Do you Believe?

What went wrong? What's going wrong? Same answer.

Lent 2016 (C) 2016-03-26: Reading the Lectionary with my family
(I encourage you to read the full text. Hold me accountable if you feel it has not been handled well. It is what Scripture means when it says to wrestle with the Bible and mentally struggle with it and inwardly digest it.)

Job 14: "A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. Do you fix your eyes on such a one?"

What went wrong? It most certainly was the question that echoed among Jesus followers the day after the crucifixion, the day the body of God lay cold dead in the tomb behind a heavy stone and a Roman seal is this. There seems to be a modern sentiment that we could have, even would have done better - "I would have stood and died with Christ." Yet Jesus knows better - we would not and we do not. My inbox is full of comments that suggest somehow we (the modern enlightened person) are able to take responsibility for our sin, and that we can make things right moving forward. This fanciful notion denies the truth of the Cross: apart from Jesus we are not even able to realize the complete extent of our sin let alone accept responsibility for it or do better moving forward.

Jesus said "there will be poor always" not because it is God's design that there be poor, but because He know us. God knows we will not take up the Cross for each other. God knows we will not do for Jesus by doing for the "least" of His people. God knows we will not lay down our life for the other. God knows we will not love each other as He loved us. Why? Because God knows the true, private, vainly hidden condition of our weak hearts.

If we modern Christians would do better why are our brothers and sisters suffering? Poverty still exists! The poor exist because there are the rich! It is not because of a lack of resources in the Church but because of the lack of resources released to ministry by Christians. The issue is the condition of the Christian heart.  ACrossMission's sub-Saharan Fund and @risk Funds are currently in need of 27 $100 monthly sponsors for missionaries in regions where Christ is ignored, despised, denied or hated. Missionaries to these places are poor and suffering. Why? Their lives are at risk (we can't even publish their testimony and pictures). why? How can this be IF we believe? How can this be if we, Christ's followers, would do better? This is just our small illustration - it sadly is not alone. Millions of missionaries and pastors beg for "Christ-followers'" help.

It hurts to write this. Especially the day after focusing on what Jesus endured for us out of divine Love. We needed and we still need the Cross. The evidence of poverty and suffering is stacked against us. Our accumulated wealth is stacked against us; our expenditures are stacked against us; our choices that bind us in financial debt are stacked against us. The Cross, the tomb and the seal are still necessary. We should have done better, and we should do better - yet we do not. Jesus asks us to show our love for Him as we love each other; as we love the least among us. To say we love Jesus is to say we will take up the Cross we encountered Good Friday, lay down our lives and radically and sacrificially love those whom Jesus loves.

The question of the passion of Christ is "Do you love me?" Is our response no or is it yes?

For today's full-text click here