When they dropped me off at my dorm in Dallas, I’m fairly sure than neither my parents nor I had any idea of what was actually happening that day. For though I went home for holidays many times after I moved away to college, it was never quite the same.
At the seasoned age of nineteen, I began my first church job, working as a summer youth director in Baytown where I lived in a rather rickety garage apartment on stilts behind the associate pastor’s parsonage. And the following year, I moved further down the bay to do the same in Texas City. Two years later I was ordained as a deacon, just days before heading to Europe to work in Slavic missions behind the Iron Curtain.
Thus began a half century of ministry within The United Methodist Church that has included pastoring nine churches, administering a church-owned college, working on a national church newspaper, as well as teaching in both denominational and ecumenical seminaries. Ministry has taken me across the world, not just to Europe but to the Caribbean, Africa, Southeast Asia, and even Siberia, as well as to more church conferences than I’m sure the Geneva Convention allows. I even hold the record for the shortest tenure on the cabinet ever within our conference, going to serve my present church before I actually moved into my new office in the conference building.
More significantly, my wife and I were married in her United Methodist church in Arkansas and both of our children were baptized in UM churches where I was serving when they were born. We’ve lived in eleven parsonages, as well as two or three apartment complexes and even the Ronald McDonald House in Houston in which we served as the founding managers just to help make ends meet. All until we bought the first house of our own at the age of sixty, much to the amusement of our realtor who quickly discovered we knew nothing about home ownership. But in every place, it has been the church which has provided for that roof over our heads, one way or the other.
Across the years we have also met many incredible church folks whose faith and love not only inspired us, but also carried us through challenges and hard times. They’ve loved on us in immeasurable ways and we in turn have both celebrated and cried with them. All of which is why it is difficult indeed to walk away from this denomination around which most of our lives have revolved for the last five decades.
But I also know it is time. For though Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the church I joined long ago is sadly not. After fifty-four years of a bold experiment in theological pluralism, in fact, it is now clear that the grand notion of a big tent when it comes to defining our beliefs did not work, as those embracing differing views on “essentials” (to use a Wesleyan term) have slowly but surely drifted further and further apart. And so, for an evangelical Wesleyan such as myself, it now feels as though I no longer have a home in The United Methodist Church.
After preaching my last sermon as a United Methodist pastor thus on Christmas Day, on December 31 I will no longer be a part of the denomination to which I have belonged since the age of 15 when the UMC itself was formed. And despite my sometimes lover’s quarrel with that body, I’m certain it will be a poignant goodbye indeed. For like that day in Dallas five decades ago, I’m leaving home once more, and I know it will never be quite the same again.
Blessedly, however, on the following day, I will begin a new chapter as an elder in the Global Methodist Church, a fresh expression of the Wesleyan witness which I believe to be a better fit for my own biblical and theological understandings. And since I can’t actually find the word “retirement” anywhere in the Bible, I hope to keep on serving in the GMC however I can, albeit at a slightly less frantic pace.
As we stand at this crossroads, thus, I wish my friends in The United Methodist Church only the best in their journey. And following the admonition in Jeremiah 6.16, my prayer is that all of us may do our best to ask for the ancient paths, to discover where the good way is, and to walk in it, finding rest for our souls indeed.
For sometimes you really do have to leave home in order to find it.
It felt a little like watching the odometer turn over in my car. For when my watch hit “1,461 days” this morning it seemed momentous to me indeed. Because for four years now—through hurricanes, heat waves, and hotel parking lots—I’ve not missed a single day walking at least five miles, usually six or seven. And hitting that four-year mark on my streak, going almost 9,000 miles or so now, has been a little like finishing college and earning a bachelor’s degree in walking.
To be sure, it’s only been by the grace of God. For those that know me well will probably agree that I’m not the most athletic person around and getting up early to walk before the heat comes on does not exactly come naturally to me. But then the streak too has had a way of self-perpetuating itself, joined by my smart—sometimes smart-aleck–watch, which has taunted me with messages like “You’re usually farther along by now…”
In the end, however, it’s all been a reminder about the power of a habit. And in that regard, it’s not just our physical health that needs consistency, but it’s our mental, relational and spiritual conditions, as well. The pandemic, for instance, broke the pattern of physically coming to church for some folks, and they’ve never quite gotten it back. And others have unfortunately abandoned such spiritual disciplines as spending time in the scriptures with God each day.
Some twenty years ago, however, Eugene Peterson found a time-tested tonic for staying strong in our faith in what he called an “old dog-eared songbook,” that portion of the Psalms, chapters 120-134, known as the Songs of Ascents. For it’s believed that these fifteen psalms were sung by pilgrims as they ascended the road to Jerusalem to attend the festivals that were held there some three times a year, and similarly, they may have been chanted by the Levite priests who climbed the sacred steps to serve at the Temple itself.
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains,” one of them begins, “where does my help come from?” And another starts simply by saying, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD.’” And still a third reminds us that “those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” They are short passages, to be sure, but all of them are hopeful. And all of them remind us that we too have been called to be pilgrims in this world, whether we ever actually go up to Jerusalem ourselves or not.
Maybe that’s why Peterson entitled his classic book simply, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. For that’s what it takes to faithfully follow the Lord in a frightfully fickle time indeed. It’s not about running like a graceful gazelle, in fact, but simply about putting one foot in front of the other and plodding on, even when you don’t particularly feel inspired to do so.
Tomorrow morning, thus, I’ll hit the pavement again, though I’m also going to think about some new routines as well for the year ahead. For though keeping a streak going can be a powerful motivator in itself, remembering just where you are headed can similarly put us on the right track. And in that respect, a long obedience is not really for just four years… it’s for a lifetime.
You never get used to it, or at least you never should. For the taking of even one life ought always to be a tragedy, and the kind of murder marathons that have marked so many of our cities in recent years has only multiplied the equation. But when a mass shooting involves children, such as what happened on Tuesday in Uvalde, there is nothing left to call it other than pure evil.
To be certain, even with no clue yet as to a motive, it has been said that the shooter must have been mentally ill, and that may indeed have been the case. And other voices instantly pinned the blame on those who manufacture and sell automatic weapons and other guns in this country, a sentiment I can share at least in part, though strict gun laws in several states don’t seem to have curtailed their misuse in those places either.
We could likewise lament a culture that has downgraded the critical importance of families, particularly in-the-home fathers, pushed religious or moral beliefs out of the public square almost entirely, and that daily celebrates character assassination in a cyber universe that looks more like the old Wild West than any brave new world. For coupled with an almost complete loss of civility elsewhere, the result has been a society that is increasingly both sad and even sociopathic, a world that clearly remains in rebellion against the One who made it.
Still, what we saw in Uvalde was something far worse, I think. For this was a manifestation of the same de-animating force that arose long ago in Egypt when a ruthless pharaoh decreed that all the male babies of their Hebrew slaves be thrown into the Nile and drowned. It’s likewise the same satanic spirit that appeared when a jealous king in Jerusalem ordered the slaughter of the babies of Bethlehem, one of whom was said to have been born the new King of the Jews.
And it manifests the same murderous impulse that led to the intentional extermination of six million Jewish men, women, and children eighty years ago in Europe, as well as the shooting in cold blood of civilian women and children in Ukraine right now.
For in the end, evil doesn’t care about the age or innocence of its victims. It only seeks to serve itself and its master. Indeed, whether or not the shooter in Uvalde was “possessed” by the father of lies, it’s clear that he was one of his agents or recruits in the spiritual war that is raging all around us, even if we don’t quite see it.
All of which is why in our baptismal vows we intentionally ask if converts to the faith will renounce evil in whatever form that it may present itself, resisting the devil and all his vainglory. For unfortunately, the road to spiritual ruin is one that all too many seem obliviously happy to walk upon this day. Deciding to go in the other direction is thus a constant conscious choice each of us must make.
Our hearts are broken today as we think of the children whose lives were so prematurely snuffed out, as well as their classmates who will forever bear the scar of having been at Robb Elementary on Tuesday and witnessed their own massacre of the innocents. And we similarly grieve for the parents and families of those who died, knowing there is nothing harder on this earth than for a mother or father to have to bury their child. We can’t begin to absorb the hurt that will now live in their hearts. But we can cry alongside them and commend them to an eternal Father who knows exactly what it is to have lost His Only Son to the evils of this world.
And we can continue to pray: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” For His really is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever. Even on sad days such as these.
It’s an odd word to modern ears, but it all goes back to the original Roman calendar which divided the year into ten months, beginning with one dedicated to the Roman god of war, Mars. The days were then counted down in relation to the lunar phase of the moon using three markers: Kalends, which came with the first phrase or new moon, Nones, denoting the first quarter moon (usually on the fifth or seventh day of the month) and Ides, which marked the full moon, falling either on the 13th or 15th day.
The Ides of March was thus initially the first full moon of a new year, or March 15. Romans knew how to party, of course, and so the day was generally celebrated down on the banks of the Tiber River with food, wine, and music. And in the era before the Empire in Rome, the Ides also marked the beginning of a new political year in which the two annually-elected consuls took office as the leaders of the duly constituted Republic.
Not long after changing the calendar, however–modestly naming it after himself, we might note–Julius Caesar also decided to change his own terms of office, becoming the Dictator Perpetuus, or “dictator for life.” And it was that monarchial grasp for power that led a group of Roman senators to try to take their Republic back by stabbing Julius Caesar to death at a meeting of the Senate itself on March 15, 44 B.C.
It’s said that he was stabbed some 23 times, in fact, by over sixty conspirators, but apparently only one of the wounds proved to be the fatal one, giving Caesar ample time to register his shock at the betrayal of even his friend Brutus. And so forever after, at least as envisioned in Shakespeare’s words, a soothsayer’s prophetic warning to Caesar has linked the day with the deed: “Beware the Ides of March.”
Given what has transpired over the past few weeks in the Ukraine, it is now clear that there is another Caesar on the world stage, whose brutality and grasp for power likewise seems to know no bounds. The task of those who believe thus is to fervently pray that Vladimir Putin will either listen to God, or be dealt with by God who is hearing the cries of His people, not just in Ukraine, but also in Russia which has fallen under Putin’s cruel grasp.
If I were Putin, however, I think I might take a lesson from history on this Ides of March 2022 as to what eventually happens to all dictators. For the phrase which some have attributed to Brutus (though he probably never actually said it) is nonetheless true: Sic Semper Tyrannis. Thus Always to Tyrants.
It’s long been my practice to write a new poem for each Advent season. With the experiences of 2021 still fresh in all of our minds, here’s my effort for this year:
(As we come to the 400th anniversaryof the first Thanksgiving in 1621, I have updated one of my earliest posts from nine years ago to reflect on just how amazing the journey of those Pilgrims truly was.)
Despite the old saying, getting there is often not half the fun at all. For while everyone knows at least some version of the story, what is often forgotten is that most of the Separatists who came to America to establish a religious colony here didn’t actually start in England at all. Rather, they began their historic voyage in Holland, where many had fled because of opposition to their religious beliefs in their homeland. Leaving the rest of their congregation and even their weeping and praying pastor behind, they boarded a ship called the Speedwell in Delfthaven, Holland, on July 22, 1620, sailing for four days to Southampton, England, where they met up with a companion ship called the Mayflower which had just come down from London.
That ship had a number of other passengers from England whom the Pilgrims did not really know–some were friends and others, simply investors that had become interested in the voyage while the Pilgrims had been doing an early version of crowd-sourcing to raise enough money for it. Like a lot of other church fundraising projects, however, the Pilgrims fell a bit short of meeting all of the expenses, and so they had to sell off most of their oil and butter–the only real assets they had–before they could leave Southampton.
They shoved off for America on August 5, but they only got a short way into the English Channel before being forced to land at Dartmouth (the English town, not the American college) because the Speedwell had sprung a leak. It took a couple of weeks to fix the ship, but on August 24, 1620, they finally started back on their voyage. And this time they got nearly 300 miles from Lands End in Cornwall out into the Atlantic before the Speedwell began to take on water once more.
They turned back again, thus, landing in Plymouth where it was finally determined that the Speedwell was not seaworthy enough to make the clearly dangerous cross-Atlantic voyage, and that further repairs would push them well beyond the safe season for sailing. At that point, twenty passengers had already had their fill of adventure and decided to just go back home. But the remaining dozen or so passengers and cargo were transferred from the Speedwell over to the somewhat larger Mayflower, which finally put out to sea by itself on September 6 with 102 passengers on board, three of whom were pregnant women, along with a crew of about 30.
Despite the overcrowding, the first half of the trip went well, with good winds and weather. One of the pregnant women, Elizabeth Hopkins, had her baby, whom they named Oceanus. But the smooth sailing came to an end about a month into the voyage when the little ship–just 25 feet wide and 106 feet long–was hit by so many storms and crosswinds that it began to leak as well. One of the main beams of the ship bowed and cracked, and they had to use a great iron screw to try to raise it back into place. Five of the passengers on board, including a young boy named William Button, died before they ever reached shore.
Finally, however, after going some 2,750 miles at an average speed of just two miles an hour, they spotted a spit of land which turned out to be Cape Cod. And there, on November 11, 1620, they finally landed, settling in for a hard winter in which 45 more of the original 102 passengers perished. It’s no wonder thus that when the survivors finished their first full year they were ready to give thanks in that celebrated feast with the Native Americans who had helped them make it that far.
But whatever happened to the Speedwell, you may wonder? Back in England it was repaired and fifteen years later, in 1635, it finally made the trip to Virginia with 59 people on board, including the owner and captain of that ship, a man named John Thomas Chappell. I know of him because he was one of my direct ancestors. Indeed, some will say that he set the family pattern when he missed sailing into history with the Mayflower, and in some ways, we’ve all been missing the boat ever since.
On the other hand, maybe it’s not so much about getting into the history books as it is simply being faithful to whatever task that God may place before you. For if your life has ever seemed like a rocky voyage, you’ve probably figured out that in the end, it’s all pure grace anyway. Whatever journey in life we may be on, in fact, the only thing that really matters is that we get there with God through grace. Our sails may split and our mast may creak and even break. Just like on the Mayflower, and later in the new colony, some will die but others will be born. And as was the case with the Speedwell, we may not get to our destination just exactly when we were planning to.
If we stay the course, however, and stay in love with God and in love with those around us, we will get there, I believe. For the truth is that it’s not the pace but the race that matters as we run with perseverance the course that has been marked out for us (Hebrews 12.1) Or to put it another way, the operative words for us as not “speed well” but “God speed.”
Just keep your eyes on the real Captain of our Faith. (Hint: his name isn’t Chappell.)
(The following appeared in this blog on September 11, 2018. I have updated it and share it again as we mark the twentieth anniversary of a solemn day indeed.)
I suspect that all of us over the age of 25 can well remember where we were when the first reports began to crackle over the radio. I had just dropped my wife off to teach for the day, in fact, and was headed back to my office when I heard the news of a terrible plane accident involving the World Trade Center in New York.
It sounded awful, to be sure, but when I got home and turned on the television it was even worse. For it wasn’t an accident at all, but a deliberate attack, confirmed when a second plane crashed into the second of those twin towers. Meanwhile, at her school near NASA, Julie noticed that Air Force fighter jets had been scrambled and were buzzing loudly overhead. And as the hours wore on, the full enormity began to flow over all of us as well. For September 11, 2001, was not just a day to remember, but a day that changed America forever.
If you’ve been on a plane recently, for instance, you will know just how much air travel morphed after that fateful day. For even with TSA Pre-Check—and there was no TSA before 9/11—it’s still much tighter. So no matter where you are going—to a conference, on a vacation, to see your grandchildren, or to meet old friends—no matter how hopeful or excited you may—there’s still that slight tingle of anxiety when you go through the line, isn’t there, still that reminder that our security in this world is never quite completely guaranteed. For indeed, we never really know when we too may be called to eternity, just as the people who got on those planes twenty years ago had no idea that it would be the last day of their lives on this earth either.
Likewise, that moment changed how we view good and evil, I think. For on 9/11 whatever innocence about humankind that we might still have had, whatever fancied ideas about the world that we might have yet indulged, whatever comfort we might have felt in our denial of the power of bad things to affect us, we were inextricably reminded that there is something very wrong in the world. Indeed, evil once more reared its ugly head and stared us down, face to face. For what 9/11 revealed is that evil not only exists–the “mystery of iniquity” as St. Paul called it in 1 Thessalonians 2.7—but that we live in conflict with spiritual forces of wickedness that are pledged to destroy us.
But what 9/11 also taught us was that even in the presence of pain and poignancy, of turmoil and tragedy, God is with us as well. For in the words of 1 Corinthians 15, we have not believed in vain, our faith is not futile, and it is not only for this life that we have hope in Christ at all. Such is not to minimize the fact that almost 3000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, of course, and countless more had their lives forever altered by the loss of their loved ones. But the hope we have is that God knew every one of them by name—just as He knows us– and eternal life did not end that day for any of them. For centuries ago, the tragedy of the cross was followed by the triumph of the empty tomb. And the good news is, it still is.
On this weekend of remembrance, take a moment to reflect back on where you were that morning that changed America. But just as importantly, ask yourself as well just where you are today when it comes to God. For if He isn’t your real security in life, the truth is, you haven’t got any at all.
“When Satan fell to earth, he fell in Kabul”—Oft-quoted Afghan proverb
No matter what your politics may be, the images coming out of Afghanistan this week have been horrendous. For the desperation demonstrated by the Afghans who flooded the airport runways in Kabul is all too palpable. And now some are reporting that Christians in that nation are fearing for their very lives at the hands of Taliban extremists.
All of which has made me think of the godliest man I have ever known, Christy Wilson. For born and raised in Tabriz, Iran, where his parents were American missionaries, from the age of five Christy’s calling from God was to take the gospel to a place where it had never gone before, the closed nation of Afghanistan, known to some as “the forbidden harvest.” But as missionaries were not allowed to enter, he found a back door in, that of becoming a teacher in a country where 97 percent of the population at the time couldn’t read or write.
Even with that enormous need, it still took four years from first applying to the Afghan Embassy in Washington before he finally received permission to go in 1951. And when he arrived, he felt the power of evil everywhere all around him. Nonetheless, Christy quickly made an impression on others—he would say God showed him favor—and soon he was the acting principal of a government high school, as well as teaching private English lessons to the Crown Prince, and conducting an English course for Afghan diplomats in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ordained during World War II to be a Presbyterian chaplain in the U.S. Navy, Christy and his wife Betty, who had started a school for the blind in Kabul, then started a small and secret house church in their home for other Christians who had come to teach or work with the U.N. agencies. And then in 1959, he heard that President Dwight D. Eisenhower (named for the evangelist Dwight Moody by his mother) was coming to Afghanistan on his Asian tour. And using a connection back in the States, Christy made a rather bold request: “Since a mosque has been built for the Muslim diplomats in Washington, on a reciprocal basis, we should have a church build here in Kabul for Christian diplomats.” And the President responded by presenting to the Afghan king that very request which was granted.
It took another ten years to raise the funds, provided by people from all over the world, and to construct the building but in 1970 the first and only evangelical Christian church on Afghan soil opened, with Christy Wilson as its pastor. Three years later, however, after a relatively peaceful forty-year reign of King Zahir Shah, everything rapidly changed. Christy and Betty were given three days’ notice to get out of the country, carrying only one small bag apiece after living there for 22 years. And then on July 14, 1973, soldiers, police, workmen and bulldozers showed up to destroy the church building itself, even digging down 12 feet belong the foundation looking for the “underground church” they had been told existed. Instead of opposing them, however, the congregation offered them tea and cookies.
Ironically, the mayor had been told that if the government touched that House of God that God would overthrow that government. And three days later, that prophecy came true, when the king’s cousin declared the end of the 227-year monarchy in a stunning coup d’état. Five years later, that government was toppled by a Communist coup, followed by the Russian invasion in 1979. And in the eyes of some Afghans, who are quick to see omens in events, the connection was clear: “Ever since our government destroyed that Christian Church, God has been judging our country.”
As for Christy and Betty, they ended up in Massachusetts at the same time that I did, in the fall of 1974, where–armed with a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Princeton, a doctoral degree from Edinburgh, and extra study at Columbia–he began teaching world evangelization at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. And there too, his quiet but fervent faith, as well as quick wit and sense of humor, made a difference. He made it his practice, for instance, each week to pray through the “facebook” that had photos of all the students, interceding for each person individually. (When students met him on campus for the first time, they would be surprised to hear a professor they had never met call them by name.) Indeed, Christy would pray with you anytime and anyplace and you never got out of his office without praying at least three times. He also established a prayer room on the campus and every day at noon, he and a band of students would unite in prayer for the peoples and nations of the world.
It became my privilege to be a part of those prayer sessions, as well as to be appointed a teaching fellow for Dr. Wilson, and the times we spent together are a treasured part of my memories. After graduation, I invited him once to a church I was serving in East Texas and after worship and lunch, my elementary aged son asked him if he would like to go out and fly a kite. I explained that Dr. Wilson was probably tired, and besides, it was January and not really the weather for that activity. But Christy, still wearing his suit, quickly got up, took Andy by the hand, and said, “let’s try.” And sure enough, the winds shifted, and that kite went as high as my son’s excitement and my admiration for the man with him.
Christy was invited to return to Kabul in 1991 for 23 days to work and pray with Christians there. And eight years later, he entered God’s eternal Kingdom after 78 years of providing to others a remarkable picture of what it means to serve God with both joy and power. If he were still on earth today, however, I am pretty clear what he would say about the current chaos in the country which he loved all of his life. “Let’s pray about it right now and see what God will do.”
As I watch those tragic images on television, thus, all I can do right now is pray as well, knowing that no one—not even the Taliban—is completely beyond God’s reach and power to change. But I also cannot think of that forbidden harvest and Kabul without remembering Christy.
It was a Selection Sunday like none before it. For in addition to the sixty-four college basketball teams that were chosen on March 14 to compete in the championship tournament, four additional teams were tapped by the NCAA to serve as potential “alternates” should any of those in the schedule have to drop out because of a Covid-19 outbreak. And though that didn’t happen with the first team that had to forfeit on only the second day, the plan is still that there will be no re-ordering of the brackets should another health disqualification occur. So if even a top-seed team cannot play at the last minute, their spot may go to an alternate that wasn’t even invited to the Big Dance in the first place.
Centuries ago, however, “Selection Day” meant something else to the ancient Hebrews. For according to Exodus 12.3, on the tenth day of the first month of Nisan (usually March to April sometime according to the Gregorian calendar), every Jewish male was instructed to pick out a lamb that would be the right size for his household to eat at Passover. And if a household was too small, they were instructed to join with another family and form what we might call in the language of our day, a Passover Pod.
Israelites could choose either a lamb or a goat, but the law of Moses specified that the animal in question should be a one-year old male without blemish or defect. Oddly enough, however, families often took the animal which they had selected into their homes or campsite until the fourteenth day of Nisan when they would be killed and eaten that evening for the Passover meal.
Why would they do so? In part it may have been for the family to have time to carefully examine the animal and make certain it had no disqualifying marks. For the thousands of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem for the required festival would more than likely not have brought their own livestock with them. Instead, upon entering the city, they would simply have made their way to the market place to pick a lamb from the flocks that the Sadducees, ever mindful of the business end of the Temple, had thoughtfully bred and raised for purchase.
But the custom perhaps had another purpose as well, namely, allowing observant Jews to more closely bond with the lamb that was to be offered up as a sacrifice for their own sins. For clearly, knowing the sacrifice personally couldn’t help but make it far more impactful.
All of which makes the Holy Week story even more intriguing. For if you do the math, what jumps out is that as the Passover lamb was killed on the Thursday of that festival that means that Jesus arrived into Jerusalem not just on what we’ve come to call Palm Sunday four days earlier, but specifically on “Lamb Selection Day.” And by doing so, the message He sent was fairly plain: “I am the Passover Lamb that can save you, so choose me!” Then as if to follow up, Jesus came to the Temple every day that week so that everyone interested could carefully look Him over and hear His claims.
It’s no wonder thus that the apostle Paul told the Corinthians that “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5.7) and the unknown composer of the Book of Hebrews similarly proclaimed that “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many” (Hebrews 9.28). Even at the very beginning of His public ministry, his cousin John the Baptist recognized who Jesus was when he saw Jesus passing by and told his own disciples, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1.36) And still later, the apostle Peter reminded others that they were indeed “redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Peter 1.19).
It makes me wonder a bit, thus, if in addition to waving palms each year at the beginning of Holy Week, we might just want to consider checking out the livestock as well on Palm Sunday. For even without an actual sheep or a goat to inspect, the days ahead are truly an appropriate time to come face to face with the claims and character of the Christ.
Never mind therefore how unprecedented this year’s NCAA March Madness with its teams in waiting is; when Jesus showed up on that ancient Lamb Selection Day in Jerusalem, it was clearly a moment that changed the entire world. What’s more, in those days between His Triumphal Entry and arrest, the “Final Four” came to have a very different meaning indeed.
(This post appears as well in the Spring issue of the Christ Church Community magazine.)
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