It’s interesting that no one is really upset by the cross. In a strange way, the cross makes sense to us. Death makes sense to us. It’s normal and natural. Most any portrayal of Jesus in our culture is fine with the cross, albeit, a cross devoid of meaning. 

Throughout history, there have been 3 major views on what God does at the cross (the technical term is “atonement theories”). They are referred to in various ways, but I’ll just use the ones I’m most familiar with (and perhaps you’ve heard of them, too).

The night has come at long last—the betrayal of Jesus. Following the Last Supper, Judas flees to the pharisees, guiding a mob to the Mount of Olives where Jesus habitually goes. Knowing this is happening, Jesus goes to the place he knows Judas will lead them. Once there, he instructs his disciples to pray, and goes himself a little ways off. 

It’s Thursday night. Passover night. Jesus has instructed the disciples on how to prepare for the Passover meal, and they’re all gathered around him at the table. Jesus is the host, naturally. On his right is the beloved disciple, John. Around the table are Jesus’s friends, his companions for the past three years.

Luke 21 is an apocalyptic judgment against Israel in general, and Jerusalem in particular. Here Jesus sounds like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or, actually, any of Israel’s prophets. They all proclaimed this message to God’s people—“Repent and turn to God; avoid the destruction that is imminent! The world is going to be turned upside down, and Jerusalem will be laid desolate. But now, even now, if you will return to God, the crisis may be avoided…”

Imagine a few years after the resurrection, the gathering of a small house church in a certain city where Simon the Pharisee lived. The followers of the Way walk into Simon’s house one by one, and as the host, he greets them each in turn. Finally in walks this woman. The woman.

One of the first Sunday mornings we visited Park Avenue Church of Christ in Memphis, the first prayer was a prayer of confession. The preacher that morning had instructed the person leading the prayer to pray a prayer of confession, and then pause for everyone in the congregation to confess their sins to God silently. That made a huge impact on me. Imagine a church where everyone knew and confessed they were sinners! How humble. How honest.

As Jesus enters Jerusalem, what most stands out is the honor the people are showering him with. They look at this teacher and worker of miracles and they honor him as a king. He needs a donkey? They give it. He’s entering the city? They pave the way with their cloaks. They sing and dance and celebrate the salvation God is visiting upon his people at long last.

I’ve been reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant. It’s kind of slow going at first, but then the Civil War happens, and it’s a real page-turner! The Civil War almost can’t help but be fascinating. It’s one of the few times in history where there’s a clear right and a clear wrong, and the good guys clearly won. It’s this moment where America stands up and says, “this is who we are, and this is what we stand for, and we won’t compromise these values.”

There’s something magical about snow. It’s ice, frozen water, but instead of being hard and brittle, it’s soft and fluffy. It floats down gently, blown about by every gust of wind, landing softly, falling from untold heights to rest silently on the ground.

The way we approach rituals is complicated, which is to say, not uniform. There are a host of things we do in life and in the church that I would call rituals, where a ritual is something we do without thinking of why we do it. I hesitantly applaud this tendency. Sometimes we idolize intentionality, failing to recognize that our habits reveal a deep part of who we are. We do things habitually when they are a part of our very nature—revealing not just who we want to show other people, but who we are.

This week we’ve stumbled upon one of the more difficult and important teachings of Jesus. It’s deceptively simple—“If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

The sky is falling. So what are you going to do about it? There’s no point in making a great fuss if all you’re going to do is stand there and watch it fall. Certainly you should do something, but what? How are you going to help hold the sky up?

Paul’s ministry is difficult to document precisely from Acts and his letters. Some parts of it fit nicely, but the descriptions of events in Acts and his letters can sometimes seem at odds. Nevertheless, here is one way to understand the evidence for the latter part of Paul’s ministry.

Every language has its own characteristics, its own ways of speaking about the world, which colors the way its speakers see the world. Some languages have words that are not easily translated into other languages. You can convey the idea, but it takes an entire phrase to translate one word, and the connotation of the word often gets lost in the process.

Sometimes there are moments of clarity where our motivations are laid bare for all to see. This particular one is the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice. In short, the 2016 Senate doesn’t have to consider a Democrat’s appointee, so they won’t. The 2020 Senate can consider a Republican’s appointee, so they will. It’s not really about democracy or integrity or “letting the people decide”—it’s about using whatever power they can to control the court system and the interpretation of the Constitution.