Suffered, Crucified, Dead, Buried

This is Holy Week: the climax of the Christian year. During Holy Week we walk with Jesus from the day he entered Jerusalem until the morning he rises from the dead. In the process we experience Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

This seven day journey gets quite a detailed description in the Bible. John spends 45% of his account of Jesus' life on just these seven days. Mark devotes 38% of his Gospel to these final events. Holy Week is very important to the Gospel writers. It is clearly the main event of the Jesus story.

Holy Week begins with Jesus riding into the city on Palm Sunday as a hero. Five days later those same crowds are screaming for his death.

We hamans are fickle. We turn on our heroes. We often behave badly.

The Bible teaches that human beings were created in the image of God, but soon became flawed and sinful. We humans have great capacity for good, but equally great capacity for evil. We sometimes operate at our best, but often lapse into behavior that represents our worst.

David was a great man of God who also committed adultery and murder. Peter was the leader of the Jerusalem Church but also denied Jesus three times. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, but foolishly followed false gods. The people we read about in the Bible were amazingly schizophrenic. They had good days and bad days. They sometimes got it right, and often got it wrong.

And you have the same problem. Your tongue praises God one moment and gossips the next. Your mind thinks inspiring thoughts one day, but is closed and bigoted the next. Your hands may be helpful and generous in some contexts and greedy in others. This is the human condition.

One of the tasks of Holy Week is to ponder these things. So, here are some questions to think about in the days leading up to Easter:

1. In what ways am I hypocritical and deviate from my personal beliefs?
2. In what ways do I betray my God?
3. In what areas of life am I sinning?
4. Where am I wandering from the path?
5. How am I out of control?

Share one area of spiritual inconsistency in your life.

Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary

On Palm Sunday 2008 a fistfight broke out in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem pitting a group of Armenian Orthodox clergy against a band of Greek Orthodox monks. It got violent quickly, and eventually it required Israeli police to break up the brawl. One group had lingered too long at the tomb of Jesus, the other group got pushy, punches began to fly, and then chaos ensued.

Conflict can break out anywhere, even at the burial site of the Prince of Peace. Conflicts are inevitable in life, even among the godly.

Some conflicts are so bad that they require 3rd party assistance. Sometimes a mediator is brought in when two parties get so far apart that they need help reconciling their differences. Mediators help settle squabbles. The best mediators are people who can relate to the needs and concerns of both parties.

One of the central beliefs of the Christian faith is that Jesus was both human and divine. He was the Son of God, but also the son of Mary. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but born of a common woman. He is both God and Man. Hebrews Chapter 4 tells us that he was the Son of God, but that on earth he was tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus knows what its like to be God, and also knows what its like to be human. This makes Jesus the ideal mediator between a perfect God and imperfect humans like you and me. (See I Timothy 2.5) Jesus our mediator paid the price for our sins, and can reconcile us to the Father.

At what point in your life did you feel most distanced from God? What were the circumstances when Jesus bridged the gap and brought you back in fellowship with God the Father?

Jesus Christ His only son our Lord

We believe in Jesus Christ His Only Son our Lord. Every word in this sentence is meaningful.

His name was Jesus. This was a common name in the first century, like Bill or Fred or Jeff today. There were at least ten prominent contemporaries of Jesus who shared his name. We Christians believe in a real person named Jesus who walked the roads of Galilee and Judea, who sailed in ships, and who lived and worked and slept and ate like any other man.

He was the Christ. He was the annointed one, the Messiah. For centuries the Jewish people had waited for a special deliverer to come upon the scene. Jesus was the answer to all their prayers.

He was God's only son. Jesus enjoyed a special relationship with God the Father. And what is remarkable is that God the Father sent his only son Jesus into the world to give his life so that we could be forgiven of sin and experience a life beyond our wildest imagination.

He is our Lord. Back in those days all Roman citizens were required to come before the magistrates annually and declare that "Caesar is Lord." Faithful Christians refused and risked their lives because of their commitment that only "Jesus is Lord."

Is Jesus the ultimate authority in your life? Is he your Lord? What are the competing Lords for you? The Government? Your boss? Popular opinion? The culture? Your friends? The almighty dollar? Your spouse? Oprah? Some teacher or mentor?

What would it look like if Jesus was truly Lord of your life?

Check out Romans 10.9 and John 3.16.

The Apostle's Creed: Maker of Heaven and Earth

You are a speck on a hair of a pimple of the universe.

So much for healthy self-esteem. But really: you are not very significant in the context of a vast, beautiful, magnificent universe with planets and stars and mountains and seas and creatures that fly and fish that swim.

Here's the memo: You are not the center of the universe. You are not even close. The world does not revolve around you.

So why do you act like it does?

In Psalm 8 God knocks us off our perch of self-centeredness and exaggerated self-esteem. He compares us to the solar system and we are found seriously lacking. This is a needed reality check. But soon God suggests a proper perspective for us to re-envision ourselves. He tells us that we are lower than the angels, but at the top of the created order. Our God-given role is to manage and preserve the awesome creation he has entrusted to our care.

We are to be good stewards of creation: tending to God's garden and honoring the maker by our treatment of his masterpiece. This is a much needed reminder in a culture that consumes and discards and destroys in ways that are unprecedented in human history. It is a slap in the face of a good creator to ruin, pollute, and abuse that which the Master Artist has painted.

How in-tune are you with this concept of creation stewardship? Are you far down the road, or just getting started? What practices have you adopted to care for God's world? What practices do you need to get started on?

The Apostles Creed: God the Father Almighty

For 1700 years Christians have declared that we believe in God the Father Almighty.

Let's break this down. Christians believe in God. This is nothing to get worked up about. It's really pretty common. 91% of all Americans believe in God, and 97% of people worldwide believe in a supreme deity. Believing in God is nothing special.

What is distinctive is that we believe in a God who is both almighty and fatherly.

Most of us have a sense that God is big, majestic, awesome, powerful, holy, glorious, and eternal. We know that God is way beyond us. God is big and we are little. God is wholly other, infinite, and omni-everything. God is almighty.

But God is also personal. In Romans 8 we are told that we can call God "Abba." Abba is not a disco group from Sweden. It is an Aramaic expression translated "daddy." We are to call God daddy. He is the loving, caring, "run to him when you get home" parent you can learn from, be friends with, lean on, etc. He loves you deeply, like a perfect father would love a child.

So God is both almighty and personal.

If you forget that God is almighty, then your relationship to Him can become overly sentimental and not very challenging. If you forget that God is a father, you can live your life at an arm's length from him.

How do you view God? When your relationship to God gets out of balance which way do you lean?