Today is Good Friday. It’s a day for people who believe in Jesus to pause and reflect for a minute. We take a day and set it aside for remembering. Remembering the person Jesus was. The life he lived. The death he died. And what it all means for me today.
Today isn’t Monday but this song spoke to me and I wanted to save it for today. So in this week’s Music Monday post we sit on Good Friday and consider the week behind us and the weekend in front of us.
Good Friday is the day all of my junk, pain, sadness, fear, frustration, wrongs, lies, betrayal, denial, every negative and evil thing I’ve ever done gets nailed to the cross. It’s when Jesus did what I could never do. It’s when he took my place and paid my price.
Take a listen to this song and enjoy Music Monday on a Friday and remember it may be Friday but Sunday is coming.
Today marks a pretty special day in the life of the church. It’s actually a pretty cool thing that happens on this day and we’ll talk more about it tonight in our worship service but here are a few things I thought would be helpful as you consider what this day is all about.
Maundy
Ok so for starters this is just a weird sounding word. We don’t use it any other time but so often we throw it around as if it’s normal or something. The word actually derives from the Anglo-French and means commandment. I know that’s not the normal focus of our Midweek Maundy Thursday worship but that’s where the word came from.
There actually was a command that was part of what we normally celebrate as the Maundy Thursday account. The command is to love one another as Jesus has loved them. The command isn’t about doing anything or performing some weird ritual. It’s about loving and serving one another and putting others before yourself. That’s the Jesus way!
Why did they all sit on one side of the table?
I know you’re probably not wondering this but I always find it odd that in every picture they’re all sitting behind the table as if for a photo op or something. But none of them are looking in the direction the camera would be! So obviously none of these pictures are real and they really in all likelihood sat around a table like most normal people do.
Why this night?
So there’s a lot of history and tradition and ritual in the timing of all of this. Jesus doing this on this particular night fits right in with the rest of the week. We talked about Palm Sunday and all of the cool hidden details in a previous post that you can read here. The idea is simple really. Jesus had to celebrate this meal with his disciples on this very night to fulfill everything the Old Testament points toward. There was a celebration in the Jewish calendar known as Passover which commemorated the plagues on Egypt and how God delivered his people by letting the angel of death pass-over the faithful. The way the angel would know whose house to pass-over was made clear by the sacrifice of a lamb in that house and the blood being on the door posts. This signified the people relying on God to deliver them.
Fast forward to this night and we see Jesus celebrating the Passover while he’s preparing to be the newer, better, fuller, forever-er sacrifice for all people not just the Israelite ones from the Old Testament.
Where’d he get the bread and wine?
Another cool thing that we might miss if we’re not paying attention is that while Jesus eats the Passover meal, he takes some of that meal as the elements for the new meal that he starts. So he takes the bread that was made for the Passover meal and consecrates it, sets it apart for what we call communion. He does the same thing with the wine. He takes a cup of wine, of which there were several in this meal to mark different attributes and actions of God. Then he blesses it and sets it apart as His very blood of a new covenant.
So when the Old Testament followers of God celebrated the Passover they had to kill a lamb to atone, bible word for pay for, their sins and their lack of faith. Now in the new Passover event, we don’t see the killing of many lambs but the self sacrifice of one lamb known as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.
How often should we do this whole bread and wine thing?
The simple answer is…yes. I know that’s not an answer to the question but really you should take it as often as it is offered. So if it’s offered once a year, then take it! If it’s once a month, then take it! If it’s every other week, take it! If it’s weekly, yep you got it – take it!
There is no set rule for how often a church should offer it. That’s left up to the context of each congregation. And no you will not lessen its meaning if you offer it weekly. No you won’t find it less special if you take it every week versus once a month. That’s ludicrous.
Who should take it?
Now this one is where the bus comes to a bit of a screeching halt for many. The church body to which I ascribe my doctrinal beliefs has a pretty solid teaching on this. The way we do this in the church I serve is I explain what communion is, and if you agree completely with the explanation I give and have had some teaching and instruction on it before that moment with a pastor (either me or someone else) then come on. If, however, you don’t think the same way, don’t believe it the same way, are confused by it, or don’t even think it’s important – then by all means don’t do it! This is a huge deal so don’t go at it willy-nilly. You have to understand what it’s about or you make a mockery of it and it will actually not benefit you at all.
So there you have it. A few little tidbits of info on what Maundy Thursday is all about, why we do it, and why you should too! If you have a church home then please set some time aside to go and worship tonight and this whole weekend (heck go every Sunday!) If you don’t have a church home, then we’d love to welcome you as our guests at Living Word Galena. And if you’re just not sure but want a little more, you’re welcome to check us out online first to listen along to see if what we teach and believe lines up with what you understand and believe.
Ok so some of you won’t really care about this nearly as much as I do but I’ve been a pastor for 19 years and have read, preached on or at least heard the Palm Sunday story every year that I’ve been alive. But this year the whole thing took on new meaning. It’s like 19 years of ministry finally paid off with a little knowledge.
The Palm Sunday account, known as the triumphal entry has tons of meaning packed into it. I’ve included the video of the message at the bottom but here’s a list of the things Jesus really did when he came riding into Jerusalem on that day we call Palm Sunday.
Mount of Olives
Did you know that over 600 years earlier, recorded in Ezekiel 10 and again in 43, the prophet is given a vision of God’s glory leaving and then returning to the temple? In 586 BC the glory of God filled the temple then exited through the east gate. It proceeded up the Mount of Olives and rested there until…
Yep that’s right, until Palm Sunday when Jesus came back down the Mount of Olives as the Son of God bringing the Glory of God with him.
Colt the foal of a donkey
So Jesus asks his followers to go, get him a donkey so he could ride into town. Now before we get all freaked out that he stole a donkey, that’s just not true. You see they had a practice in this time that a king could claim eminent domain on a beast of burden if needed. Well, Jesus is king, granted a totally different kind of king but king nonetheless, so the donkey was rightfully his to use for this moment.
And it had to be a donkey and not a full grown horse because tradition also demonstrated (and is echoed in Genesis 49 and the accounts of David and Solomon in 1 Kings 1) that a king would come into town on a donkey if he came bringing peace. Jesus then is the Prince of Peace according to Isaiah 9, so rightfully he brings that peace into Jerusalem once again. This riding in on a donkey was also prophesied in Zechariah 9, so Jesus doing it this way was fulfilling what was promised about him.
Additionally the donkey is said to be an unridden donkey. This too was significant because a king to be considered the greatest would ride a donkey that was unridden. The king was the only one who was to ride his animal. It generally was unbroken by someone else showing that no one could be as great or powerful as this king.
Hosanna!
The people lined the streets, threw their coats on the ground, waved palm branches and shouted hosanna! This may seem to be nothing major but even the words of the people fulfilled some of the Old Testament. The words that the people spoke were and echo of Psalm 118 in a psalm of praise.
Triumphal Entry
A triumphal entry was a Roman tradition actually. One would get a triumphal entry parade if you were a king or mighty warrior who was headed into battle against a worthy adversary or had conquered a group of 5000 or more. Oddly enough Jesus would actually do both of these!
A few days after he was welcomed into town in this triumphal entry, he would go to a cross where he would die on the cross. Now for most people dying was a sign of weakness or being beaten, but not for Jesus. To fulfill the Old Testament rules, someone had to die to pay for sin. Since Jesus didn’t have sin, his death would be a perfect death. That meant that in his death he was victorious. Therefore he deserved a triumphal entry!
But if you go ahead in the story to Acts 3-4, you see the disciples healing a man. Then everyone wanted to know how they did it and who they were. They taught about Jesus and this very week in history. People were so overcome by the event that they surrendered their previous way of life and gave themselves to Jesus. And there were 5000 of them total!
The temple
Jesus lets the fanfare run its course then ends up in the temple. But in a very anticlimactic way looks around and leaves. This is a sign to show that while the glory of God has returned it’s not going to be staying in the temple. Now the glory of God is on the loose. This would be made even more evident in the events of Good Friday when the temple curtain was torn from top to bottom symbolizing God tearing.
The temple curtain was said to be the divider between God and man. But when Jesus died the glory of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God was released for all to see. Now instead of standing in judgment afraid of eternal punishment, we stand before God made holy and righteous because Jesus is our righteousness and God’s glory at the same time.
These are just a handful of the Old Testament passages that are fulfilled in the event we call Palm Sunday or the triumphal entry.
I remember a little over four years ago there was a whole movement in the United States with people who were upset about the results of the 2016 election that started a not my president social media campaign. It was laughable to say the least. They weren’t going to change an election with a social media campaign. Not sure what they were trying to prove to be honest. But it was indicative of a deeper rooted issue that was present in our culture. In 2021 it’s been given the name cancel culture.
The basic principle of cancel culture is that when something doesn’t go how we want it to go, we cancel it. Now canceling comes in a variety of forms. We delete someone from social media and act as if they never existed. We change the narrative of someone’s story to line up with what fits our lives best. We demonize the opposing person to make them the total enemy just because they have a different view point.
There are tons of ways that this is done in our world today. And it goes both ways, so let’s not get our panties all in a wad here. This is a two sided game that’s played out in life, so stop pointing fingers at the “other side” for doing this all the time. Although it always looks worse from our perspective when the opposition does it.
But is there a better way? Is there a better way to handle it when someone disagrees with us or opposes our view point?
Yes! There is! It’s called being an adult. Goodness we act like a bunch of preschoolers who get our feelings hurt. Grow up!
Ok that wasn’t helpful at all. Sorry about that. Seriously, there is a better way to handle this for sure. Canceling is not the right answer. Ever. Here are a few steps that we can take to prevent ourselves from canceling someone that has a different outlook than we have.
Listen before replying.
One of the biggest issues that I find exists in this whole cancel culture world is that we make assumptions based on emotion not fact. We hear the part of what someone says and form our opinion before we know the whole story. All too often our communication is predominately in short written forms like text messages or social media. Well you can’t get all of your thoughts out in a text message and you have no idea what a person really is thinking when you read that text. So instead of asking what a person means, we tend to jump to our emotional response. We make assumptions. ASSumptions are not good by the way. They make you look, well let’s just say bad.
Respond don’t react.
Following closely on the heals of listening is having a measured response. It’s super easy to give the gut reaction to something but let’s be honest. That’s usually not the best way of doing things is it?
I think of wha happens when someone, even jokingly, slaps me in the back. Not to be hurtful or anything just a hit on the back harder than a gentle pat. Well, something inside me flips when that happens. My reaction is generally not that great. I will typically spin around with fist clenched ready to show you in no uncertain terms that I don’t like that. I know it’s an overreaction but that’s what reactions are – they are not well thought out.
So when we respond instead of react, we take time to process the information that someone gives us. We listen to the words but also read the nonverbal cues. When we’ve put all of the information together and calmed ourselves down from any emotional vigor, we can respond in a more level-headed way.
Remove Emotion.
Another key to having a civil conversation with someone who differs from you is to remove your emotionally keyed up self from the equation. We all too often come into a situation with all sorts of preconceived ideas, emotions from other parts of life, bad day at work, scared of financial trouble, kids aren’t listening, friends don’t treat us the same way, all sorts of things that pile up and then someone disagrees and WHACK! We rapidly turn around and pummel the person who thinks red is a better color than blue.
When we’re in a situation where we disagree with someone else, it can be helpful to step away for a predetermined amount of time to cool off. Say something like Hey I’m not in a good place right now, so I’m going to go for 10 minutes to cool off and then we can talk more. But come back in 10 minutes and be cooled off!
The two problems we have with this most often are that we don’t take time to cool off when we know it’s the right thing to do. And secondly, we don’t set a return time. If we don’t set a return time, it comes across like we’re ditching the conversation. Saying that you need to go cool off is so ambiguous and has the appearance that you’re never coming back and just avoiding the problem.
So step away and cool off. Then come back and with a level head talk gently about it.
Lower your voice.
One of my favorite things about parenting that I learned way too late was the power of a whisper. When we’re heated up and someone isn’t listening to us and we feel attacked or like we need to get a point across, we tend to raise our voice and yell. But when we raise our voice, the other person backs away.
If we want to get the situation to calm down and draw them close, we need to lower our voice (and in turn lower our blood pressure). Then we will force ourselves to more calmly engage in conversation.
It’s ok to not see things the same way.
The last part of this is to realize that we don’t need to agree with everyone. It’s ok to disagree. Disagreement doesn’t mean war. It just means that I can respect your point of view but I expect you to do the same for mine.
None of these alone are silver bullet approaches to diffusing conflict. But all of them put together will go a long way toward deescalating some of the trivial back biting we find prevalent in our society and relationships these days.
It can be seen all around us. The little everyday moments of kindness and love. Going out of our way to show care for someone in hurting. Being generous with our time or our possessions toward someone in need. Being an ear to listen or hands to help. It’s all around us but rarely do we see it.
The bible is full of references to the Kingdom of God but what does it even mean? It’s kind of an abstract idea. Is it a building? Is it a person? Is it a place? Is it just sometime in the future?
All of these can be where the Kingdom of God is found but they don’t fully represent the kingdom. All of these ideas are great but the kingdom is found in all of them. At the same time.
The kingdom of God is found wherever God is found. It’s found when two people sit down to read the Bible. It’s found in the waters of baptism. It can be found in a church gathering for communion or leaving on a mission trip. It can be found on Easter Sunday or the second Sunday in July. The kingdom of God is present in the phone call to a hurting friend or the prayer offered for a hurting loved one.
The kingdom may seem abstract but when we realize that we carry the kingdom in our thoughts, words and actions it becomes much more visible. Much more concrete.
The video below will explain what the kingdom of God is and where it can be found. It’s intended to help you see the kingdom all around you and even inside you.
I have to tell you when I hear people that they’re in this whole living life thing to make themselves happy something inside me goes a little crazy. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. There are some people that want life their way. They want things handed to them on a silver platter. It just has to be about them.
Have you ever had that person who just likes to find problems in life? I mean you give them a compliment and they somehow turn it to a knock on you? You thank them and they tell you that you’re not doing enough? Or they just want everything to be done their way and if not they’ll let you know all about it?
Well selfishness and self aggrandizement is called out by Jesus in Mark 10. There were a couple of his close followers that wanted to get something from him. They asked Jesus to give them whatever they wanted. Pretty bold I know!
Hearing that passage it’s pretty easy to think well how dare they! I’d never do anything like that… But is that really true? Can you honestly say that personal happiness and having things done your way isn’t driving your decisions from time to time?
I think in the world today, we’re seeing a lot more prominently displayed a self-centered approach to life. We see people who want to be the center of attention and for life to revolve around them. We are seeing people take disagreements as personal attacks. There has to be a better way.
Yes there is. Jesus takes the whole selfish pride outlook on life and flips it on its head. He says that for you to be great you have to be willing to be least. To be first you should be last. To be best you need to be ok with serving other people instead of asking why you didn’t get picked first.
Jesus tells his followers that we need to look different than the world looks. Check out this message on struggling with pride and selfishness.
It’s no secret, we all hit that moment in life when we just fall apart. Maybe it’s an illness or a job loss. Sometimes it’s a death in the family or a child moving on and a piece of you seems to be missing. When we hit that place when all we can do is fall to the ground and cry we need to hear someone tell us that it’s going to be ok. Maybe not today or tomorrow but it will be ok.
Today’s MusicMonday is for those of you who are swimming in the quicksand of life. It’s for those of you who can’t seem to get on top of things in life. It’s for those of you who don’t know how you’re going to put food on the table for your family. It’s for those of you who are watching your mom or dad or grandparent slowly fade from your grip and you can’t do anything about it.
There are things in life that we know we can’t change but they’re just plain hard. For the past several years I’ve watched as two of my grandparents have struggle with the debilitating illness of alzheimer’s. They didn’t know who I was or why I was there. The illness drained every bit of recognizable life out of them. Grandma breathed her last over the summer of 2020 and grandpa is still fighting.
Sometimes we laugh about the memories we’ve made but most of the time we just stare and wonder why. We wonder will this ever be ok? We watch the fight and the struggle and while I’m not really a crying kind of guy something inside me breaks as I watch one the strongest men in my life not even be able to bear his own weight anymore.
Sometimes I just want to fall apart, and one day I likely will. But for now I want you to know that falling apart isn’t bad. It’s not a sign of weakness or shame. Falling apart and losing yourself in the moments of grief and pain brings healing. If my grandma were still here she’d tell me that it’s ok to cry. She’d hold me close and remind me that one day it will make sense. She’d tell me it’s ok to hurt but on the other side of hurt is healing.
Listen to this week’s song, even though it’s a day late. Find healing in your tears. Every drop that you let go will be a flood of healing for your soul. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to fall apart.
Not sure if you noticed or not but black is not white and white is not black. I know that sounds a bit simplistic but I’m not sure our culture gets that. The world today doesn’t want to do the hard things in life by living with difference. Instead we try our hardest to lose distinctions and blend everything into some form of mush. We love the gray area because it seems to offend the fewest people.
I don’t agree. As a matter of fact, when we draw a clear line of distinction and properly delineate between two sides of an issue or two ideologies, we are less likely to divide than if we try to appease everyone.
There is a push in our society to gray the lines of right and wrong, male and female, racial distinctions and even life and death. The only thing this is doing is creating a greater divide. One would think that an attempt to make everyone equal would make things better, but that’s not how this works.
The problem is when we force someone to lose what makes them unique in life, we devalue everyone. Now I do believe we need to do better at valuing our brothers and sisters despite our differences. You see there are so many things that make you who you are that are valuable and special. Trying to make you into someone else just isn’t right.
In our time together this past Sunday we focused on leaning into our distinct sides. We focused on not blending things together and creating a mess in the mushy middle. There is no gray area. There is a clear right and clear wrong. The more clear the distinctions in life, the easier it is to live with and value those distinctions.
Here’s this week’s message. Jesus didn’t dumb things down, so we probably shouldn’t either.
I’m always on the lookout for a new song for our Music Monday posts. Some days are harder to find one I haven’t done yet while other weeks there seems to be no trouble at all. Today we’re going to look at one that kind of jumped out in a quick search for top songs for 2021. It’s called Stayed on Him. The song is built around a passage from Isaiah 26:3.
You will keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
Think about how different life would be if we just let peace reign in our lives. How much different would your outlook on life be if you stepped back from the worry and fear to trust in the one who has everything under control?
The issue we face often is that we let our minds wander to things that are not of God. We focus on the pain and the shame and the hurt and the fear and the anxiety. We let worry creep in and take over our thoughts.
Today’s MusicMonday is really calling us to stay on him. Focus on the promises of God. See his presence in your life today and always. So stop what you’re doing for the next 5 minutes and let this song help bring a smile to your face and comfort to your soul.
We are a driven people aren’t we? We push and pull and drive and run and force our will in our time. We like to go 100 miles an hour in life, maybe not driving because that’s dangerous but in our decisions and our push to success. We pack our schedules with very little down time. We live in the margins of life. We need to hurry up and wait!
One of my many downfalls in life is that I am a very task oriented, type A, driven person who doesn’t like to sit still and always needs a project. I seem to always need to be doing something. Whether working around the house, going on a walk, working out at the gym, going to work to get a little extra done – for me it’s just hard to stop.
But we all need downtime. And we’ll take that downtime whether we do it voluntarily and mandated to do so. For so many the pandemic has been a forced pause moment. Well at least at first many of us slowed our lives for a bit and stopped virtually all of the extra things. This allowed for more rest, more suppers with family, more walks around the neighborhood with our spouse, more movie nights with the kids, more fires on the patio. Slowing down was a great and much needed relief from the pace of life.
But we’re starting to return to a more rapid pace in life. And if we’re not careful, we’ll soon end right back where we were a couple of years ago. We’ll be running 100 mph through life and miss so many great opportunities, all because we couldn’t rest and wait.
Today’s MusicMonday is titled Hurry Up and Wait. The idea is simple. If we don’t hurry up and find rest in our day to day lives, if we don’t get out of the margins of life and live at a more managable pace then we’re going to be forced to rest in a way we don’t really like or want.
I’m not saying the pandemic was God’s doing, but I am saying that I firmly believe he has used this slowing of our pace to work some good. So hurry up and find the place and time when you can rest before it’s too late!
