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The Plea Bargain
“If you were blind, you wouldn’t be guilty,” Jesus replied. “But you remain guilty because you claim you can see.”
John 9:41 NLT When a man is arrested and brought into court for a crime he is accused of committing, there is a pretrial hearing called an arraignment, as I’m sure you know. Prior to this hearing, the accused (defendant) meets with his attorney and they discuss all the various options available based on the evidence the prosecution has.
Regardless of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, however, the prosecuting attorneys (prosecution) may propose a “deal” to the defendant. This plea bargain is an arrangement between the prosecutor and the defendant whereby the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for a more lenient sentence or an agreement to drop other, more serious, charges.
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Making the List
Blessings or curses. Wrath or favor. Heaven or hell. Why did we all grow up believing that either God rewards or punishes us based on our behavior? Where did we hear about this God? Was it our parents, using God as a “threat” against us for misbehaving? Maybe somehow the threat of eternal damnation was good enough to keep us in line… So they hoped. But did they even believe it was true, or was it just a tactic their own parents may have tried?
Santa Claus has become pretty much the same thing. Parents have latched onto the idea of Santa (as a God replacement) as some magical being who holds their children’s fate in his hands (or sack). Based solely on a child’s behavior, they can look forward to receiving that long-awaited gift… or the dreadful lump of coal. And because of this idea, kids the world over attempt to “win back favor” with Santa to stay on or get back on the “Nice” list during the last days before Santa shows up and their fate is decided. Christmas morning, they rush to the foot of the tree to discover whether or not they were “good enough” to be in the Christmas Club, praying they are not a tragic recipient of the dreaded Coal Award.
Just like Santa, we’ve come to believe that we’re either in or out of God’s grace because of our deeds.
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Slaves of Righteousness
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Romans 6:5-7 NIV When one is enslaved, he has been taken against his will to live and serve a new master in constant fear. Initially, the slave’s desire is simply to escape and return to what he used to know. But as a result of the pain and suffering he must endure under the charge of his new master, his desire soon changes to simply getting through the day without injury or recourse.
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True Crimes
For many, the concept of committing a “sin” is a tough thing to grasp. Before I knew Jesus, I’d heard tell of those who professed to be sinners and attempted to convince others of their morally superior perspective.
At that time, the basic concept of sin didn’t mean anything to me. It was used in the context of having broken some secret rules, or at worst, having committed some kind of crime against God. But to me, these always seemed like victimless crimes, since He was God and surely anything I could possibly do wasn’t that big of a deal. Of course, once I was exposed to the Word of God in the book of the prophet Isaiah, this sin idea began to gain traction:
Look, the Lord’s hand is not too weak to deliver you; his ear is not too deaf to hear you. But your sinful acts have alienated you from your God; your sins have caused him to reject you and not listen to your prayers.
Isaiah 59:1-2 NET But still, the term sin itself didn’t mean much, and I confess that, even after 20+ years, it still seems rather powerless to me. While many of us may have diminished the term’s true effect without realizing it, recently I discovered that I had.
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Second Skin
“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” Mark 2:22 NIV
Did you realize that as reptiles grow, they shed their skin to allow for further growth? This is because, unlike our skin, a reptile’s doesn’t grow as they grow. Instead, snakes, lizards, and other reptiles must shed their skin regularly as their old skin is outgrown. (Technically, humans shed their skin too, at the rate of about 50 million cells a day.)
So then, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; what is old has passed away – look, what is new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17 NET
As Christians, when we speak of being a new creation, it is important that we see ourselves as “reborn.” When we believe, we are as newborn infants, having restarted from a place of wonder and childlikeness, wholly dependent on the One who gave us rebirth. Having begun again in these new skins, we find ourselves in a constant state of spiritual growth, even as we continue in the constant state of physical decay in which our earthly bodies must endure.
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New Beginnings
In my book, The First Communion: The Making of the Last Supper I show how intrinsically connected the Last Supper, and by extension the Lord’s Supper, is with the celebration of Passover. God had selected this very specific event to tie into His plan for salvation, as the first Passover was the first iteration of this plan designed to culminate with all of what we celebrate now on Resurrection Sunday (Easter).
While we realize that we are ultimately celebrating both the Last Supper and the Resurrection each week we gather at church for worship and communion, this Holy Week provides an opportunity for us to extend over the course of seven days that which we normally share in the course of a few hours. It is in this vein I share with you this excerpt from chapter 11: Six Days of Preparation.
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The First Communion
A couple of years ago, I got in my head the idea of investigating the true meaning and purpose of Communion (The Lord’s Supper) beyond my own elementary understanding of it, and ignoring the different traditions that surround it. Sure, we all understand and appreciate this mirroring of the Last Supper on the night before Jesus’ death on the Cross, and how sharing in it as a church body reminds us of that Cross and the suffering Jesus underwent on our behalf.
We get it. But for me, this wasn’t good enough, because the way the Catholic church teaches and practices it, both in substance and form, differs from how the Lutheran church teaches and practices it, which differs significantly from how the non-denominational (often evangelical) and other Protestant churches practice it (without much instruction)—not to mention the frequency of its practice, be it daily, weekly, monthly, special occasions, or never.
While I knew it wouldn’t be particularly useful for me to investigate those disparities, I did think it valuable to discover its true origins, according to Scripture, and try my best to understand the history and tradition behind the origins of the Last Supper (and Passover) itself, while discarding the traditions of the evolving Christian church beyond the first century, being able to examine more intimately how and why the first century Church believed, taught, and practiced it.
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A Mistaken Identity
Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?
These are the three questions that every human asks of the cosmos at one point or another. We need to understand our origins, our purpose, and whether there is hope for a future beyond this life.
While we may ask these questions individually at different points in life, they are remarkably interconnected, and we cannot answer either of the second two without first understanding the first.
And yet so many often start with the third question, wondering if its answer would some how bring resolution to the other two. Where am I going? This question is most often formed as “Is there life after death?” We all want to know whether or not an afterlife is hopeful, because the answer to that question allows us to reconcile the mysteries of the present. Our lives are chaos and can be pockmarked—if not filled—with tragedy and bad fortune. We can often feel we are victims of circumstance, unable to catch a break and unable to figure out why life is so difficult.
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Can’t Fix It From the Inside
When a piece of equipment or a device fails, it is impossible to repair it using the parts of the broken unit itself. We must always employ the use of a tool or replacement part outside of that system in order to affect the repair.
Sure, we’ve seen things like the movie Apollo 13 where they were able to fix things using material already on the craft. But in that instance, they scavenged components from the abandoned lunar module (spare parts) to solve their problem.
The human body, in all its wondrous goings on, cannot heal itself without the food, energy and water required for the cells to do their work. And this fuel comes from outside the body. It does not create its own fuel.
And no repair we ever make is lasting. Even at its best, the body’s efforts are also in vain. Eventually, everything fails beyond repair to the point that a full replacement is necessary, where available. And then, from where shall that replacement come?
It’s a great wonder, then, that we are so often convinced that we can fix the broken pieces of our own lives by utilizing the very components we’ve a desire to repair!
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This Isn’t the Way It’s Supposed to Be
It breaks my heart to see and hear so many who don’t understand why the world is the way it is.
Because God has set eternity on every human heart
Ecclesiastes 3:11 , every man, woman and child yearns for a place called Eden (by one name or another), and to live at peace in a restored and perfect world.Because this desire is so strong, those who don’t fully understand God’s nature either blame him for the way the world is (because he’s not a good god and he’s not fixing it), or feel that this imperfect world is simply evidence against his authorship.
A most common complaint the world over is “Why?” “Why did that happen?” “Why is this happening?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” These are all variations of the same question, and expose a great lack of understanding of God’s power, grace, and love. Surprisingly, it’s the same question even the most devout Christian may ask during their own personal trials.
Those who believe in God may attempt to comfort others during hardship with words like, “It’s all part of God’s plan.” But this does not help to console, because it fails to answer the question, mostly because the one saying this doesn’t really believe it themselves. In fact, this statement stands in stark contradiction to God’s nature. And by declaring that it’s God’s plan for mankind, wildlife, and the environment to suffer and endure such pain and hardship, one sets God against Creation. And this couldn’t be further from the truth.
