by Elizabeth | Apr 21, 2011 | Learning Story
The cookbook the Houston women gave me.
14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. 21 But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. 22 The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him.”
(Luke 22: 14-22)
When I was out in Houston earlier this month, the wonderful women there gave me the ultimate gift – a cookbook called Peace Meals. The premise of this book is that feasting brings community together. For years, I have gathered with strangers and friends for “Story Feasts,” an opportunity to dine on foods of all kind and remember the stories of what God has done.
Today in our Holy Week journey, we join Jesus and his disciples for the ultimate Peace Meal. Jesus is enjoying his last supper before he leaves to endure the suffering of the Cross which will purchase the ultimate peace, the restoration of shalom, the relational harmony and right order lost in the Fall.
In the way of gospel irony, even over this peace meal hovers the looming deconstruction of harmony. Jesus knows Judas will betray him, but he has a greater confidence – His Father, God, will destroy all powers of darkness through his body and blood. Not only will betrayal not win the days, God will redeem betrayal for His grand purposes.
Dear Lord Jesus,
It is hard to sit in this scene with you, knowing what is to come. But you celebrated the Last Supper as a joyous feast, the ultimate peace meal, in anticipation of things to come. Thank you for defeating darkness by your death on the Cross and inviting us to table with you, to remember that is only by your body and blood that we could possibly enjoy peace with God and with one another. God, we praise you for raising Jesus from the dead – the resurrection reality in which our hope lies. Holy Spirit, draw our hearts to dwell today and every day on the marvel of Your meal. In the name of the God who defeated betrayal, Amen.
by Elizabeth | Apr 20, 2011 | Learning Story
This is a sequel to yesterday’s post on the “Royal Wedding,” focusing on a parable Jesus told during his last week of life. Read it in Matthew 22:1-14.
The second part of the wedding feast parable also requires an understanding of Ancient Near Eastern wedding culture. . Just as the groomsmen and bridesmaids today wear special clothing to mark them as part of the wedding party, in that day, guests wore garments marking them as partakers in the feast. The garments would even be provided by the host if necessary.
I guess in some ways it would be like a guy showing up in dirty jeans for the royal wedding. Is it rude for the host to kick him out? In this story, a parable, remember, the garment represents something about the heart of the man there. It suggests at least two things about him: 1 – he didn’t take the feast seriously enough to respect its tradition and honor the bride and groom, and 2 – he wanted to wear his own clothes and refused the gracious gift of garment.
The connection really isn’t hard then for us to make. I am like the guy at the feast when I try to wear my own righteousness rather than the righteousness Jesus died and rose to earn me. I am also like that guy when I disdain God’s gracious and costly gift of salvation by doing things my way instead of honoring God with a life of obedience. Grace is a free gift, and it would be as preposterous as a wedding guest wearing dirty garments not to take it and treasure it.
Charles Spurgeon preached an excellent sermon on the meaning of the parable
Here was a man then who came into the gospel feast, and yet refused to comply with the command which related to that feast. He willfully preferred self to God, his heart was full of enmity and pride, he despised the gifts of grace, he scorned the rule of love, he stood a defiant rebel even at the banquet of mercy which his king had spread.
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0976.htm
Dear God, my King and my Host,
Thank you for inviting me to the gospel feast. Thank you for giving me the garments of righteousness, entirely undeserved, even unsuiting a woman of sinful heart like my own. Forgive me for preferring self to you, and draw my heart toward you so that I may never despise the gifts of grace. Help me wear with honor the grace-garment you have bought for me with the price of your own beloved, sinless Son’s blood. May I honor you as an invited daughter of the King, inviting other outcasts to the Feast. In the name of the Son you cast on the cross for us. Amen
On a side note, I discovered this article about what the prime minister will wear to the royal wedding: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8463248/David-Cameron-will-wear-tails-to-royal-wedding-after-all.html
by Elizabeth | Apr 19, 2011 | Learning Story
I found my invitation to the Royal Wedding on Google:)
If this were the last week of your life, how would you spend it? This question always comes to mind as I read in awe the events of the last week of Jesus’ life. Part of it he spent answering malicious questions from people wanting to kill him. Not only did he answer them, he did so with complete and utter perfection, and mostly he used stories to make his point — which was, to sum it up shortly, “God is God, and you are not.”
Prince William of England is marrying Catherine Middleton on April 29, 2011. If you were invited to this royal wedding, would you turn down the invitation? In Matthew 22, Jesus tells the story of the Wedding Banquet, which is utterly befuddling without some understanding of Middle Eastern weddings. Eugene Peterson explains that when a marriage is announced, people stop what they’re doing and go. It would be unfathomable not to go, which is what makes this story so attention-grabbing to its original hearers. NO ONE would NOT go to the wedding feast.
Read this amazing story in Matthew 22:1-14.
Here is the question Peterson asks us to consider about how we respond to God’s invitation:
“We make the judgment on ourselves. God has invited us to come to him and has prepared a feast for us to share. And we take it lightly. We make excuses. Or we’re so far out of touch with reality that we actually scoff at or even destroy the messengers who deliver the invitation. God is the reality with whom we have to deal. Life is the banquet he has prepared. How many of our actions are a refusal to come to him and a rejection of his presence with us?” Eugene Peterson, Conversations
Lord, you invite me to come to you, to quit trying to carry my own burden of sin, to lay it all at your feet as a filthy offering that you have transformed into righteousness through the blood of Jesus Christ, your only son. But the good news is even more amazing…you have invited me to party with you over this ridiculously good news! I’ll admit, Lord, in my worldly way of thinking, this story makes no sense to me. You are an AWE-SUM God, the sum of awe. Forgive me for my waywardness, and keep me close to you, celebrating the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ! In the name of your ever-astonishing son, Jesus Christ, Amen!
by Elizabeth | Apr 17, 2011 | Learning Story
“As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 “Say to the Daughter of Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”c
“Hosanna in the highest!”
10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Matthew 21:1-11
It is Holy Week. Let me say it again. Holy. Week. Time to slow down and walk as one in the crowd following Jesus through his last week of life. To think about which character in the story we would be. Would we be crying “Hosanna!” at the beginning of the week and “Crucify him” by the end? What is our cry today?
Yesterday in a sermon about “Who is this Jesus?”, Pastor Ross Lankford mentioned a quote from Karl Barth that I found highly entertaining as well as inviting.
“With horror I read [a] statement that I was the greatest theologian of the century. That really terrified me…. What does the term ‘greatest theologian’ actually mean? …
As a theologian one can never be great, but at best one remains small in one’s own way…. Let me again remind you of the donkey I referred to [earlier]. A real donkey is mentioned in the Bible, or more specifically an ass…. It was permitted to carry Jesus to Jerusalem. If I have done anything in this life of mine, I have done it as a relative of the donkey that went its way carrying an important burden.
The disciples had said to its owner: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ And so it seems to have pleased God to have used me at this time, just as I was, in spite of all the things, the disagreeable things, that quite rightly are and will be said about me. Thus I was used…. I just happened to be on the spot. A theology somewhat different from the current theology was apparently needed in our time, and I was permitted to be the donkey that carried this better theology for part of the way, or tried to carry it as best I could.”
—Karl Barth, “Karl Barth’s Speech on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday Celebrations,” inFragments Grave and Gay (London: Collins, 1971), pp. 112-17.
by Elizabeth | Apr 14, 2011 | Learning Story
John Haskins depicts the joy of a "holiday by the sea."
“12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Col. 3:12-14
A good blogger doesn’t ask people to read more than a paragraph or two. I’m not a good blogger today:).
I’ve been revisiting my tattered copy of John Piper’s Desiring God, in which he calls us to revisit an essential but often left-out part of the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of [humankind]?” “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Piper asks us to reconsider how enjoying God glorifies God, and begins by quoting the following portion of C.S. Lewis’ great sermon, The Weight of Glory. I promise you the challenge here is worth the five minutes it will take you to read it. I even broke one long paragraph up into shorter sections:). Read it and ask yourself — what can I learn about glorying God by enjoying God?
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love.
You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.
I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
by Elizabeth | Apr 12, 2011 | Learning Story
We think less and less about the better things that Christ will bring us at his reappearance because our thoughts are increasingly absorbed by the good things we enjoy here. No one would wish persecution or destitution on another, but who can deny that at this point they might do us good?” J.I. Packer, Affirming the Apostle’s Creed
Where does hope grow? In times of hopelessness. When our hope in earthly things fades, our Christian hope swells. Earthly hope is based on limited vision which leads us to dream mild dreams by heavenly standards: a new IPad for our birthday, an A on the bio exam, a much-needed job, or a longed-for spouse.
While there is nothing wrong with hoping for good gifts in this life, Christian hope far exceeds the small story of earthly hope. Focused on resurrection, restoration, and renewal, Christian hope centers on two key chapters in biblical history. The first is the Resurrection; this real story of Christ dying and being raised from the dead invites us to die and live anew with the raised Christ. It is this story that allows us to look at a world rapidly unraveling, and proclaim with confidence, “New life will arise out of this doomed day.”
Christian hope also focuses on the end of the story told in Revelation 21 and 22, an ending that writes a new and eternal beginning. Revelation tells us that in the new heavens and the new earth there will be no more death, disease, disequilibrium, or despoiling. Instead, there will be health and wholeness, work and worship. Knowing that one day no more tears will flow encourages us to work intentionally on restoring this broken world even as we wait expectantly for a day when our Lord will come and complete the process.
And when our Lord comes, I John tells us: “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really and truly is.” (I Jn 3:4, NLT) Whether we know it or not, this is the deep hope our hearts were made for, the hope that brings our stories into focus. Because of Christian hope, N.T. Wright, tells us, we live differently in this world: “Our task in the present …is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” Tom Wright,Surprised by Hope, p. 30
