Skip to main content

Good Friday

Image
By
I recently read through Gary Thomas' Sacred Pathways and discovered that I experience God in ways I wouldn't have imagined. None of them fit me perfectly, but from what I can tell, I experience God as a sensate primarily. But I also approach him as an activist, and surprisingly, a traditionalist.

That last one is a shocker because I have always been distrustful of the "High Church" and all their rote mumbo jumbo. I am a low church guy with roots in the house church and Plymouth Brethren movements. Neither of these movements put much credence into tradition (well, at least tradition outside of their own cultural patterns). In fact, it was normal for us to completely ignore the Christian calendar - even preaching on 1 Corinthians 5 on Christmas because, well, that is where we were in the text.

So, this year, really for the first time, I have tried to attune myself to the traditional Christian seasons. I know this is on the far margin of what it means to be a traditionalist, but it is a good place to start exploring how to worship God in the way he has wired me.

I marked Ash Wednesday, though I did not attend a service. I participated in Lent (or should I say, am participating). I geared my reading and meditations to those portions of the gospels that would help me focus on Jesus' passion and the events surrounding it.

Not surprisingly, I have been tremendously challenged and refreshed.

So today - Good Friday - I am thinking about how sinfully broken I am. As we have come to say around the Journey - how jacked up I am. I am also thinking about how much pain and suffering that brought to my savior, Jesus. After a long night of painful anticipation, beatings, humiliation, betrayal, and physical pain beyond my understanding - Jesus died for me.

I am so broken - so sinful - Jesus had to die. There was no other solution because my problem was so big it required God himself to come down, take human form, and die in my place. I am Peter. I am Edmond and Eustace. I am Kafka's cockroach. And he died - had to and willingly chose to - in order to pardon me.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel, Faith, and Asking Jesus into Your Heart

By
Kelly, our wonderful  Trailhead Kids leader, sent me a link to a great blog over at Sojourn Church.  It is titled " 9 Reasons not to Ask Jesus into your Heart ."  You should read it because it is clear, succinct, and right. I am not a fan of asking Jesus into your heart.  I am not a fan of committing your life to Christ or making him Lord of your life or asking Jesus to be your friend, either.  Strange thing for a pastor to say, right?  Wrong. After I became a believer and started working in a Christian high school, I came to see just how short those kinds of sayings fall from leading people to the real gospel.  As a new believer (and a lover of all things English), I loved my job, most of the things about my school, and, of course, my students.  One of the key frustrations I had, though, was that so many of my students claimed to follow Jesus but so few of them seemed to know him or love him. So, about two months into the school year, I de...
32 comments
Read more

Masturbation, Onanism, and Injustice

By
    The Real Sin of Onan I was a teenage new believer the first time I heard someone talk about the “sin of Onan.” The message was clear—and honestly, kind of terrifying: don’t masturbate. God killed a guy for it once. That story, told in Genesis 38, got repeated in various youth group talks and church settings. Onan became shorthand for what not to do with your body when you’re alone. His name was a warning: “Don’t be like Onan.” Touch yourself like that and God might just touch you to kill you. But when I actually read the passage, I found that it doesn’t say what I was told it says. An Old Reading That Misses the Point It’s true that for centuries—especially in medieval Roman Catholic tradition—this passage was interpreted as a condemnation of any “spilling of seed.” The act of ejaculation outside the context of procreation, whether through withdrawal or masturbation, was viewed as inherently sinful. That interpretation shaped a lot of what was passed down in purity cu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sanctified Diversity: Learning how to Keep in Step with the Gospel

By
Last Sunday (March 26, 2017), I preached a message at Trailhead Church in Edwardsville, IL , called Sanctified Diversity, looking at Paul's rebuke of Peter for not "keeping in step with the truth of the gospel." The clear implication of this passage is that it's not enough to only know the truth as a follower of Jesus. You must also lean in and learn to live out its implications in the difficult spaces of life.  There are few areas that our culture needs us to lean in with gospel grace, humility, and empathy more than in the area of racial and cultural diversity. It's just not optional. We can be orthodox in our words and heretics with our lives, undermining the integrity of the message of the gospel because we are not walking in its power. To be true to the gospel, we need to do more than just believe its truths. We need to walk out their applications in our lives.  My sermon was called Sanctified Diversity . You can follow that link to listen to it on Tr...
2 comments
Read more