No Shortcuts

 "And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's."
And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." (Mark 8:31-38)

     Suffering. Rejection. Death.
    
     This is what awaited Jesus. Beyond that was the promise of the resurrection, but the only way you get a resurrection is to undergo the death that must precede it. Peter was looking for the shortcut to glory. Surely the Christ of God would not suffer those things!
     
Jesus called this attitude Satanic. It was a posture of the heart that elevated man's self-preservation instincts above the purposes of God. He then told His disciples (and the crowds that followed Him around, hoping for another free miracle-meal) that if you wanted to follow Him, grab a cross and start marching towards your own suffering, rejection, and death.

     If we think we can follow Him and avoid the tragedy that our own rebellious and self-focused lifestyles have brought on this planet, if we think we can enjoy the resurrection without the cross, we are fooling ourselves. And declaring publicly that we are ashamed of Jesus. We are disassociating ourselves from Him when we look for the easy way or get angry when God doesn't do things the way we think He should. We think we know how this story should go. We want to correct the Author for what surely must be a mistake. But we only see a very small part of the plot. We are but a sentence in a paragraph on a single page in one chapter of an epic Story. Trust the Author. The ending is worth it. "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." Romans 8:18-21 https://www.bible.com/bible/100/ROM.8.18-21"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." Romans 8:18-21 https://www.bible.com/bible/100/ROM.8.18-21(Romans 8:18-21)
     
     Father, forgive me when I set my mind on my own way and not Yours. When the evil and suffering of this world tempt me to think You are not good and You're not in control, help me to remember what it cost You to make things right when Jesus returns at "the renewal of all things." Though we bear the cross now in this evil age, there is a resurrection coming. Grant me the grace to endure and not lose heart. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!

Stooping is the New Standing

 The following is an excerpt from my personal journal dated July 4, 2015.

“…but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.” (Luke 4:11-12, ESV)

     The resurrection of Jesus Christ still seems like an “idle tale” to many “...and they did not believe.” In our cynical, reality-obsessed culture, we gravitate towards the gritty. We are suspicious of happy endings. Real life isn’t tied up neatly with pretty ribbons and bows. The resurrection seems to us like a fairy-tale finish to an otherwise powerful and poignant tragedy. It’s too good to be true, so we dismiss it as false.

     The disciples apparently felt the same way. Jesus was dead. That was real. They saw it. They knew it to be true. It must have seemed a cruel joke in poor taste for these women to come barging in with wild, “idle tales” of a risen Jesus. Yet there was one man among them who dared hope their words were true, enough to get up and go see for himself. 

     Peter’s last encounter with Jesus ended badly. Betrayal. Vehement denial that he even knew Jesus. Cowardly self-protection at the expense of His Lord. Worst of all, Jesus had known him better than he knew himself. He told Peter he would do this.

     But He also said, “When you return…” He knew Peter would deny Him, yet offered him hope that there was a way back. So when Jesus was killed on the cross, that hope had died. Jesus was gone and Peter never got the chance to make it right again before He was killed.

     Until today. If He was alive, then maybe… He got up and literally ran to the tomb. And here’s the part I personally love in the text, the specific word picture Luke uses: “stooping and looking in.” To stoop means to bow down, to get low. It means to make yourself smaller so you can enter. It’s a humbling of self. Had Peter refused to make himself lower, all he would have seen was the stony outside of a garden tomb. But “stooping and looking in, he saw…” There is a whole different perspective awaiting the one who will stoop and look in. You have to want it bad enough. Peter did.

     Ordinarily, it would be nothing special for a person to bend down in order to see into a small, low space. But there was more going on inside Peter. The action was pregnant with spiritual implication. Peter, whose pride and self-preserving instincts wouldn’t let him risk his own safety to identify with Jesus just a few nights earlier, now had to lower himself to peer into a tomb to know if there was any hope for him beyond his own death.

     Did he see Jesus? No, and that’s a good thing. If Jesus had been in the tomb, then all hope for redemption was lost – for Peter and for us. Instead, he saw the shell of empty grave clothes laying there, no body to fill them, as if to shout, “I couldn’t hold Him! He is too strong! I was no match for Jesus!”

     Maybe the reason the story seems like an “idle tale” to so many is because they will not stop to look in for themselves. Maybe they are afraid of what they will see if they do. If they dare get low in front of all their peers and take a hard, honest look inside that tomb, it might really be empty. And if it really is empty, then Jesus might actually be alive. And if Jesus rose from the dead, then He has claims on their lives that they cannot shake. No, it’s too risky. Better to stay home with the scoffers. It’s safer that way.

     Safer. At least until the sky cracks wide, and that Risen Jesus returns in triumph to claim His place as rightful King over all. The those who rejected Him, who refused to stoop and lower themselves, who dared not look inside for fear of what they would – or would not  -- find there, they will cry out for the mountains to fall on them and for the rocks to cover them. Anything to escape the penetrating gaze of that “Idle Tale” turned “True Story.” For them there will be nothing left but the wrath of a Holy God who did everything in His power to save them except force them to love Him.

     For the Christ follower, stooping is the new standing. It is a permanent position of humility before a glorious Savior. Jesus stooped far lower than He asks any of us to do. Yet stoop we must. Lower ourselves we must. If we want to see for ourselves what is true and live a life of freedom, hope, and victory, then we must do it from the stooping position.

Following Jesus... at a distance.

Read this yesterday in the Grand Story from Luke 22 and it caught my eye...

"Then they seized [Jesus] and led him away, bringing him into the high priest's house, and Peter was following at a distance." (Luke 22:54)

Peter was "following at a distance." What does that mean? 

Peter was following Jesus, no doubt about it, and in every sense of the word. He had devoted the last three years of his life to becoming a Christ follower. He had left his career, left the comforts of home, left the security of a steady paycheck to follow a rabbi from Nazareth of all places. He was all in, no question.

But when Jesus was arrested and led away to be tried by a kangaroo court and executed, Peter followed "at a distance." By putting some space between himself and this now very unpopular Jesus, he hoped to escape notice, to blend in. "Aren't you one of his followers, too?" The question must had made his blood turn to ice in his veins even as he warmed himself by the fire that night. "Who, me? No... no, I'm not, I... I don't even know the guy."

Following Jesus is not what people do who want to blend in. It's not where you go to be under the radar. It frequently places you in the cross-hairs in the war of cultures. This is the guy who said, "Don't think that I came to bring peace; I came to bring a sword that will divide even families against each other."(Matt. 10:34) All over this one issue: who He really is. 

Because if He is who He said He is, then we are obligated to take seriously that what He says is true. And He makes some pretty bold and unpopular claims on our lives, loves, dreams, desires, money, relationships... If He is who He claimed to be, He has the right to tell us how to live. And that's not popular. Following a guy like that can get you crucified.

As a result, many Christ followers can find themselves "following at a distance." When the predominant views of the culture we live in pinch us between following Jesus faithfully and falling into line with the majority, the temptation to blend in can be strong. Will we try to slide in unnoticed next to those who warm themselves around the fires of sophistication and enlightenment, or will we fearlessly but humbly acknowledge Christ as King, and His Word as the unchangeable authority over every area of life?

Acceptance and approval have been a distraction for the modern church for decades now, and is to blame for much of its anemia. The Bible's unflinching stance on controversial issues like marriage, sexuality, parenting, and abortion (just to name a few) makes it pretty near impossible to court the approval of the culture and maintain faithfulness to Christ. In fact, Jesus promised His disciples that to follow Him was to invite the hatred of pretty much the rest of the world. (John 15:18-19) 2000 years of worldwide persecution, which continues to escalate right up to this very day, would prove Him right. To put it bluntly, the cross just isn't cool. It wasn't then, it isn't now, and it never will be. 

Every time we distance ourselves from Christ by backing off what He said to make it more palatable, or water down the scriptures to avoid being vilified in the press, or remain silent on an issue that demands we stand up and speak the truth even at great cost, it is a betrayal. We are abandoning Jesus to suffer alone at precisely the point we are called to "share in the fellowship of His sufferings."(Phil.3:10, NASB)

"And immediately while [Peter] was speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord... And he went out and wept bitterly." (Luke 22: 61-62)

The story does have a happy ending. Jesus rises from the dead. Peter is forgiven and restored and reaffirmed by Jesus. Later, he would be crucified himself for his refusal to ever follow at a distance again. But even so... I bet he never, ever forgot that look from Jesus that night. In fact, I'd wager it was precisely the memory of that look, seared into his mind and burned into his heart, that brought him to his own cross finally. And into the Kingdom where he could see that face again, and see those eyes, but with a different expression altogether.