; actually before it began. “Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.” He, “like a bird,” “brooded over a murky, muddy abyss.” A lifeless abyss. Nothing. And stirred out of that nothing life. This is the “Spirit” God will bring to us as we are given the role of Christ in our world.

Any one word we have to describe the “Spirit of God,” fails to fully explain His role and the nature of our relationship with Him. The Greek word John uses to capture what Jesus said that night literally means “someone called alongside you to aid you.” But it also means “someone who pleads another person’s case before a Judge; an Advocate.” Such a person pleads our case before God Himself. He is an “intercessor.” He “helps” those to whom He is sent. Ultimately the Holy Spirit comes to take the place of Christ with us; to lead us to a deeper knowledge of the truth; to give us divine strength; to develop in us the qualities; the character of Jesus Himself. This “love,” for example, which moves and enables us to please Our Lord, is the same “love” Jesus has for us.

Saul of Tarsus – later Paul the 1^st Century Preacher – wrote about the Spirit’s influence in Christ’s Followers. Just in case you’re inclined to see what Paul wrote as out of the “Upstairs Room” context remember this. Jesus Himself called Saul of Tarsus to be His Follower. Several years after that dramatic call this man – now Paul – appeared before the other Men Christ had called and told them of 3 years he spent with Jesus, in the desert. He told those men what he’d learned from the Master. When they’d heard what he claimed he’d heard from Jesus, they “extended the Hand of Fellowship” to him. They accepted him as one of them. That man wrote, in an early letter to new Christ-Followers in the Roman Province of Galatia, about something he’d learned from Jesus. “The fruit of the Spirit,” he wrote, “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” This is the kind of person the Spirit, our “companion, advocate, intercessor,” and “guide,” makes of us. Followers just like Jesus. So like Him, in fact, that people are inclined to say things like, “those folks have been with Jesus;” “that woman is truly ‘Spirit-filled;’” “they are genuinely ‘godly’ people.”

This Spirit, our “Supreme Companion,” “The Spirit of God Himself,” will empower us to change our world; to bring amongst its ruins “the Kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ.”

Love First!

We’re relying on John – the Son of Thunder – for what we know about that evening with Jesus in the Upstairs Room.

There’s one sentence that seems almost unlike Christ at first. “If you love me you will keep my commands … show it by doing what I’ve told you.” At first it sounds like a complaint. Maybe a disappointed Mother whose rebellious son has caused her embarrassment; or whose Student Daughter hasn’t called as frequently as she’d asked her to when she went off to College. But that’s not Jesus.

After some closer consideration we see He might be saying, “Your obedience will prove your love.” The problem with that is that it puts performance before matters of the heart. Jesus Himself said that there would be lots of – many – people who, in the end, claim to have done things important to Him; things like “healing sick folk;” “exorcising devils;” people He doesn’t even know. They did what they did for reasons other than a relationship with Him obviously. One of His Followers – one He called later – wrote, “The letter kills; the Spirit gives life.”

No. The way of Christ is not the way of regulation and compliance. Christ’s path; all the way to this Passover evening, has followed a course of love; love for His father; love for His people; love which gave rise to a life of “Grace and Truth.” What you would expect of the Father’s Son?

“If you love me” …

The “love” matters most.

Such “love” stirs in anyone’s heart a desire to please the beloved. Passionate acts of admiration; even reverence; devotion; intimate understanding of the beloved’s desires and dreams. When you “love,” someone this way you “prefer” Him. There is, literally, nothing you wouldn’t do for Him. But no amount of religious rigor, no superior will-power, no regimen regardless of how precisely it’s followed will develop such love. It emerges from a re-made heart; a “right” spirit; a life born “of the Spirit.”

In that same Upstairs room, earlier in the conversation, He’d said, “By this will all people know that you are my Followers; by the love you have for each other.” And here, now, we see the same applying to our love for Him. Genuine “Christ Love,” stirred and active in the Spirit energized heart, will demonstrate the very character and way of life which, seen in Christ, was “Good News;” hope of “pardon;” “Light in darkness;” “Liberty;” assurance of “God’s High Favor.”

Love Him like you’ve never loved anyone or anything before. You’ll be amazed at how genuine; how strong it grows.

And you’ll be like Him; more and more loving … more and more lovable … the devil’s worst nightmare!