Reaching Toward Easter. Derek Maul
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laps, would have been special.
Of course, such illuminating moments are always a possibility, even today, because the ministry of Jesus is not merely historical, it is current, right here in the middle of real life. How would we choose to respond to such an opportunity today? What would we have our best friend and teacher share with us, right now, at this moment? How much of the truth are we prepared to hear now, where we are, on our knees?
This would be a good moment to talk with Jesus about it, one on one.
Prayer: It is hard to kneel. Yet we do: contrite, submissive, and eager to learn. Teach us, heal us, and love us, we pray. Amen.
Day Eight: Tuesday
The Jesus Imperative
Read John 14:9-14.
“How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (vv. 9-11).
I love the language the great Teacher uses here, always schooling his listeners about the nature of God. Jesus is the interface of time and eternity, the known and the unknown, spirit and matter, the natural and the supernatural.
This is Incarnation, another moment when God, in Jesus, breaks quite literally into time and space. We have no adequate language for God—no way to conceptualize eternity, perfection, completeness, omniscience, or holiness. The Jews were on to something when they did not speak God’s name as a sign of reverence. But Jesus called the Father “Abba,” Daddy. And then he said that we too could know God in the same way.
We see in today’s reading that God’s intentions were focused into this flesh-and-blood world through the lens of Jesus. We see also that the Creator intends that kind of work to continue through all of us privileged to call ourselves Jesus’ followers.
BELIEF
Our foundational beliefs, Jesus suggests, are a critical factor in determining how we think, speak, and ultimately act. In other words, what we believe profoundly affects the manner in which we live. I think that Jesus understood this better than anyone else in history.
Jesus invites us to participate in the God-life in much the same way that he does. I honestly don’t think that Jesus came into this world preloaded with infinite knowledge and superhero abilities—kind of a GOD-version 7.7. Instead, it’s my opinion that Jesus had the opportunity and the responsibility to live and learn and grow and develop with the same reality-based constraints we all have to contend with. The difference is that Jesus, God made flesh, not only “increased in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52, NIV) but also surpassed all human expectations.
Jesus brought to the table the clarity of his belief. Jesus knew that he was in the Father and the Father was in him, and he understood how dramatically and conclusively belief affects everything else. That’s why he was constantly raising the question, and he parsed it again in the scripture we’re looking at today. Jesus challenged his friends to believe that God literally inhabited him, and that God “does his works” (v. 10) in and through the life he was living among his friends.
SALVATION
One of the most helpful definitions of salvation that I’ve come across can be expressed as “participating in the work of God.” Jesus challenged the disciples to believe, so that they too could participate in the good work that God is up to in the world.
So in the last few days before he was killed by the people his radical ideas threaten, Jesus lays out what is important. He tries to make his friends understand that they will not “see the Father” in the traditional ways that they are used to imagining God, or via the ways they think they need to experience God. God, Jesus points out, is best understood and experienced in terms of allowing God’s work to take up residence in us, and then to believe, and, consequently, to live.
THE JESUS IMPERATIVE
“Live!” That’s the Jesus imperative. And it’s a good word to conclude the first full week of Lent.
“Take the trouble to know me,” Jesus continues the thought from the question Thomas had posed earlier. “Take the trouble to know me and you will also know the Father. If you know God’s will, and then pray accordingly, greater things still are going to happen because you dare the commitment” (John 14:10-11, author paraphrase).
Prayer: Use me, Lord, use even me. Take me; melt me; break me; mold me; fill me. Amen.
Day Nine: Wednesday
“IF YOU SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME”
Read John 14:15-17.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever” (vv. 15-16).
Today I’m caught up in the memory of my cousin Linda. She died this past week, just forty-six years of age. But she demonstrated such wondrous grace and faith as she realized that the life she knew, in this time and space, was coming to a close.
Linda was an arrestingly lovely lady, both beautiful and spiritually astute. She owned a vibrant sense of life and the kind of “live-it-out-loud” application of faith that engages the deepest meaning of Lent’s redemptive focus. Linda lived the powerful truth that, because of Jesus’ passion and resurrection, the reality of eternity is held in every moment: life, death, and, sometimes most poignantly, the transition between the two.
I sensed all of this acutely during a wonderful conversation I had with Linda and her husband, Dave, via Skype the first week of December. We talked for close to an hour. Then, at the end of the conversation, we prayed together. I wish we all could have taken one another’s hands. But it was interesting how prayer linked us inexplicably, and I could barely speak through the tears. It was as if a different kind of conduit had opened up the moment we began to pray.
So there is communication, and then there is communication. The content of the entire conversation was necessarily deep, but something else happened when faith entered the equation. “Perfect love,” John said, “drives out fear” (1 John 4:18, NIV). And, as Jesus promised, “But take heart! I have overcome [conquered] the world” (John 16:33, NIV).
I wrote the following entry in my blog the day after that conversation:
I’ve said before that my cousin Linda is a cool lady, full of grace and strength. Well, she’d say it isn’t her, that the grace is all God—and even more the strength part. But that is what happens when you don’t really know anymore where you come to an end and where God begins.
I’m thankful that, as who Linda is becomes more and more defined by eternity than it is by time, my cousin’s faith is something that we all can embrace, and that God’s powerful presence is all about the fullness of life. I pray that we all might know the assurance of such faith and love.
JESUS-FOLLOWER
Question: What are some of the biggest stumbling blocks that keep nonbelievers from darkening the doors of their local Christian church?
Answer: A lack of authenticity, church politics, and the hard-to-hide truth that the real-deal, Jesus kind of love is seldom central to community life.
I guess that I’m saying my cousin Linda was a bona fide Jesus follower. Jesus was crystal clear regarding what he wanted to see when it came to that kind of label. And it’s safe to say that the Lord wasn’t looking for correct doctrine or outward appearances or a social political slant.
“If you love me,” Jesus said, “you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Such a simple admonition. Jesus shows us the way, plain and simple. “All right then. I’ll use small words and speak slowly. Listen up: if you love me—if you truly say that you love me, then follow my directions; demonstrate my love; keep my commandments.”
“Oh, but Lord,” we all want to say, “you mentioned something about loving the Lord God with all our heart, all our strength, all