Indeed!

But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?...   Matthew 20:22 (KJV)

He is risen!!  From a Christian perspective this is indeed great news!  If Jesus stayed in the tomb, well – I don’t know what we’d be talking about right now.  If the Jews of Jesus’ time and shortly thereafter became evangelistic after the diaspora, then I suppose we’d be celebrating Passover and looking for the Messiah.  But He did.

Jesus rose from the grave – great, awesome, incredible news!  Jesus rose from the grave – uh, oh boy…what does that mean for me?  Oh I know it means that the debt of sin has been paid.  I realize the justification, sanctification, and …  But I have that feeling that it means even more (or am I looking for additionally?) right here, right now.  I guess I’m considering what it means in my every-single-day life.

I find it hard to believe that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead just so I could go to church on Sundays, give a bit in the offering plate, sing some songs and maybe even now-and-then do good things for other people, although these certainly seem to be part of the big picture.  But if that is all there is to being a Christian, then I would have to agree with Bonhoeffer when he called that kind of Christianity “cheap grace”.  The kind of grace where my life remains unchanged, I could continue in sin, no worries because ‘He is risen!’

I have no interest in a cheap grace Christianity.  My desire is for Christ to be real, substantive in my life.  It is, in Bonhoeffer’s words once again, a “costly grace”.  For this grace cost Jesus more than I could even begin to express here.  And it is a grace that will cost me…what?  My life?  Maybe that’s what it is – I surrender my life to the will of God.  I haven’t a clue how to do that.  The best I can do is offer it daily, maybe even sometimes moment-to-moment.

I suppose I should be careful what I wish for.  Costly grace.  Drinking from the same cup.  A baptism in which Jesus surely was not referring to water.   But cheap grace is too similar to what my life has always been, and frankly – I don’t want it, it’s hollow, empty, sad.  I don’t know what a costly grace will look like in my life.  I don’t know what the resurrection, His and mine, will do to my life, but I have already been crucified with Christ, now it’ll be interesting to see what my life will be with Christ living in me. 

He is risen!  And so am I!

A Long Good Bye

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder.  And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.  Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death… Matthew 26:36-38 (KJV)

When I was being shipped out for the first Gulf War, the hardest part was the waiting to go and the long good byes.  I remember calling my parents and my Dad, with a quivering voice, tell me to watch out for the gas.  I don’t remember what else he said, if anything, I just remember his voice.  Then the night before I left, my wife and I stayed up all night holding each other, crying, and watching North by Northwest.  It was the longest night. 

The next day two things stuck in my mind:  we had this sergeant in our unit who was the meanest SOB I’d ever met.  He wasn’t a particularly big guy, but he was hard-as-nails tough.  He had been in my unit for three years but he wasn’t going with us because he was leaving the Army within a month.  So as we marched out the gate of our little post, Sergeant K stood and shook each of our hands as we went by…tears streaming down his face. 

The other thing I remember was marching through the airport in Nuremburg with civilians lined up all along the walls.  There was no cheering or flag-waving, just these somber stares and tears.  I’ve come to hate long good byes.

Gethsamane haunts me.  With Maundy Thursday coming, I spent some time thinking about Gethsamane and reading it over and over again, praying over it, chewing on it.  It spooks me.

I see Jesus with the figuratively literal (huh?) weight of the world on his shoulders, going to a garden with some friends to pray.  But it’s so much more than that isn’t it?  It’s the middle of the night, He’s already told his friends he’s gonna die.  Matthew tells us that when he got to the garden Jesus became sorrowful and very heavy.  And herein lie the thoughts that trouble me. 

I can’t begin to fathom how the whole God-intertwined-with-man thing works, but I wonder if part of the sorrow was the long good-bye to his friends.  I wonder if he went to Gethsemane looking to the Father for comfort.  Did he get it?  He knew that in a matter of hours the Father would betray him – what anguish!    Where were the angels to minister to him this time?  Was the Father already grieving?  Was He looking at Jesus and thinking 'I just can't watch this'?  He asked twice (!) if the cup could be passed from him, when the Father answered...was His voice quivering?  Peter and the boys were sleeping...was Jesus already alone in this whole thing?  

There are lessons here.  But sometimes I don't want lessons.  Sometimes I just want to think of Jesus and let that be enough.  I can’t put it into words except to say that I cannot, not even once…read the story of Gethsemane and not find tears on my cheek.