Talking About the Problem of Prayer Is a Problem

Photo by Matheus Bertelli on Pexels.com

Pastors and Christian authors frequently speak and write about “the problem of prayer,” as if its problem was singular and well-defined. Prayer has many problems. It is not just the problem of unanswered prayer, but of answered prayer: why was this prayer answered when so many others, seemingly more worthy, were not? Why was her prayer answered and his prayer not?

Another problem is that people cannot even agree on what prayer is. Some say prayer is a means of developing intimacy with God. These people are not too bothered by unanswered prayers; they think the only thing that matters is getting closer to God.

They don’t pray so that they can have things but so they can have God, and he can have them. They engage in contemplative prayer, centering prayer, and the prayer of silence. For these people, prayer is about intimacy with their Creator. I have various books on this kind of prayer by Thomas Merton and others.

Others want nothing to do with contemplative prayer, and even claim it is dangerous and unbiblical. For them prayer is about asking. If contemplative prayer is about peace, this kind of prayer is about struggle. These people wrestle in prayer. They agonize. They ask. They ask God to put an end to evil (like sickness and death) and to bring good (like peace and health) for the sake of his kingdom. I have books on my shelf on this kind of prayer by Donald Bloesch and others.

We don’t just have a problem of prayer; we have a problem of talking about prayer. One of the difficulties is that prayer is relation-dependent. The type of prayer we engage in depends on the nature of our relationship with God, and that relationship is not a static thing. It is multidimensional.

One can imagine a son who is an officer in the military and whose father is the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Sometimes when he talks to his father it is as a son. They reminisce about the past or make plans for the future. They talk about fishing. They share a joke. These conversations are close and intimate, the kind a son has with his dad.

But there are other times when he speaks to his father as the Supreme Commander. At those times, he does not call his father “Dad” but “Sir.” They don’t talk over old times but current battle plans. The son receives orders, not advice. He asks the Supreme Commander to send his company supplies, not to pass the potatoes.

As a son, he might ask his dad for the potatoes or for anything else in his power to give. “Dad, I’ve got myself in a mess and could use some money.” Or “Dad, I’m not sure what to do in this situation. What do you think?” But as a soldier, he might ask for very different things, like reinforcements, tactical support, or the latest intelligence reports. The relationship between us and the heavenly Father is more complex still, for we are at once creatures of the Creator, servants of the Lord, priests of the most high God, and children of the heavenly Father.

Because our relationship with God is not one-dimensional, neither are our prayers. We see examples of this throughout the psalms. The psalmist sometimes talks things over with God in intimate conversation: “This is what is going on. I hate this.” “Thanks for that!” “I’m worried.” “I’m weak.” “Are you paying attention?” At other times, he asks God for things. “Break my enemy’s teeth.” “Let him fall into the trap he has made.” “Preserve me. Provide for me. Guide me. Help me!”

If prayer was only for getting things, there would not be much intimacy. If prayer was only making conversation, there would not be much change. But prayer is both—and much more. It facilitates the relationships we have with God as Father, as Master, and as King. No wonder the nineteenth century’s greatest preacher, Charles Spurgeon, said that he would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.

Faith Enables People to Embrace Change

Many of the churches in our community have participated in an initiative that we called “Bold Faith.” The churches, which come from various denominational perspectives, focused on the same biblical texts during their sermon time each week for a month. Congregants were encouraged to integrate what they were learning on Sunday into their daily life.

Everyone who took part in the initiative was asked to wear a brightly colored “Bold Faith” wristband throughout the month. Whenever they saw someone else wearing the same wristband, they were asked to talk with them, find out what church they were from, and encourage them. It was not uncommon to see people wearing our colorful wristbands in the bank, the grocery store, or the restaurant.

My wife and I were in the checkout line at Walmart when I spotted a wristband on the arm of the young woman working the register. I asked her where she went to church, and she told me. I said, “Your pastor is a friend of mine. He is a great guy!”

She smiled and said something to affirm my comment. That was when a mischievous idea struck me, and I acted on it immediately—to my wife’s chagrin. I said to the cashier, “And I so admire the changes your pastor has made in his life since he got out of prison.”

Of course, her pastor had never been in prison. He was raised in Sunday School and church and went off to Bible College after high school to prepare for ministry. He was the white sheep in a family of white sheep. But the cashier did not know that. She gaped at me open-mouthed, apparently in astonishment.

I quickly said, “I am just joking. He was never in prison.” She seemed relieved but, like my wife, was unamused. But when I told my pastor friend what I had said to his parishioner, he got a kick out of it.

I have since wondered if the woman I joked with was surprised because she knew her pastor’s history and was sure he had never been in prison or if she was surprised at the idea that her pastor could ever have done anything bad. Did she think that her pastor, or pastors in general, have always lived morally blameless lives?

One of the foundational beliefs of Christianity is that people can change. But this does not go far enough. One of the foundational beliefs of Christianity is that people will change. An encounter with God is necessarily transformational. In a normal Christian life, wherever it begins – in prison or in church, when one is fifty years old or five – people experience change, growth, renovation.

It should not surprise us that converts need to change. Change is not only normative; it is necessary. Whether a person is just starting out or has been at this discipleship to Jesus thing for decades, he or she will need to overcome selfishness, fear, anger, and a hundred other faults. To be happy, to be whole, requires change.

The biblical writers took for granted that change would be ongoing in the lives of their readers. They assumed that they would “grow,” “mature,” and even “put to death the misdeeds of the body.” Church members were expected to increase “in the knowledge of God” and “grow up into [their] salvation.”

But what happens when a church holds no expectation for growth, when its people act as if all their changes and growth have already taken place? This kind of church looks good on the outside for no one acknowledges failure – to do so would amount to ecclesial suicide. But people remain stuck in destructive habits, and the relational fallout is continual.

Church members’ unhappiness and failure cannot be seen; it is too well hidden. Outsiders think, “I could never be a part of that church. They would not want me; my life is too messed up.” And so, people miss out on the change they so desire because they assume that they must be perfect before they can enter the church.

The church needs leaders who expect church members to change, who talk about it openly, and model it in their own lives.

Hope Wins in the Battle of Worldviews

The battle for worldviews – religious, atheistic, and materialistic – is nothing new. Today, it is dominated by monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with materialistic atheism, and the postmodern rejection of absolute truth. In the first century, the big players were Epicureanism, Stoicism, and the newcomer Christianity.

Epicureanism’s influence was already faltering by the time Christianity emerged. Its proponents were religious skeptics who believed, like Carl Sagan, that “the Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Based on this foundation, Epicureans believed that pleasure or happiness should be the goal of life, and that required the absence of fear and pain.

The Stoics’ worldview was ascendent in the first century. Like some scientists in our day, they believed in an inflexibly deterministic universe. But unlike some scientists in our day, they believed that people could choose how to respond to predetermined events. They taught that virtue was the highest good, and that virtue depended on reason. Score one for Mr. Spock.

There is much to be admired in both Epicurean and Stoic philosophy. Epicureans, unlike the modern caricature of them, believed that a life of moderation, not wild indulgence, would lead to the greatest happiness. The Stoics chose not to be governed by unruly passions, but to seek good feelings like joy, goodwill, and moral integrity. People who adopted either of these ancient worldviews would make good neighbors and friends.

Why did Christianity, rooted as it is in a thoroughly Jewish worldview, displace these long-established philosophical systems? What was it about Christianity that gave it an advantage over Stoicism and Epicureanism in the battle of worldviews?

The answer to that question requires, and has frequently received, a book-length treatment to do it justice. The Christian understanding of life and reality prevailed in part because of its belief in a creator who remained actively engaged with his creation, something that both Epicurus and Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, denied.

Further, Stoicism relied on a person’s ability to reason in order to achieve virtue and experience the good life. But those denied an education or shackled by a poor upbringing were simply excluded. Zeno’s good news was only good for the educationally and culturally advantaged, while Christianity, with its promise of supernatural aid, offered the good life in God’s kingdom to all.

Epicureanism taught people not to fear god or worry about dying and assured them that even terrible things are easy to endure. But people found these instructions not only unnatural but impossible. For example, enduring terrible things has never been easy for anyone, not even Epicurus.

Perhaps the biggest advantage Christianity had over its competition in the worldview ring had to do with hope. People, whether Epicureans, Stoics, or Christians, lived in a world filled with injustice. They experienced tragedy. They lost children, lost fortunes, lost their health. They lived through wars and famines. It was in this setting, in the real world as opposed to the ivory tower world of the intellectual, that Christianity shone brightest.

The Epicurean, faced with sorrow and tragedy – the death of a child, for example – would say that it was all meaningless. The Stoic would tell a parent that their emotional response was unreasonable. But the Christian, steeped in Judaism’s view of creation, would lament the tragedy, trust God to destroy death itself, and raise the child in the resurrection. The Christian would, in a word, have hope.

That hope extended beyond what would happen in the world to what would happen in the Christian himself or herself. The virtue which the Stoic sought through reason alone would be granted to the Christian through grace-enabled effort. Christians, unlike Stoics, were not left to achieve this on their own.

The hope of a world set right and peopled with men and women made new and complete was one that neither Epicureanism or Stoicism – or any of today’s ideologies – could dream. The life others sought was being experienced by the freshly spirited people of Jesus. Christians saw the pain of the world, which Epicureans and Stoics must ignore or deny, as the birth pains of a new, just, and beautiful cosmos. It was hope that won the day.

It still does.

A Child Shall Lead Them: Lesson in Patience and Grace

My wife and I have been nomads since last November. After thirty-five years, I left my position as senior pastor of the church we love and, though I was open to new employment opportunities, it seemed that we were retired. We spent two months in Texas, living near our oldest son and his family, then returned to Michigan, where we stayed at our friends’ lake home for six weeks.

While we were in Texas, a denominational official called to ask if I would be interested in pastoring his home church. My wife and I talked about it, and I told him that we were open to exploring the possibility. Since then, we have met with various committees and groups, and I have preached at the church. They recently extended an invitation to me to become their lead pastor and we will be moving there in a few weeks.

In the interim, we have been staying with our youngest son and his family. He and his wife have three children, a nine-year-old boy, and two girls, one seven and one five. Our grandchildren are, like most grandchildren, the smartest, cutest, most wonderful grandchildren in the world. Nearly every day they say or do something that surprises, impresses, or delights us.

Every day they also do or say something that reveals that these smart, cute, wonderful little people are still immature children. They quarrel with each other. They whine about doing some task. They leave their things lying all over the house – the floor is sometimes a minefield of Legos, dolls, stuffed animals, and other toys.

I exhort them to stop bickering. I tell them to pick up their things. I remind them that their mom or dad asked them to finish some task. I probably do this more than I should since I am not their parent and since it has been a long time since our own children were this age. I have forgotten how young children think, how they react, and what kinds of things they do to find their place in the world.

It is not that I expect my grandchildren to act like adults—but perhaps I do not expect them to act like children either. I want them to turn off the lights when they leave a room. I inwardly groan when they spill their milk. I get impatient when they whine, or scream, or fail to show consideration to their siblings.

It is a good thing my son and daughter-in-law are their parents. They are patient and kind. They are understanding. They treat their children as children and not miniature adults. They clearly expect the kids to grow and mature, but they keep in mind that growth and maturity are part of a process that takes time. I do not always remember that.

It is significant that the Bible uses the parent-child relationship as a metaphor for God’s relationship with his people. Indeed, the image of a father with his children is one of the most important ways the Bible represents the relationship between God and humans. The image is rich in meaning. The fact that God thinks of his own as children is full of hope. He does not think of us as grown-ups—not yet anyway.

When we bicker with our brothers and sisters in the faith, God is not surprised. When we whine, he does not throw up his hands in despair over our immaturity. When we are inconsiderate of our fellow believers’ feelings and needs, God knows what to do. He will certainly instruct us. He might possibly correct us. But he never forgets that the growth and maturity he expects are part of a long process.

The Bible speaks of this process in many places. It is called “discipline” and “training” and is linked with “instruction.” God himself formulates our training program. It is not something that happens in isolation from real life; it is our real life.

The Scottish novelist and poet George Macdonald was right: “The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair; the inability, the one central misery.” But if God is our Father, all will be well.

Holy Saturday: Waiting in the Shadow of Uncertainty

In his song “Maranatha,” Michael Card sings that “waiting is the most bitter lesson a believing heart has to learn.” I understand the sentiment, but doesn’t it depend on what kind of waiting we are doing? Waiting for the birth of a child, a much-needed vacation, or retirement is one kind of waiting. Waiting for the divorce to be finalized, the foot to be amputated, or a terminally ill spouse to die is altogether different.

In either case, though, we know what we’re waiting for. Whether we are longing for it or dreading it, we know what’s coming. But there is a third kind of waiting, which may be the most bitter of all. The thing for which we are waiting is uncertain. We don’t know what is going to happen or if it will happen at all. We sense that a storm is approaching, but we don’t know how bad it will be. We are waiting in the dark.

Some years ago, social scientists in the Netherlands conducted an experiment in which they told one group of subjects that they would receive 20 strong shocks at routine intervals, over a short period of time. They gave a second group similar information, with these changes: 17 of the shocks would be mild and only three would be strong, but they would not know when the strong shocks were coming. The result? Subjects in the second group sweated more and experienced faster heart rates. They suffered less physical pain but more emotional pain.

Waiting in the dark is hard. We’re not sure we can handle what is coming. People who have been through trauma often suffer in this way. The pain they’ve already experienced is compounded by the pain of not knowing what is coming next.

It must have been this way for Jesus’s first disciples. Five days before the crucifixion, they were exultant. Everything was coming together just as they had hoped. And then Thursday night came, and the world turned upside down. One of their own was a traitor. Jesus was arrested. He was tried that very night. The next day, in a rushed execution, he was put to death.

It was a nightmare. The unthinkable had happened. And now what? The disciples had so aligned themselves and their future with Jesus that, when he died, their identity died with him. Who were they now? They didn’t know. What would happen next? They had no idea.

When the authorities arrested Jesus and, later, when they tried him, they questioned him about his followers. That was ominous. The disciples locked themselves into the upper room, not knowing what was coming. They jumped at every noise. They were so traumatized they could hardly think.

Besides the immediate danger, there was long-term uncertainty. Just days earlier, they had known who they were and what to expect. But who were they now without Jesus? And what would happen next? Would a crack team of soldiers break in the door and kill them all? Would their lives end in one terrifying moment? Or would they return to their villages and the ridicule that awaited them? Would they go back to what would forevermore seem like a hollow existence?

We call the day after the crucifixion, “Holy Saturday.” They would have called it something else. It was a day of grief and dread. In that dark, upstairs room, they could almost feel something surrounding them, nearing them, coming for them.

They did not know it, but it was God who surrounded them, was near them, and was coming for them. They did not see him, but he saw them. And he sees us.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote: “Between the great dramas of life, there is almost always a time of empty waiting…” Waiting? Yes, indeed. But empty? No. Such waiting is filled with possibilities.

Imagine standing outside the garden tomb on the evening of the first Holy Saturday. The dreams you cherished lie buried. But though you cannot see it, that tomb is filled with indescribable and glorious possibilities that are about to burst into life and change the world forever.

Believing in Jesus: Not “For Once and for All,” but “For Once and for Always”

I preached this as a candidate for the pastoral ministry at California Road Missionary Church – my first time preaching a candidate’s sermon in 35 years! You can read the sermon below, or you can watch it on Cal Road’s website: https://www.californiaroad.org/pages/watch, then click the 3/17/2024 tab. (The sermon begins at 28:43.) This sermon is a survey of John 1-2, looking at what it means to believe in Jesus.

___________________________________________________________________________________

When Karen and I were youth sponsors in our home church, we had a teen in the youth group named Philip. He was a smart kid who went on to be a physicist working in fluid dynamics.

When Philip was about 10 years old, he responded to the altar call week after week after week. Some of the adults assumed that Philip had an overly sensitive conscience. Others thought he needed to “pray through.” Someone said to me that his parents should tell him to stop going forward.

I suspect the adults had a poorer grasp of the situation than Philip. Looking back, I don’t know that his young heart lacked assurance as much as it possessed desire—desire to go further up and further in. He didn’t believe in Jesus once and stop; he continued believing, which is to say he continued entrusting himself to Jesus. That is what followers of Jesus do. Trusting him is not a for-once-and-for-all thing, but a for-once-and-for-always thing.

The Christian life depends on faith. The Apostle Paul taught that it is through believing in Jesus that the Christian life begins, that we are “justified” and accepted into the people of God. It is also through believing in Jesus that we are enabled to obey God. Paul calls this “the obedience of faith.” Elsewhere, (Hebrews 3 and 4, and John 3:36 are examples) the Bible speaks of the disobedience of unbelief. Obedience depends on faith.

Faith is also the means by which we calm our hearts when they are all stirred up. Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me” (John 14:1). That is reminiscent of what King David said: “When I am afraid, I will trust in you … in God I trust; I will not be afraid” (Ps. 56:3,4).

Further, belief in Jesus is the spring from which joy flows into our lives. It is by “believing” – present tense; it’s not something you once did but something that you are doing right now – by “believing in him [that] you are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8).

What we are going to see is that the Christian life is “by faith from first to last” (Romans 1:17 NIV). We will never be so mature that trust becomes unnecessary. That is not what maturity means. The mature person is not one who no longer needs to trust but one who is able to trust sooner and continue longer than he was once able to do.

I have referenced the Apostles Peter and Paul and a little of what they say about faith, but I could have mentioned others biblical writers as well. The one who focuses most consistently on faith is the Apostle John. The purpose of his Gospel, which guided the content he chose, was “that” – these are his words – “you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

This morning, we are going to do a quick survey of the beginning chapters of John’s Gospel, looking for what he says about belief and particularly about the need to continue believing. Just because we have not repudiated our initial confession of faith does not mean that we have continued to believe. Faith in Jesus is so much more than “I believed when I was 10 (or 20, or 50) and I haven’t changed my mind.” It is, “I believed when I was 10, and when I was 20, and when I was 50, and ten thousand times in between. And I believe in Jesus now.”

So, let’s survey those initial chapters of John’s Gospel for insights into what it means to believe in Jesus, starting with the prologue in chapter 1. John begins at the beginning with the Word that was with God and was God, the Word that spoke into existence all that is, and gives light to humanity. Then he writes (John 1:6-7): “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.”

The thing to note is the purpose for which God sent John the Baptist into the world. He came “so that through him all might believe.” That is going to require some unpacking, but for now just hold onto the thought that God wants people to believe and has taken steps to make that possible.

Now, look down to verse 12, where we learn what happens when people believe: “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” God wants children, and the way people become children of God is by believing in Jesus.

My wife’s sister and her husband wanted to have children but were unable to conceive, so for many years they fostered kids. They know the ache that so many others have felt, who wanted children but did not have them. God understands that; he wants children too.

Before we continue our survey, we need to pause to consider John’s terminology. The phrase, “to those who believed in his name,” is literally “those who believed into his name.” Believing into Jesus is the characteristic way John describes the act of faith. We have it, for example, in the famous John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes into him should not perish but have eternal life.”

John 11:25 is another example: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in [into] me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in [into] me will never die.” John uses the “believe into” construction more than 20 times, though it is relatively rare in the rest of the New Testament.

So, why did John prefer this preposition? I think it might be because he wanted to convey the idea that the life of faith is not static. We don’t believe in Jesus from a distance. Belief moves us into him, into fresh experiences of his wisdom, his kindness, and his grace. Into a fresh awareness of our sins and weaknesses. The life of faith is always calling us, to quote once again from C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, “further up and further in.”

Followers of Jesus don’t just sit, not even in a pew; they follow. If you and I stop moving forward, a gap will grow between us and our savior because he has not stopped moving.

Believing into Jesus sometimes – more often than we’d like – moves us into trouble, but also into a family, into adventure, into mysteries, into ecstasies, into challenges, purpose, and love.

John follows the prologue’s emphasis on belief with the stories of five men (six, if you count John the Baptist) who did believe and received the authority to become children of God (vv. 35-51). Because we have limited time, we will focus on Nathaniel, who initially disbelieved.

In verses 43-51, we read that Jesus found Philip (that is a great story in itself), who found Nathanael and told him they had found the Messiah—Jesus of Nazareth. Nathanael asked if anything good could come from Nazareth. Philip said, “Come and see.” Now verse 47.

⁴⁷ When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

⁴⁸ “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

⁴⁹ Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

⁵⁰ Jesus said, “You believebecause I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” ⁵¹ He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

People say that seeing is believing; that is not always the case. I was once asked to pray for a man – a lapsed Catholic – who had been diagnosed with cancer. So, I went over to his home and prayed with him. When I went back to see him a couple of weeks later, he was bubbling over with joy. His cancer had gone into remission, and he was certain that God had healed him.

Before we moved away from that town, I went back to see him – this would have been months later. He was still in remission, but his interest in God had flagged. He had seen for himself what God can do, but seeing wasn’t believing. But from Nathaniel we learn that, while seeing is not always believing, believing leads to seeing. Jesus told him, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. But you will see greater things than that.” Believing opened the door to greater things.

But what does it mean to believe? To believe in someone always involves entrusting something to them—something of value. When we believe in Jesus, we entrust ourselves to him. That is what Nathanael did. He entrusted his future, his reputation – his very self – to Jesus.

But why can’t a person do that once and, as long as he really means it, be done with it? The reason has to do with how God made us. We are bigger on the inside than on the outside. Humans are so vast, so complex that each of us, to borrow a line from John Donne, is “a little world made cunningly”—a world large enough to hold belief and unbelief at the same time. As Dallas Willard once said, “Perhaps the hardest things for sincere Christians to come to grips with is the level of real unbelief in their own life.”^[1]

When we trust Christ, a beachhead is established in that world, but there remains a lot of territory within us – a Promised Land – for us to conquer and take for Christ. We conquer, and more than conquer, by faith. Faith is the victory that overcomes that world, too (see 1 John 5:4). A believer’s life work is to bring the territory of their own souls into submission to Christ.

It happens like this: I discover yet again that a region of this little, cunningly made world that is me – that region could be work, or politics, or relationships – has not been brought under Christ’s rule. It’s clear that Christ does not control this part of my life because fear, anger, lust, or greed have a base there. That part of my life needs to be conquered, entrusted to Christ, and set apart for his use. That is what being sanctified is about. And when every part of the world that is me is brought into submission to Christ, I will be, in Paul’s words, “sanctified wholly.”

But that only happens by trusting Christ, which is to say, by entrusting ourselves to him. No wonder St. Paul says (Romans 1:17, lit.) that “God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith.” Every step forward in the Christian life is taken by faith. Every step backward is the result of unbelief.

We need to move on in our survey. John 2 begins with Jesus’s mother, who was attending a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, which was only a few miles from where Jesus grew up. Jesus and his disciples were also invited. You may remember the story. The entire village is at the wedding feast, but the wine has run out, which is a disaster – a social embarrassment. Jesus’s mother asks him to help, which he does by miraculously transforming the water in six stone jars, each holding 20 to 30 gallons, into wine.

Because our narrow focus on faith does not allow us to go into the details of this great story, we need to skip down to John’s summary of the event in verse 11: “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

Now, wait a minute. Didn’t the disciples already believe in him? Of course, they did. Andrew was convinced that he had found the Messiah. Philip told Nathaniel that he and his pals had found the one about whom the Old Testament speaks. Nathaniel believed and confessed Jesus to be the Son of God. Clearly, they had believed already, but here they are believing again. Faith in Jesus in not a for-once-and-for-all thing. It is a for-once-and-for-always thing.

Let’s read down a little further. Jesus has just cleansed the temple (2:12-16), which is to say, he has driven out the merchants and put a temporary stop to the corrupt practices of the high priest and his associates. Many people were glad to see Jesus do this. A group known as the Essenes would not even worship at the temple because they believed it had been defiled. Some of the Pharisees, like Nicodemus, were sickened by these clerical abuses.

But some very powerful people were not glad at all. The people who benefitted from the temple trade demanded proof (v. 18) of Jesus’s authority to act in this way. The proof Jesus offered was this: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (2:19)

John says that Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. The disciples remembered these words after Jesus rose from the dead. And note what John says in verse 22. “Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” This is the third time after they had become Jesus’s disciples that one or more of them is said to have believed – and this was three years after they started following him. The Christian life is “by faith from first to last.”

Now, let’s read verses 23-25, where we learn something further about Jesus and trust. “Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. ²⁴ But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. ²⁵ He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.”

John says that many of the people who saw what Jesus was doing believed in (or into) his name – they believed in him. That’s what it’s all about, right? “Faith from first to last.” But look at what John says next: “But Jesus would not entrust himself to them.”

The word translated “entrust” is the same word we have seen repeatedly translated as “believe”. They believed in Jesus, but Jesus (literally) “did not believe himself to them.” Apparently, it is not just our faith in Jesus that matters. It is also his faith in us. The key to eternal life is our faith in Jesus. The key to power in life is Jesus’s faith in us. When we entrust ourselves to Jesus, we are redeemed. When he entrusts himself to us, we are empowered.

This passage helps us understand what it means to believe. It is more than reciting a sinner’s prayer. It is more than subscribing to a theological doctrine. Jesus’s belief, or in this case, lack of belief, was expressed in the choice not to entrust himself to people. Our belief in Jesus is expressed in the choice to entrust ourselves to him.

What does that look like? It looks like our initial confession of Jesus as Lord when we first came to him and entrusted ourselves to his care. But it also looks like our choice to obey him when times get tough, and we are not sure if things will work out the way we hope. It looks like the day we get bad news from the doctor and entrust our body and our health to Jesus. It looks like the day we admit we are caught in a sinful habit, trust him to help us overcome it, and then dare to do what he says. It looks like the time when we forgive someone just because Jesus taught us to do so, even though it feels unfair and dangerous.

Do you see? Trusting Jesus is a way of life for the Christ-follower. When we see an opportunity, when we suffer an injustice, when we are in need, we entrust ourselves to Jesus.

And here is the thing: When we entrust ourselves to him, he entrusts himself to us. When that happens, we, like the Apostle Paul, experience “his energy … powerfully working in [us]” (Col. 1:29).

Now, I conclude with two reminders and a challenge. The first reminder is this: trusting Jesus is not a for once-and-for-all thing but a for-once-and-for-always thing. You and I never get past the need to trust Jesus. The other reminder is this: trusting Jesus always involves entrusting something important – our salvation, our health, our reputation, the wellbeing of our family – to him.

Now, the challenge is to do that today, either for the first time (if you are new to all this) or for the ten thousandth time. If you don’t know how to do that in your situation, please talk to me after the service or to some Christian friend whose life you admire.

---

[1] This is, I believe, a direct quote from Renovation of the Heart.

Palm Sunday: Why Is It Called That?

This is the time of the year that churches celebrate Palm Sunday and commemorate what is popularly known as the “Triumphal Entry.” What is the origin of Palm Sunday, and why is it significant?

The original Palm Sunday took place a few decades into the current era in Jerusalem. It was just days before one of Israel’s most important holidays. The nation was about to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, starting with Passover, which commemorated Israel’s independence from Egypt.

At the time of the first Palm Sunday, Israel was again under foreign occupation. The celebration of Israel’s erstwhile independence, and the national fervor it engendered, increased the possibility of revolt. Thousands of Roman troops were transferred to Jerusalem for the duration of the festival, and the head of the occupational government himself, the procurator Pontius Pilate, would come to provide the military with immediate oversight.

All this explains why, in St. Mark’s Gospel we read, “They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid.” Entering Jerusalem during the Festival, with crowds of people hailing Jesus as king, was incredibly risky. That is why, in St. Luke’s account, we read that some people in the crowd begged Jesus to make his followers be quiet. That kind of talk could get them all killed.

Tens of thousands of festivalgoers began arriving in Jerusalem earlier in the week. When they heard that Jesus was on his way, many of them went out of the city to greet him. John’s Gospel tells us that “They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Blessed is the King of Israel!’”

The imagery here is familiar. When a king, long out of the country (usually because he was engaged in some kind of military campaign) returned, word would spread through the cities and the countryside. People would gather gifts and flowers – in this case, palm branches – and line the sides of the road, chanting praises and singing hymns. At the king’s appearance, they would shout and cheer. When the king passed, they would join his company and follow him back into the city.

It is likely Jesus entered Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate. Interestingly, on this same day across the city, thousands of lambs were being brought through the Sheep Gate to be tested for purity and then offered as sacrifices to God in the Passover. It may be that the lambs of God and the one John the Baptist called the Lamb of God entered the city simultaneously.

Before he began his descent into the city, Jesus found a young donkey to ride. He was intentionally fulfilling the role of the Messiah King, of whom the prophet Zechariah had written, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentleand riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The Roman soldiers who patrolled the area would miss the significance of the donkey; some of the Jewish festivalgoers would not.

The fact that he chose a donkey – and a colt, at that – meant that he was not coming to make war; he was coming to bring peace. Had he ridden into Jerusalem on a white charger, the implication would have been entirely different.

St. John writes that the disciples did not understand the significance of what was happening or of their role in it. They were at the very hinge of history and didn’t know it. That sounds a lot like us. We never fully understand the things that happen to us or our role in them.

What this means is that we cannot even gauge our own successes and failures accurately. Sometimes when we think we’ve failed, God totally disagrees. Sometimes he disagrees when we think we’ve succeeded.

The triumphal entry was not a triumph because it led to power, but because it fulfilled God’s will. Though it did not bring about dominance, it set the stage for forgiveness and prepared the way for the resurrection. That is reason enough to call it a triumph.

Old Dogs and Old Tricks

My wife and I finished up at our beloved church at the end of October, then spent two months in Texas to be near our son and his family. It was a good time. We got to see our 2-year-old granddaughter nearly every day. I was able to do some writing – a novel I have been thinking about for the last few years.

When we left our church, where I have served for 35 years, I was congratulated on my retirement hundreds of times. Again and again and again, I told people, “We are not retiring. We’re just seeing what God has for us next.” Karen and I were completely happy with the idea of being part of a church and helping out in whatever ways we could, though if God directed us into something else, we would be happy about that, too.

While we were in Texas, a denominational official reached out to me to see if I might be interested in being the lead pastor at his home church. I told him that Karen and I would be happy to explore the idea and learn if God might be leading in this direction. We met with a search committee by Zoom and then, when we returned north, met with them in person. We have since met with the board, members of the finance committee, etc.

This weekend, we will meet the church family in a get-to-know-you affair, and on Sunday, I will preach. Afterward, the church family will decide whether or not to call us. If they do, we will be returning to pastoral ministry.

Things have changed since I first started pastoring in the early 1980s. I’m an old dog, and I’m not sure I can learn new tricks. Throw me a bone and I will still chase it. Command me to shake hands, and I’ll lift my paw. But don’t expect me to stand on my back legs and beg.

Karen and I have visited many churches over the past few months: Mennonite, Baptist, Christian Church, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and more. Since it did not look like we would be in a full-time ministry setting, we thought we would spend some time with our extended Christian family before settling down and finding our niche.

During that time, I’ve seen more than one cool pastor. They dress cool. Their vocabulary is cool. They are not preachers anymore but communicators. But I am a preacher, an expositor. I still wear a blazer on Sundays and parse Greek verbs. I’ve only just learned to use a cell phone, for crying out loud. Will I be able to adapt?

I don’t expect to experience an Eliza Doolittle transformation or want one – at least, not in terms of ministry style. But I want to adapt where adaptation benefits the church and the honor of Christ. To recognize when that is the case requires wisdom, for which I ask God.

If you wouldn’t mind, would you ask God for me as I begin this next adventure? I will be profoundly grateful.

Whether Science or Theology, the Proof Is in the Pudding

Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, two of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, engaged in a decades-long disagreement over the nature of physical reality, and particularly over quantum mechanics. Einstein rejected Bohr’s idea of quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.”

Quantum entanglement is hard for us to understand or even talk intelligently about. The idea is that the state of one particle in an entangled pair – an electron, for example – continues to correlate with the other particle even after the physical connection between them has been severed.

Physicists still debate the cause of this strange connection, but recent technological advances have proved that it exists. Change the “spin” of an electron that is part of an entangled pair, and the spin of its partner is modified, regardless of the distance between the two particles.

The debate that Einstein and Bohr began still continues. Whenever I read about it, I cannot help but think about a different kind of “entanglement”: that of Jesus and his people. We find evidence of this mysterious connection in the Gospels, in Acts, and in the Epistles.

The idea of a bond between Jesus and his people goes back to Jesus’s own words. A well-known example comes from teaching Jesus gave shortly before his crucifixion. Regarding future judgment, Jesus said “the king” would separate individuals into two groups, one blessed and the other cursed.

The king tells the blessed that they fed him when he was hungry, clothed him when he was naked, and visited him when he was sick. He tells the cursed that they ignored him when he was hungry, naked, and sick. People in both groups claim that they never saw the king hungry, naked, or sick, so how could they have done, or failed to do, these things for him?

Jesus’s answer was, “Whatever you have done” – or not done – “for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done” – or not done – “for me.” Apparently, Jesus and his people are “entangled.”

This receives further confirmation from an event in St. Paul’s life. He had violently persecuted Jesus’s followers and was on his way to arrest and imprison even more of them. That is when Jesus appeared to Paul and demanded to know why he was persecuting him. Even though Jesus was in heaven, Paul’s violence against his people was equivalent to persecuting Jesus himself.

The Apostle Paul takes this much further. He claims that Christ’s death affected his people’s death too. When he rose from the dead, his people also rose. When he appears in the last days, “we also will appear with him.” Paul sees an inviolable connection between Jesus and his people.

This means for Paul, as it meant for Jesus, that doing something for or to a Christ-follower has a corresponding effect on Jesus himself. So, in his first letter to the Church at Corinth, he argues that “when you sin against your brothers and sisters … you sin against Christ.” This claim echoes Jesus’s own words, “Whatever you have done for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done for me.”

Paul parses this out in his theological teaching. “…we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.” It was with this idea of connection in mind that Paul wrote, “the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men,” and “through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

Theologians are as divided about how this connection works as physicists are divided over the principles that govern quantum entanglement. What the world needs is experimental proof. Technology has provided such proof when it comes to quantum entanglement; Christians need to do the same thing when it comes to demonstrating the Christ connection.

Conviction of the reality of quantum entanglement did not come from Niels Bohr’s arguments but from John Bell’s experiments, and later by those performed by the 2022 Nobel Laureates. The proof was in the quantum pudding. Likewise, the reality of the Christ connection will be proved by people who live the life rather than just talk about it.

Judas and the Roots of Betrayal

People have wondered what motivated Judas to betray Jesus for almost two millennium. There has been much speculation, from scholars and lay people alike, but it has been just that: speculation. However, we do know of two things in Judas’s life that must have played a role in what he later became.

St. John wrote that Judas, who was the apostolic band’s chief financial officer, used to help himself to what was in the treasury. I doubt that Judas thought of himself as stealing. He probably told himself that it was just for a day or so but, somehow, he never managed to pay back the money.  Perhaps the first time he helped himself to the petty cash he was in a tight spot; he owed taxes, or something of the sort. He took a little money, meaning to pay it back in a day or two. He wasn’t trying to be secretive, at least that is what he told himself; it was just too small a thing to mention. 

But, of course, something happened, he wasn’t able to pay back the money, and he felt uncomfortable mentioning it to the Lord. The next time was a little easier. Still, he intended to pay it back—all of it.  He wasn’t stealing; it wasn’t like that.  But he never did get around to paying back the account and, after a while, it became clear that he never would.

He must have trembled when he heard Jesus tell a story, which St. Luke informs us he told his disciples rather than the crowds, about a manager who misused his Master’s money. One can almost see Judas turn pale as he listened to the story. Did Jesus know? Was he going to audit the funds and uncover Judas’ crime?

That was the first thing: taking money without asking. The second was the increasing ease with which Judas played the hypocrite. Surely, he had kissed Jesus – the customary greeting in that culture – and called him “Rabbi” many times prior to the night of his betrayal. How long ago, one must wonder, had his love for Jesus grown cold?

A short time before the betrayal, a woman spent an entire and very expensive bottle of ointment in anointing Jesus. The gospels tell us that a number of the disciples complained that it was wasteful. The ointment should have been sold and the money spent on the poor, they argued. St. John tells us that it was Judas who started that kind of talk, and not because he cared about the poor, but because he had been taking money out of the treasury. It was after Jesus rebuked him that he made the choice to betray Jesus.

The combination of a wrong hidden and repeated, and a hypocrisy growing ever larger, placed Judas on the evil path that brought him to betray his friend and leader. His sin – it needn’t have been stealing; it could have been adultery or lying or any one of a thousand other wrongs – and especially his dishonesty, prepared him to do the unthinkable.

Should we feel sorry for Judas?  Perhaps, but there are other lessons for us here. Bury a sin in your heart, hide it from the sight of others, add rationalizations to fertilize it, then irrigate it with the sweet water of blaming others, and it will sprout up like Jack’s beanstalk; only rather than growing up to the heavens it will grow down into hell.

Among the long list of traitors the world has seen, Judas ranks first. The acts of treachery by Alcibiades, Brutus, Cassius, Benedict Arnold, Alger Hiss, the Rosenburgs, and Aldrich Ames all pale in comparison to what Judas did. Yet God took this most monstrous act of betrayal and used it to bring about the greatest good humanity has ever known.

People sometimes say that Judas had to betray Jesus; it was predestined. That is the wrong way to look at it. What Judas did was Judas’s doing, not God’s. But what God did turned history’s most appalling betrayal on its head, transforming it into humanity’s most glorious blessing. That is how good he is at being God.