I Would Have Been on the Wrong Side of This

As we have moved through Holy Week so far, particularly through Maundy Thursday last night and Good Friday today, I've been dwelling on a couple of things:

First, I've never noticed before how fast things happened. Perhaps that's because as we read the gospels, the events of yesterday and today take up a lot of space. Compared to the speed of the narrative of most of Jesus' life, once we get to Thursday and Friday of this week, the speed of the narrative slows dramatically, particularly in John. Of the 21 chapters, 1/3 of them (chapters 13-19) are filled with the content of these 24 hours.

This makes the pace seem slower when reading the story, as we read about Jesus getting passed back and forth between people, Pilate trying to figure out what to do with him, and the religious leaders working the political system to get their desired result ("You are no friend of Caesar... We have no king but Caesar."). Yet despite the change in pace of the narrative, the reality is that Thursday evening Jesus was having dinner with his friends- including Judas. By mid-afternoon on Friday both Judas and Jesus were dead. It happened very fast.

As I've tried to let these stories sink in and picture the scenes of the Last Supper, Jesus' trial with the Sanhedrin, Peter's denial, the crowd's choice of Barabbus and insistence on Jesus' death, I've realized something: If I had been there and been a character in the story, or even just a face in the crowd, it's silly to think that I would have done anything differently from what everyone else did. I too would have been on the wrong side of the story and left Jesus alone.

I might have been one of those who loved Jesus but for various reasons couldn't do anything about what was happening, and therefore had to let it happen. Those such as Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, John, Joseph of Arimathea, or Nicodemus surely hated what they saw happening but felt some inevitable sense of resignation to the way things were playing out so quickly.

Or I might have been someone who more actively turned my back and ran from Jesus, like most of his friends. I may have even done what Peter did and tried to cover up any tracks that I'd had with him. Based on my own history in circumstances much less intense that what Peter faced that night, I don't have much reason to think I would do any better than he did.

Or I might have been Judas. It's easy to believe that I could have been more interested in my own plan than Jesus' way of getting things done. Like Judas, I too have been disappointed with God at times, feeling that he didn't come through as he should have, so who's to say that I wouldn't have been the one to seek personal gain as a result of Jesus not turning out to be and do what I had hoped?

Regardless of what role I would have played, I would have been among those included in Jesus' statement, "you all will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me."

I would have been somewhere on the wrong side of this horrible drama. And Jesus would have known that, and even in his most agonizing hours which I helped to bring about, he would have loved me anyway.

A Prayer for Good Friday

"Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family,for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

- From The Book of Common Prayer

Wesley's Sermon 16: The Means of Grace

"Let all, therefore, who truly desire the grace of God, eat of that bread, and drink of that cup."

[This is a post on one of John Wesley's Sermons as part of the Getting to Know John series. See the other posts here.]

Because the Lord's Supper is so central to Wesleyan and early Methodist spirituality, it's appropriate that posting on this sermon falls today, on Maundy Thursday, when we remember Jesus' last supper with his disciples and the beginning of the Christian church's sacrament of Holy Communion. If there is any day when we should practice a combination of all three of the means of grace Wesley focuses on in this sermon (prayer, searching the Scriptures, and receiving the Lord's Supper), we should do so today.

This is a great sermon, and it is key to understanding John Wesley and the meaning of Methodism. Practicing the means of grace (or, in his language, "attending upon all the ordinances of God") was one of the three General Rules that made up the lifestyle that the early Methodists agreed to live by. Doing what Wesley describes in this sermon, combined with commitments to do good for others and avoid doing any harm were what it meant to be a Methodist in Wesley's day (as well as participation in Methodist groups), and they still form a reliable framework for how we can shape our lives today.

I wish that the sermon described more of what grace meant for Wesley, but apparently its definition was known well enough by his audience that there was no need to include a description. The need is tremendous in our day, though, because its meaning has been reduced drastically between his time and ours. Today, we often equate God's grace with his willingness to forgive our sins. That certainly is gracious of God, but his grace is much bigger than that. When grace is only forgiveness, the very phrase, "means of grace" makes no sense. How can doing these things be a means of God's forgiveness? That is far from the intended meaning.

Dallas Willard says that grace is God's action in our lives to bring about what we do not deserve and cannot accomplish on our own. That's a much bigger (much more Wesleyan and much more Biblical) understanding of grace. When we understand it in this way, we can see how prayer, "searching the Scripture," and receiving the Lord's Supper are essential ways that we open doors in our lives to God's work in us.

Wesley spends much of the sermon addressing the theologies of his day which questioned whether outward things that we do have any role in the Christian life. Although the questions would be phrased differently today, they're still very applicable. Is doing these things necessary for Christians? Wesley lays the groundwork for an unequivocal "Yes" which is utterly dependent on God's grace.

If you consider yourself a Methodist, or if you may already be one and don't know it, you will do well to dig in to this sermon.

You can download my ePub file of the sermon to read on electronic devices, read the entire text online, or just review my outline of the sermon.

A Wesleyan Hymn for today and for this sermon:

Because Thou Hast Said Charles Wesley, 1748

1. Because thou hast said: "Do this for my sake," the mystical bread we gladly partake; we thirst for the Spirit that flows from above, and long to inherit thy fullness of love.

2. 'Tis here we look up and grasp at thy mind, 'tis here that we hope thine image to find; the means of bestowing thy gifts we embrace; but all things are owing to Jesus' grace.

A Prayer for Holy (Maundy) Thursday

"O God, by the example of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ,you taught us the greatness of true humility, and call us to watch with him in his passion. Give us grace to serve one another in all lowliness, and to enter into the fellowship of his suffering; in his name and for his sake. Amen."

- By W.E. Orchard, from The United Methodist Book of Worship

A Prayer for Wednesday of Holy Week

"Most merciful God,your blessed Son, our Savior, was betrayed, whipped, and his face spat upon. Grant us grace to endure the sufferings of the present time, to overcome all that seeks to overwhelm us, confident of the glory that shall yet be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen."

-From The Book of Common Prayer

Golf Skills, Spiritual Formation, and My Deficiency in Both

I played golf with my father-in-law last week. It was the third time I've played in my life, and the first time in fifteen years. My first two experiences were miserable. At that point in my life, I was still pretty proud of my self-perceived athletic ability (since I had yet to experience the forced humility that my lack of success in college basketball would bring), and those first encounters with a game at which I was totally inept were extremely frustrating.

Last week's experience certainly doesn't qualify as miserable, but a huge gap remains between how much I think I might enjoy golf and how much joy I actually get from the experience of it. When I see pictures of golf courses, I can easily catch myself thinking that I should be very into this sport. I love being outside, and golf courses are very nice places to be. It's a game that appears to go at a relaxed pace, and at this point in my life I'm much more drawn to sports that are popular with the geriatric population than I am to those that involve constant running and jumping. So I was genuinely looking forward to it when my father-in-law invited me to play. But why don't I enjoy that sport more?

The answer is simple: I stink at golf. I wasn't surprised by the number of balls that went flying in a direction more than 60 degrees away from where I intended them to go, nor by the number of putts that missed by at least 15 feet, nor by how many towering drives of 60-80 yards I was able to crush. No, what surprised me most was how many times I completely  missed the ball. I never thought about a "swing-and-a-miss" as a possibility in golf, but it is. Apparently even making contact with the ball requires some degree of skill which I have yet to really develop.

If you're a golfer, you don't want to play with me. I don't have my own clubs, so I'll have to borrow yours, but I'm likely to lose one of them on the course. (Don't worry, Barry, I realized I'd left your 7 on the previous green and went back to get it.) I don't have any golf balls, so will have to use some of yours and will definitely lose some of them. (Rather than keeping my score, I eventually began judging my success by whether or not I lost a ball on each hole.) But on the other hand, if you're okay with the material loss involved with playing with me, the positive thing is that it will provide a boost to your confidence, because you will look really good with me as your partner.

Thankfully, some redemption of the experience came when I began to notice some parallels between my golf experience and spiritual formation:

1. It's incorrect to say that I have no golf skills; the more accurate statement is that the golf skills I have are very poor. You have some golf skills too- it's just a question of whether they are good or bad. This is the same with our spiritual formation, because spiritual formation in itself is neither positive nor negative, but just a reality of human existence. We are all in the process of becoming one kind of person or another. The question is more about whether the spiritual formation we have received and are choosing is good (spiritual transformation) or bad (spiritual malformation).

   It's understandable that every month and year that passes without playing any golf, my already poor golf skills become worse. My body practices doing other things than swinging those clubs. The same is true with our spiritual lives, because it is never the case that we stay the exact same kind of person that we were yesterday. We make decisions each day that shape us (form us), either into a more spiritually transformed person or a more spiritually malformed person. We will be well off to recognize this, pay attention to it, and plan accordingly.

2. While I was on the golf course last week, my main insight was the incredible amount of work it would take to become proficient at that sport, and how I have invested none of it. Being a good golfer (not necessarily measured by my competition against others, but more by the degree to which parts of the game become easy, natural, and enjoyable) would require a lot of practice. Somehow, though, in the spiritual life, we hear Jesus say something which is Christianity's equivalent of Jack Nicklaus-type skills, like "bless those who persecute you," and think that we should be able to do them as beginners and from then on whenever we want.

   But it doesn't take long to realize that life doesn't work that way. Throwing an emphatic "In Jesus' Name!" onto our request to God to give us patience, humility, joy, or peace does not bring the result we desired. No, the Christian life also requires a lot of practice. However, if I practice well, I will eventually become good at the things Jesus taught us to do. Again, my proficiency at them is not measured in a competitive way against others, but rather in terms of how I handle the things of life that come at me. The best students of the way of Jesus through the centuries attest to the experience of parts of life becoming easy, natural, and enjoyable, which apart from his way were only frustration. It was, after all, the Teacher (who would later be crucified and rise from the dead) who told us that in learning to live his way, we would find rest for our souls, because his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

3. The practice pays off. My father-in-law said that one of his favorite things about golf is that, regardless of how you may play the other 17 holes, there's always the possibility that you'll play this hole better than Tiger Woods, or any of the best players in the world. (It was after he said this that I discovered how this statement assumed I at least had the level of skill required to actually make contact with the ball.) But for someone who practices, he's exactly right.

   And no matter how much I make mistakes in my pursuit of God and his kind of life in this world, there's always the possibility that as I practice living his way and opening myself to his grace day after day, that I will be able to genuinely act like Jesus in this situation that comes my way today. Everything adds up, and the practice pays off.

I will not practice golf today, nor probably any other day until my father-in-law invites me to play again. And, as a result, when we do play I will still be a very poor golfer. But in the meantime, I will continue to practice living Jesus' way, so that the next time I'm on a golf course I will hopefully have much more of an awareness of God's presence while enjoying the time outdoors and much less of a desire to shatter my friend's clubs into pieces in Jesus' name!

A Prayer for Tuesday of Holy Week

"Holy and compassionate God, your dear Son went not up to joy before he suffered pain,and entered not into glory before he was crucified. Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son, our Savior. Amen."

- From The Book of Common Prayer