A Question of Holding--April 6, 2026

A Question of Holding--April 6, 2026

"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. This is my message for you.' So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, 'Greetings!' And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me'." [Matthew 28:1-10]

It's funny what people run to grab when they are surprised.  Orat least, it is telling.

Take this scene, for example. It's the day of resurrection--in fact, the moment of the Big Reveal that the tomb is empty! And in the wake of that most world-shaking of surprises (literally--Matthew says there was an earthquake!), notice that two different groups respond in two different ways.

There are the soldiers--who shake with fear and fall to the ground when they see the wonder before them. And then there are the women--who are just as surprised at the news and then the presence of the risen Jesus. But the women don't reach for one another... or a tree to hide behind... or the guns in their purses. They reach for Jesus. That is kind of odd, but also exactly right--odd, because Jesus is the one who is startling them in the first place, but exactly right because he is the one who can ease their fears, too. These two women named Mary run to take hold of Jesus' feet, as Matthew tells it, and to them this is the most natural thing in the world they can do.

Funny, isn't it, how the same surprising turn of events makes one group of people (the women at the tomb) reach for Jesus and thereby find peace... and another group of people (the guards) have nothing to clutch but their pathetic, useless weapons out of paralyzing fear. I suppose like all Roman soldiers they have been trained to think that their swords and spears could solve any problem or make them feel big and tough... but they now realize in the actual moment that their weapons cannot do a thing to banish fear.

Isn't that funny--the ones in the Easter scene who are armed to the teeth and trained for shooting first (well, stabbing first) and asking questions second are the ones who fall down to the ground petrified with fear until they "became like dead men," and meanwhile in the very same turn of events, the ones who find their confidence, their hope, and their strength are the unarmed women of the scene. Maybe it is only in that moment when the angel speaks and the risen Jesus arrives that it becomes clear: a Roman sword, or any other weapon for that matter, can't give you any actual peace of mind in this life. And meanwhile, it's the empty hands of the women who are free to reach out for Jesus--and who find peace because they do.  The critical distinction between these two groups is what they reach for; this is a question of holding--what we hold onto when everything else gets shaken makes all the difference in the world.

And while we are drawing comparisons, notice, too, that it's only these women who have the courage to move when the scene is over. The guards are still traumatized and curled up in a ball on the ground after seeing the angelic messenger--they can't even get up to report back to their commanding officer that they've blown it and let the dead rabbi out of his grave. But the women--again, who had literally NOTHING to defend themselves with--are the ones who end up with the courage, not only to bear going to the tomb in the first place, to face down the guards in the second place, and to talk face to face with the angel who has made the trained soldiers wet their pants in the third place...but then beyond all that, the courage to go out and bring the news of the empty tomb to the disciples. As the old line puts it, if it weren't for women preachers (that is, for Mary and Mary, bringing the news on Easter morning), there would be no church or gospel!

Look at the immense difference that Jesus makes for us, ones who are in some way standing in a long line of continuity with those first women at the tomb. In the face of life-changing surprise and wonder, there are two kinds of responses: either the paralyzed cowardice of soldiers who have nothing to clutch but their impotent weapons, or the empty-handed courage of two women named Mary, who get all the resolve they need for a new mission by reaching out for the risen Jesus. Almost makes you feel sorry for those sad, pitiable guards.

So here's the question for the day: which are we? Which will each of us be in this day, in these aftershocks of Easter? Look--the world is going to startle you and catch you off guard. Life is going to surprise you, maybe even shock you. That's how it is, and there's no point in pretending it's otherwise. But when it happens--when you find your world shaken like an earthquake in the dim light of early morning--what will you reach for? What--or whom--will you turn to? And will you have empty hands able to take hold of real peace, or will they be too busy shaking as you fumble for your spear? Will those moments of shaking leave you collapsed and immobile, or will you find that Christ is speaking peace to you in the turmoil and sending you out on a mission? Will you and I let the news of the resurrection, and the presence of the Risen One, move us beyond the prison, the tomb, of fear?

Dear Jesus, thank you for the witness of real courage in women like Mary and Mary, and for offering us the same courage for our fearful lives into our empty hands, too.

The One Taking the Nails--April 3, 2026

 The One Taking the Nails--April 3, 2026

"Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11)

Jesus is what God looks like with a human face.  

That's the crux of this whole passage we've been looking at over these last several days, reflecting on the words many of us heard back on Sunday.  Jesus shows us fully what God is like--and not just in the moments of miraculous power, but in the moments of utter weakness and suffering love.  This is the truly scandalous--but utterly essential--claim of Christianity. We don't simply believe that Jesus shows us what God is like when he's walking on water or turning water into wine; Jesus reveals God most clearly when he is bleeding and dying on a cross.

That's really the gist underneath Paul's claim here that Jesus is given "the name that is above every name," and that "every knee" will bend and "every tongue" confess this name.  See, Paul isn't just waxing eloquent here--he's quoting from Isaiah 45:21-23, where the God of Israel, YHWH, declares that there is no other God and no other savior, and then that "to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear."  Paul is deliberately claiming for Jesus the status that only belongs to the God of Israel, the God of all creation.  And he has just made the point in the immediately preceding verses that this Jesus emptied himself and laid down his life on a cross.  The point is clear: it is God who went to that cross.  It is God who goes all the way into death for our sake.  It is God whose life is laid down in order to redeem the world.  If you want to know what God is like, in other words, you find it most clearly and truly in the Crucified One, dying at the hands of the politically powerful and respectable religious people rather than killing them.  This is why Jesus is exalted and why his name is "above every name." Jesus has been showing us the face of God all along.  To say that Jesus is "exalted" isn't so much to say that God "rewarded" Jesus for doing a hard thing like dying and that resurrection is a sort of return on his investment, but rather that Jesus has been showing us all along that it was God who took the beatings, God who was mocked by the crowds and the soldiers, and God who bore the nails.  It was God, even, who cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

We who know this story know that come Sunday, death will not have gotten the last word and the tomb will be empty. But to be clear, it's not that Easter Sunday takes away or erases Good Friday--rather, the resurrection reveals that the cross is the place where God's victory already happened.  It is as Lesslie Newbigin put it: "The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross." To say that Jesus is exalted and given the name above every name is not to say that the cross is cancelled out but that it was God all along who was on it.  And that means, further, that any attempts to equate God with shows of brute force, of domination, of imperial coercion, and of inflicting violence on others are blasphemous.  God is the One being crucified, never the one doing the crucifying.  God is the One taking the nails, never the one holding the hammer.

That is vital for us to be clear about, because we are easily tempted to make just that mistake.  We are often tempted to point to the powerful and say, "This is what is God is like!" We are easily misled into conflating God with kings, emperors, potentates, and presidents, and to assume their high offices are evidence that they have been bestowed with divine favor.  Paul's point in his letter to the Philippians is the opposite--that it was always the Crucified One in whom God was fully present. It was never Caesar, no matter how much he told people he was divine.

Whatever else we take from the story of Jesus' Passion on this day, that much is clear.  The story of Good Friday is the story of the lengths God has been willing to go for our sake, because God didn't send someone else to do the suffering.  In Jesus, it has been God who died our death and who bore the worst we could do.  That is why Jesus' name is above all others. That is why he is the One we confess to be Lord.

All hail the one true and living God--the One nailed between thieves for the sake of the world.

All praise to you, Lord, for the depths of love that went to a cross for us all.

Letting Go of Our Leverage--April 2, 2026

Letting Go of Our Leverage--April 2, 2026

"And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:7b-8)

Jesus doesn't take advantage. Of anybody. Or anything.

Not even his own position... his own prerogatives... his own rights.

This reality is the heart of understanding not simply the story of Jesus' crucifixion, but the Gospel itself, the whole shootin' match, as it were, of the Christian story and the Jesus Way of Life. This is what it looks like to belong to the Found Family of Jesus' followers.  Jesus had the opportunity to stay safe and comfortable. Jesus had the "right" to keep himself protected and out of harm's way. Jesus had the authority--the actual, literal divine authority--to preserve himself at all costs. But Jesus does not. That is what makes him wonderful. That is what makes him worth following after.

This is, again, one of those places at which the way of Jesus (which, as Paul reminds us here in Philippians is always also the way of the cross) is radically at odds with the way of "business as usual." The conventional wisdom says that your rights, your position, and your interests are most important. The conventional wisdom says you must clutch them like grandma's pearls, protect them from some vague and shadowy "Them" out there who want to take your interests and your rights away from you, and you must never lay them down for someone else... or else you'll lose them forever! The conventional wisdom says that you have to value yourself and your group more than everybody else, because, after all they are all looking out after their own interests first, too. The conventional wisdom, therefore, says if you're smart, you'll leverage any situation you find yourself in to maximize what's best for you, and who cares what costs that means for anybody else! Step on them before they step on you--that's what everybody does! At least in the eyes of the conventional wisdom of the day.

But not Jesus.

Jesus' greatest strength and his boldest act of courage looks like the waiving of his "rights" and the forgoing of his privileges in order to lay down his life for us.

As Paul reminds us here, Jesus doesn't take advantage, even of what was theoretically his to exploit--not even divinity. And so, as you read through the Gospels, you'll notice that there is never a point when Jesus got the Sadducees in a corner and threatened that he and his followers might withhold their offerings for the Temple unless they would give him a prime spot on the Sanhedrin. (Pilate is the one trying to leverage his power and position over Jesus when he says, "Don't you know that I have the power to release you and power to crucify you?" and Jesus just won't play by those rules.) There is never a story in which Jesus scares people into paying attention by blurting out, "I'm gonna send ALL of you to hell!" and then casually backs down once their ears have pricked up to manipulate people into giving him something more, in the hopes that they might avoid hellfire. There is never a scene where Jesus threatens to send angel armies against those who oppose him or to call down fire from heaven on those who reject him--in fact, when his followers explicitly ask him for permission to do that, he flat out refuses and rebukes them for even suggesting it.  There is never a time where Jesus acts like a big jerk just to put the pressure on Simon and Andrew to commit to following him, and then relents to only acting like a medium-sized jerk in order to close the deal with them.

Jesus doesn't haggle, and Jesus doesn't exploit. Over anything.

Now, lest we say to ourselves, "Well, good for Jesus--that's why he's the Savior, and I'm not! This is one of those places where Jesus does something that we mere mortals cannot do--whew!" take note, boys and girls, that Paul the Apostle here sees this non-exploitative stance of Jesus as exactly something for us to pattern our own lives on. This whole passage from his letter to the Philippians starts, as we saw yesterday and heard this past Sunday, with Paul's admonition that the followers of Jesus not slide into the world's same old manipulative ways of taking advantage of others and leveraging situations for our own benefit at the expense of others. And then, again precisely to illustrate that point, Paul says, "Do the same thing you all saw and heard about in Jesus..." who didn't exploit or take advantage of his God-ness to stay safe, but put our needs first.

It's true that there are some ways we don't get to be like Jesus in this life. We don't get to curse fig trees into withered husks. We don't get to assume the power of calming storms by our voices or multiplying loaves just because we want a midnight snack. But in the deliberate choice not to exploit situations or other people--that is exactly the kind of thing that we are called to do, exactly because Jesus did it first.

There are going to be voices around us today who would advise us that it's "just common sense" that you have to look out for your own interests first in this life. They will say, convinced that they are being reasonable, that everybody looks out for themselves first, and that this is just "how it's done" in the adult world. They will say that you have to take advantage of the other guy when you can, and you have to project a tougher, stronger, more hard-line version of yourself to others, so that you don't look "weak" or like a "loser. " They will say you have to clutch onto what is yours, or else--or else someone might take it... or someone might try to walk all over you... or you might lose your leverage.

Do not buy their lies.

When those voices around us say things like, "Who on earth would ever be so foolish as NOT to look out for themselves first?" you and I will hear Paul's words ringing in our ears, and we will say simply, "Jesus--who didn't put his own interests first, but went to a cross."

And when they say, "You have to protect your own interests and defend your own rights at all costs, or else you'll lose them!" we will remember what Philippians 2 says, and we will answer, "But we are taught exactly to lay down our interests and rights for the sake of others, because that is what Jesus did for us."

And when they cry out that you have to get as much as you can from the other guy in this life, because the other guy is looking to leverage you already, too, you and I will say, "But the way of the cross means considering others as better than ourselves, just like Jesus didn't exploit what he could have exploited to preserve his own comfort."

See, the issue is not that the way of the cross is unclear or uncertain--we are perfectly clear on what the way of Jesus looks like, but we do not like it. And we look for any alternative voice to listen to that will let us rationalize to ourselves the old patterns of self-interest. Paul calls us on it and puts it plainly--if we are followers of Jesus, we are bound for the same Christ-like laying down of our own lives, rights, and interests that led him to an actual cross. We may not be called upon to be literally crucified, but we are called upon to lay our own interests and leverage down for the sake of others, regardless of who they are, regardless of whether it is easy or not.

While the voices around us may be shouting, "Us first! It's just common sense!" we will dare to answer, calmly through their noise, "Others first--just like Jesus did for us!" And then, as God grants us the courage, we will dare to live what we say.

Lord Jesus, pull us into your new motion, where we lay down our own interests to put others before our own.