[This post is part of an Easter series: President [fill in the blank] and King Jesus.]
As a pastor I’m somewhat used to being around the departing and very-recently-departed. Within my first few months as a pastor a family called me to pray with them in the hospital room of their dead mother. They asked if we could all hold hands, including my holding the dead mother’s hand, which was still slightly warm yet was also cool and stiff and very clearly devoid of life. It’s an indescribable feeling one doesn’t forget. Another time, a dear church member died and my wife and I waited with the body for several hours in the cold hospital holding area as the woman’s family traveled to the city. But a number of such incidents have followed over the years and, while I’m always sensitive to and mystified by the dying and dead, it’s no longer a novelty.
Tabitha was a beloved disciple who “was devoted to good works and acts of charity” (Acts 9:36-43). She was a seamstress who had made many garments during her life, most likely many given to those in need. You know the type of person—quiet, humble, having very little yet always giving to others. So when Tabitha becomes ill and dies, she leaves behind many brokenhearted brothers and sisters in Christ. Desperate, they reach out to Peter for help.
Peter is on a journey—a spiritual journey. It began that day on the sea, the day Jesus called him to become a “fisher of people.” There have been many ups and downs, many challenges since then. Peter has been forced to look into his own soul, to weep at what he sees, and to humbly repent before his risen Lord. Now Peter is a real leader of the church. He only thought things were challenging while he walked the dusty roads of Palestine with Jesus. Now that Jesus has ascended, Peter has to step up and lead others down those roads. He has to go where, apart from that call from Jesus, he would never otherwise have gone.
Read More[This post is part of an Easter series: President [fill in the blank] and King Jesus.]
Understatement: Life changes when you have kids. When I was younger, how I arranged my days depended on the TV sports schedule at least as much as any other influence. Now, however, we have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and I watch a small fraction of the quantity of games I used to. Thankfully, our television isn’t on all that much, but if it is, it’s usually something the kids want to watch. The case in point is how this year's championship game for the NCAA tournament appears to have been a classic, but I haven’t gotten to watch it yet. Meanwhile, I found myself on the couch with my family yesterday watching a Barbie movie. As if that weren’t enough of an indication of the way life changes–we were watching it for the second time in two days.
I didn’t sit through the whole thing either time (like my wife did and for which she gets extra credit). But there was a point in the story when one of the good guys turned out to be the bad guy, and revealed that not only was he behind the mean things being done, but in fact had plans to rule the world.
When he said that, my four-year-old daughter’s response was, “He can’t do that. God already does that.”
Read More[This post is part of an Easter series: President [fill in the blank] and King Jesus.]
When we were around ten my cousin and I witnessed a murder. We were playing in the parking lot of his grandfather’s car dealership in our small hometown. We heard a loud “Pop!” There was a bus depot next door, so we thought it was probably just a bus backfiring. Then we heard two more pops, and we knew it wasn’t a backfire. We ran the twenty yards or so to the corner and saw a man lying facedown in front of the gas station across the street, a pool of blood widening around him. We also saw another man quickly get into a car in the alley and take off. We ran back to the dealership to get help. Very soon we heard the ambulance coming. We stood across the street and watched the paramedic—our family friend who always had a new joke to tell—attend to the man lying on the ground. I will never forget the image of that paramedic looking at his partner and shaking his head. That was my first real exposure to violence and humanity’s capacity for brutality. The police did their work, including questioning my cousin and me. We were witnesses. Later we witnessed the gas station owner hosing the blood off his lot.
“The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, after you had laid violent hands on him and hanged him on a tree” (Acts 5:30).
The big-picture result of the coming of the Holy Spirit is power, power to be witnesses (Acts 1:8). And this witnessing unites us. But witness to what?
Read More[This post is part of an Easter series: President [fill in the blank] and King Jesus.]
We are in the midst of electing the next president of the United States, and there are ways in which it feels like this election cycle is taking place within a pressure cooker. I’ll be quick to confess that it feels more pressure cooker-ish to me when I have listened to more news coverage than does anyone any good (and perhaps it doesn’t take much quantity to qualify for that description).
Here are two facts that are true as I write this: 1) we are electing a president (and experiencing communal anxiety as we do so), and 2) Easter is here. What do these have to do with each other? We are electing a president, and the crucified and risen Jesus is still reigning as King. But how? How can an unseen Jesus actually be ruling in any meaningful sense, particularly when in any thirty seconds of those news reports, we will see things directly contrary to Christ and his way?
Read More[Note from Daniel: Yes, we are electing a president, and Jesus still reigns as King. This will be the theme in the weekly series beginning on Easter Sunday and continuing through Pentecost, as we focus on how Jesus reigns through the stories in the book of Acts. Robert Pelfrey and I will trade weeks writing the series, and I asked him to write this introduction for today, Palm Sunday.]
In this crazy political season there are three kinds of people showing up to the often out-of-control rallies. One person is absolutely sure this candidate is America’s only hope. This is my candidate who thinks just like I think, and therefore, this is God’s candidate. Another person is absolutely sure this same candidate is the worst thing that could ever happen to America. If this candidate is elected, all hope is lost. This candidate must be stopped! And the third person is at the rally because it’s a spectacle with TV cameras and celebrities. They’ll eventually move on to the next flavor of the month.
It’s funny how crowds don’t change. This also describes the people in the crowd on Palm Sunday—which, make no mistake, was very much a political rally.
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