What Would It Be Like for You to Walk With Him?

Today I’d like to invite you to take a walk with Jesus. 

I don’t mean this literally, although you are certainly welcome to actually go walking somewhere in your neighborhood or in a park or some other place you like to visit. 

I mean it imaginatively. 

If you were to actually take a walk with Jesus, where would you want that walk to be? What would be the perfect place for just such an experience? Take a moment now and ask yourself that question. Then take another moment and imagine that place in your mind. What are the surroundings like? What are the sounds, the smells, the feel of the air like? 

Now imagine Jesus is there with you, walking beside you. What does he look like? Are there any remarkable features you notice about him — his height, his stature, his clothing, his eyes, his mouth, his hands?

What is it like when he looks at you?

As you walk, notice yourself. Do you look at him? Keep your eyes on the ground in front of you? Look ahead or away from him? Do you put your hands in your pockets, swing them freely, hold his hand?

And now I’d like to invite you to discover what the actual walk with him is like. What would you like to say to him? Can you let yourself say it? Would you rather remain quiet? Would you like to listen to him? What might you hear him saying to you?

This has been an exercise in imaginative prayer. If you practice this exercise, I would love to hear what it was like for you to connect with Jesus in this way.

It Requires Safety

Yesterday I wrote about one aspect of the good news of Jesus — that he is about the work of restoring our broken places. I so love that about him. 

But as a dear person recently reminded me, the thought of going back into those broken places is scary. Even turning around on the road to see them there behind us is hard. It can jab us with such sharp pain, just knowing those potholes and drop-offs and broken-up pieces of cement are there, can’t it? 

And the thought of going back into them, even to receive something as wondrous as healing? Terrifying. 

This is why getting to know — really know — the person of Jesus is so paramount first. 

I could not have allowed Jesus to visit those tender and difficult particulars of my life, much less excavate them and begin an in-depth reconstruction project, if I hadn’t first learned to trust him.

That’s just sanity, right? 

But the good news is that he is indeed trustworthy. It takes time to learn this for ourselves — to let the person of Jesus beecome known as real and concerned with us specifically. It takes time to learn what he is like, how he really sees us, how he converses with us, and how he holds us together.

Once that foundation of trust and safety is laid, perhaps we’ll be ready to let him heal us in the deepest of ways. I’ve come to know there is nothing better in all of life than this.

Do you want to get to know this trustworthy Jesus?

This Is Good News

There are many things we could say about the “good news” of Jesus. There are layers and layers of this good news that bring us into a life we’ve never imagined for ourselves or even realized we needed like our own next breath. 

But today I want to focus on just one aspect of that good news. 

John the Baptist, when telling the people to prepare themselves for God-in-the-flesh who was coming to earth among them, said: 

Every ditch will be filled in,

Every bump smoothed out,

The detours straightened out,

All the ruts paved over.

— Luke 3:5

I have experienced this good news of Jesus. 

When I began to know Jesus in a real and intimate way, I could look back on the terrain of my life and see ruts and jagged edges and huge ditches and potholes littered throughout the whole of it. My life’s history was pockmarked with brokenness. 

I was broken, and so was my history.

In my life with Jesus, he has been about the work of filling in those ditches, of smoothing those sharp edges, of filling in all of those potholes. He has been smoothing and filling the back road of my life. 

And do you know what he’s been filling it with? Himself. 

Do you have ditches and potholes and detours and drop-off edges in your own life’s history? Do you want to experience the good news that Jesus brings to you and those places? 

He Wants to Be Chosen by You

In the Look at Jesus course currently underway, we’ve been noticing Jesus as someone who continually puts himself out in front, vulnerable to acceptance and rejection. 

There’s a strength in Jesus — he knows who he is, he knows what he is here to do, he knows who his Father is. But even in that strength and confidence, he is choosing to make himself vulnerable. He offers himself again and again to a small group of friends who don’t fully grasp who he is. He offers himself again and again to crowds of people who ask him to touch them, heal them, restore their lives, and teach them about God — but then often leave him as quickly as they came to him.

He sees the need of people and, moved with compassion, keeps moving toward them. 

But it implies risk.

His friends misunderstand his intent. They want to get bigger, not become servants. They don’t want life with Jesus to include crosses and death. They don’t want to believe they will reject, deny, and leave him all alone. 

He keeps moving toward them anyway. 

Always with Jesus, there is his vulnerability to be received by you. He wants you to draw near. He wants you to know him — really know him — just as he knows and wants to keep knowing you. 

Do you want to draw near to Jesus?

The Path of Progress

Currently reading.

Over the last week, I’ve started reading some new books that we’ve had in our home for a long while and seem perfect companions for me right now. One of those books, by a fellow brother in Christ named Watchman Nee, is called TheNormal Christian Life.

I’ve just this morning opened its pages for the first time and haven’t yet progressed further than the opening preface and table of contents, but I can already tell is it going to help clarify and crystallize elements of our life with God that I have written down in snatches here and there and intuited inside for a great long while. 

For instance, one of the first things I noticed is that several of the chapters begin with the phrase “The Path of Progress.” I assume this means that the author has identified stages of the Christian faith that occur along the way of our formation with God. 

The main thing I want to notice is the fact of this formation itself: there is a path, and we progress along it. 

Our life with God is not a destination. It is not a one-time deal that gets infused into us at a particular moment in time and then is finished forever. 

Yes, there is an end point in the great, grand scope of things. This would be heaven, also known as the new earth in which we will live and reign with God at the end of time. And yes, in the eyes of God, the new life given to us in Christ, because of his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, makes us sons and daughters who find full acceptance and freedom before God. 

But what happens at the end of time and what we gain at the moment of salvation is not the whole picture. It’s also about what happens in between those two points in time. That is a really important element in the whole scope of it.

There is a path of progress. There is a process of formation that continues while we live. And I, for one, absolutely adore and am grateful for this process. 

This path of progress is about learning the kingdom of God and what it means to live inside of it. It is about being conformed ever more into the image of Christ. It is about growing more and more fully into the reality of our true selves.

Do you consider your life as one that follows a path of progress?

He Loves You

Yesterday we talked about the connection between loneliness and belovedness. Today I want to invite you deeper into a truth I’m sure you’ve heard many times before: 

God loves you. 

I don’t know about you, but that truth didn’t mean anything to me for a really long time. Two-thirds of my life, in fact, was lived without any meaningful experience of that phrase. I heard it, I believed that I believed it, but in reality, it just bounced right off me. 

I’ve learned that the experience of God’s love is essentially connected to the experience of ourselves.

What I mean is, if we aren’t in touch with ourselves, we can’t experience love. Because the part of us that experiences love — the real us, the deep-down us — isn’t there. It’s out to lunch. It’s on vacation. It’s in the avoidance spiral. It’s completely disconnected. Turned off. Shut down.

Being in touch with the truth of ourselves is essential to our experience of God. I would say it’s the essential first step to connecting in a real way to God at all.

Have you experienced God’s love for you in a real and true way? Do you want to?

Knowing Your Belovedness

I shared yesterday that I struggled this week with an acute feeling of aloneness. Thankfully, a book by Henri Nouwen helped broaden my scope to remember that all of us struggle with that same experience. 

Aloneness is a prominent experience of the human condition. 

I’ve been continuing to think about that feeling of aloneness, and it’s caused me to see that part of the reason I experienced it so acutely on Tuesday was because I’d gotten disconnected from the knowledge of my belovedness. 

When I’m connected to the truth of my belovedness, I’m not alone.

I’m connected to God. I feel his delight. I feel free of pressure or expectation or criticism or condemnation because the power of love dispels those dark, negating things. 

I’ve come to deeply and firmly believe that life — salvation — is about discovering our belovedness, exploring the truth of it to better understand and believe in it, squooshing ourselves all around inside of it so that it covers and fills every part of us, and then connecting to its truth again and again and again. 

Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said to “abide in his love” (John 15:9). 

Do you know your belovedness? 

On Not Being Alone

Yesterday was a bit of a doozy for me. 

I struggled quite a bit through the day and into the evening with feeling alone. Alone in the work that I do, specifically. All the little gremlins crept in and whispered all kinds of meanness in my ear: What you’re doing doesn’t matter. Who even cares? 

Oh, those gremlins. They are so sneaky, so subtle, and so effective in their work against me sometimes. 

So today, I’ve been thinking about loneliness as a universal experience. It’s pretty common for all of us, isn’t it?

The tough thing is, it’s hard to talk about. Hard to admit. Vulnerable to say out loud. I feel alone. 

This is a space where I hope you find it safe to be with what’s true. To be with it and also feel not alone in it. To be with your truth while being with other sacred, courageous pilgrims who are being with their truth, too.

You are not alone in this space. We are here, together. And the light of Jesus, shining with gentle and unending invitation, is here with us too. 

Do you ever struggle with feeling alone? 

Pulse Check: How Have You Changed?

Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve noticed changes in myself while in the midst of certain moments. 

It got me thinking — and thankful — about the ways we change over time.

For instance, recently I found myself walking along with a new friend without anything top of mind to say. My usual pattern would be to wrack my brain for something to talk about — and probably to berate myself in the process to hurry up and say something interesting, worthwhile, or funny.

But I chose not to do that. Since nothing came to mind to say, I just let the silence be what it was, and I felt really okay with that.

That was a pretty surprising — and amazement-inducing — moment. 

I saw that I’d changed. I wasn’t scared of the silence or of losing my new friend.

Another time I read a passage in a book that talked about the kind of character needed in a person for them to be ready to take up their calling. Normally, I would have analyzed the author’s words — along the way, analyzing myself — and clung to the book in an anxious attempt to find answers. I would have underlined and hemmed and hawed and wondered what it would take for me to measure up to my own calling. 

But that didn’t happen this time. Instead, I noticed what the author said, agreed with him, and trusted that God is making me into the person I need to be to do the work he has for me to do.

That was another revelatory moment. I’ve seen enough growth in myself to know God is growing and changing me, so I don’t have to be anxious about it. Nor do I have to try to change myself.

Isn’t it interesting how we form and change over time? 

Sometimes we don’t even notice it’s happening. We’re going along and slowly, almost imperceptibly, our values are changing. Our measures of ourself and others and God are changing. Our knee-jerk reactions are becoming less knee-jerk. We’re growing in our capacity for patience, generosity, and charity.

And then, one day, we notice it. We’ve changed.

I’m curious if you’ve noticed any changes in yourself lately.

When you look back over the last little while of life — it could be 3 months, the last year, the last 5 years, or even the last 10 years — in what ways do you notice you have changed? What is it like for you to notice those changes?

After Easter

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:18-20

Yesterday we noticed that, in his resurrection and ascension, Jesus is with us even now, here, today. (I am so thankful for that, aren’t you?)

Today, I want to notice what was next — for the disciples and for us.

We talked about this a little bit already last week when we noticed the way Jesus prepared the disciples for life after life with him on earth. But in these last words he spoke to them before ascending into heaven, we learn a little bit more. 

Simply put, he asks them to make disciples. 

When reading through Matthew this time through, I really felt the fullness of what that charge meant.

Jesus spent three years with his disciples. He was with them day in and day out. He taught them about himself and about the nature of the kingdom of God. He answered their questions. He corrected their misunderstandings. He helped them practice the same things they saw him doing. 

He wasn’t asking them to evangelize with a few quick sentences or a few quick questions. 

He was asking them to be with people as he was with them.

Teaching them. Orienting them to a truer reality than the one they see around them. Showing them the nature of Jesus by their own lives. Answering their questions. Being present to them.

Life after Easter is about having Jesus with us here and sharing him — the fullness of him — with others. I so love that. It’s become what I most want to do.

He Is Risen, and He Is With Us

They called him Immanuel, which means “God With Us.”

For me, that has always meant the wonder of the incarnation — of God humbling himself into human form in Jesus in order to draw near, to be with us in our human experience of life, and to then die in order to draw us even nearer to himself. 

But this year, I’m thinking about the way Jesus is still, right now, with us. 

He is always Immanuel. 

Matthew records these last words of Jesus to his followers after the resurrection, just as he ascended into heaven: 

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:20

He is with us always. Even to the end of the age. 

Just as he was ascending into heaven, he tells his disciples he is with them always. It’s a physical impossibility for someone to be in heaven but also here on earth.

Unless you are God. Unless you have a Spirit by whom you come and dwell inside of man. Unless you have a Spirit whose role it is to remind humanity of all your words and teachings and to teach them even more truth — all things — than you taught while walking the earth. This is what Jesus says is true of the Holy Spirit: 

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. … But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

— John 14:23, 26

We have Jesus now, here. He comes and dwells with us. And we learn, through the agency of His Holy Spirit, all that is true and real in this life that God created. 

He is risen from the dead, and he is here with us now. Praise be to God!

The Women Who Never Left Him

Reading through the passion account in Matthew this year, I noticed the women. They’re faithfully there. 

On Friday, when Jesus was abandoned and ridiculed and scorned from every possible direction, hanging there on the cross, we read this: 

And many women who followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him, were there looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdelene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons. 

— Matthew 27:55

I think about them standing there, from afar, looking on. What were they thinking and feeling? What might they have said to one another, standing there, watching it all unfold? 

They must have felt so helpless, so astounded and incredulous, so grieved. 

And then we read that they were there when Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’ body down from the cross, wrapped it in clean linen cloths, and laid it inside the brand-new tomb he’d recently hewn out of rock. It says: 

And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb.

— Matthew 27:61

In his death, they remained as close to him as they could get. They sat at his tomb. They watched. They wondered. They remained.

And on Sunday morning, as soon as the Sabbath has passed, they were there at the dawn of morning. They “came to see the tomb,” Matthew tells us. Mark’s gospel says they brought spices with them there, so they could anoint his dead body. 

The women take such care for him, I noticed. So attentive. So faithful and present, even after he died. 

It’s how they remained with him in his life, too.

Mary of Bethany (believed to be Mary Magdalene by the Catholic tradition) sat at his feet when he visited her home one time. Even as her sister Martha prepared the meal in the kitchen and got things ready to eat, Mary sat at his feet looking up at him, listening, learning, just being with him. 

On another occasion, that same Mary anointed his feet with expensive perfume as well as her very own tears, in anticipation and preparation of his death. Jesus remarks on every occasion that story is recorded in the gospels that it meant an incredible deal to him that she would demonstrate such love and care and sacrifice for him in his sorrows.

The women in Jesus’ life were so faithful and loving toward him. 

And it so moves me that, on the Sunday after his death, when they came to the tomb with the intent to anoint his body with their spices, our risen Lord chose to appear to them first. What grace.

He Hung There All Alone

As I was reading through the narrative of Christ’s passion in Matthew’s gospel last weekend, I was struck by the utter aloneness of Jesus. 

After spending three full years of eating meals, taking walks, listening to teachings, witnessing and performing miracles, enjoying friendship, and just doing everyday life with Jesus, his closest friends left him in an instant. Once the guards and multitudes arrived to take Jesus away in the garden, we read: 

Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled. 

— Matthew 26:56

Except Matthew includes a little postnote about Peter two verses later: 

But Peter followed Him at a distance to the high priest’s courtyard. And he went in and sat with the servants to see the end.

— Matthew 26:58

Really, Peter? You followed at a distance, snuck into a courtyard, hid among a cluster of servants — in order to see how it would turn out? 

It feels so sneaky. And that note about Peter really heightened my sense of Jesus’ aloneness in all of this. Even his closest friend could do no more than sneak around in the background on him, staying on the periphery. He wasn’t willing to come near. He wasn’t willing to be with Jesus. 

But then the aloneness just gets worse. 

Everyone in the high priest’s court testifies against him. There he stood, in the middle of all assembled there, while person after person brought their case against him. Then they took turns abusing him — they spat in his face, beat him, and taunted him, hitting him from behind and then goading him to prophecy who had done the hitting each time. 

The next day, on the day we observe today as Good Friday, the receding continued.

Against his better judgment, Pilate delivered the death sentence and then scourged him. His soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and crushed it into the brow of Jesus, then dressed him up in royal robes and mocked him. They, too, spat in his face and hit him on the head from behind with objects. 

Once Jesus hung on the cross, the soldiers hung out at his feet on the ground below the cross and gambled with each other for his clothes. People walking by the cross wagged their heads at him and sneered: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. Save yourself!” 

Even the two thieves, the ones hanging on his right and left, abandoned him. The scriptures say they reviled him as they hung there next to him (Matt. 26:44). 

He hung there all alone. Everyone left him. No one could stand to be with him in his final hours. 

And then the world turned black.

"Will You Watch With Me One Hour?"

Today is Maundy Thursday. It’s the day in the church calendar that signifies the final night of Christ’s freedom.

On this night of his life, Jesus celebrated the Passover feast with his disciples in the Upper Room. During that meal, he gave thanks for the bread and wine and offered it to them, saying that it represented his own body and blood that were being given and shed for his followers. He also, as recorded in John 13, washed the feet of his disciples (the act that gives Maundy Thursday its name). 

And then he walked with them to Mount of Olives.

This is the place that holds the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus struggled in prayer on that last night of his freedom, asking God if he really did need to die. 

When going apart to pray, we see Jesus ask his closest disciples to sit and wait for him. When he comes back to them three different times, each time he finds them asleep. Grieved, he asks them:

“Could you not watch with Me one hour?”

Tonight at my church, we’ve been invited to participate in a prayer vigil that is being kept through the night. Kirk and I signed up for a slot at 3 a.m., and I’m just full of anticipation at the opportunity to arrive at my church in the dead of night and kneel on the ground before an altar of candles, sitting with Jesus in the silence.

Will I be able to stay awake with him one hour? I hope so. 

And I want to encourage you, if you are so inclined, to carve out an hour of time this evening to do the same. Create a space in a corner of your home for this. It doesn’t have to be a very large or particularly holy kind of corner. Just a space for you and Jesus to sit together for an hour. Maybe light a candle. Maybe sit with your journal to record the things you think about or pray during that time. Spend time sitting with Jesus in the silence and the darkness of night, waiting with him for the hour of his death that soon approaches.

If you do this, I’d love to hear what it’s like for you. 

Oh, Judas

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week.

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For some reason, I’ve spent more time thinking about Judas this Easter than ever before. He keeps cropping up everywhere.

I wonder about him. 

Did he know the religious leaders intended to kill Jesus when he agreed to hand him over to them? In Mark’s gospel account of the betrayal in the garden, we read that Judas told the multitude who came to seize Jesus, “Whomever I kiss, He is the One; seize Him and lead Him away safely” (Mark 14:43). 

Lead him away safely? That doesn’t sound like the directive of someone who knows he’s leading a band of marauders who have blood and death set in their hearts. 

I wonder about Jesus, too. 

When Judas approaches Jesus in that moment of betrayal and greets him with that traitorous kiss, Jesus calls him friend: 

“Friend, why have you come?” 

— Matthew 26:50

Friend? 

Jesus knows why Judas came. Just 30 verses earlier in the same chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him and identifies Judas explicitly as the one. “Rabbi, is it I?” he asks Jesus. “You have said it,” Jesus replies. 

And yet he calls his betrayer friend and asks him why he’s come. 

I can’t help but wonder if Jesus is inviting Judas to face the truth of himself — that perhaps he knew Judas was detached from the reality of his actions. Even though Judas went directly to the chief priests and agreed to betray Jesus for a fee of silver, he then asked Jesus if he was the one who would do it. Did he not know — really — what he had set himself to do? 

Did Judas not have the strength to see and own the truth of himself? 

I’m not sure he did. We know what happened after Jesus was condemned by the religious leaders to death. Judas feels remorseful, goes back to the religious leaders to try and make things right, is denied, and then goes and hangs himself. 

Oh, Judas. My heart breaks for you.

Last year in an Ash Wednesday service, I was led to consider for the first time what happened during those three days Jesus spent in Hades after he died. What did he say or do in his time down there? Did he preach the truth of his own good news to those already dead?

I hope so.

And then recently, my rector posed a new question: Did he encounter Judas there? 

If so, I wonder what their encounter was like. I can’t help but hope Judas bowed at the feet of Jesus and repented of what he’d done, then received the open, forgiving arms of Jesus welcoming him back into love.

Preparing the Disciples for What Comes Next

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week.

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After Jesus engaged in a truth-telling series of teaching with the religious leaders in Jerusalem, he spent time with his disciples. 

And what he did was prepare them for life after life on earth with Jesus. 

If you have a red-letter Bible and look at Matthew 24-25, you will see solid red letters all the way through. All of these red letters — the very words of Christ — are the words Jesus spoke to his disciples about what to expect about the end of time and how to live in the meantime, while waiting for it to come to pass. 

He’s teaching them how to live after he’s left them.

He begins by answering their question about the end of days, telling them how they will know those days are near. He prepares them for the inevitability of false prophets who will call themselves the savior in his stead. He tells them life will be hard. 

And he asks them, in all of this, to be faithful and trustworthy: 

“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.”

— Matthew 24:45-47

This teaching to be faithful continues through chapter 25.

He tells the parable of the ten virgins — five wise and five foolish — who awaited the coming of their groom. What made five of them wise? Being prepared with enough oil to light their lamps through the night, no matter how long they were made to wait for the groom’s arrival. 

He tells the parable of the talents — a master who goes away for a long spell but leaves his servants with some resources with which to be creative and useful and fruitful while he’s gone. Those who were blessed upon his return were those who did just that: used what the master had given them to some good and fruitful end.

He talks about a division of sheep and goats — those who enter into glory (sheep) and those who don’t (goats). What marks the difference? Those who choose to love and care for others on earth, no matter their circumstance.

In all this, Jesus is teaching his disciples — and all of us who follow him — how to live until the end of time. 

Be faithful. Be useful for good with what you have and who you are. Be full of love and care and kindness and mercy. Until he returns to set all things right.

Enter Jerusalem, Enter Conflict and Strife

This is a continuation of daily posts through Holy Week that began yesterday. 

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It struck me this time more than any other time I’ve read through the gospel of Matthew that confrontation and strife first greeted Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. 

The first thing he did was cleanse the temple. Yes. I’d noticed that before. 

But this was the first time I’d thought about this being the temple. As in, the huge, monolithic structure that the people of Israel took years and years to build in the time of Solomon. As in, the place of intent and holy pilgrimage for all the Jews every year when they observed the Passover. As in, regarded with way more reverence than any local synagogue that stood in for the temple on behalf of the people throughout the rest of the year’s duration. 

Jesus came and cleansed that temple. 

I’m pretty sure that made no little mark on the city that week. 

He then proceeded to have it out with the religious leaders — the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and even the Herodians. Every single one of them wanted a piece of Jesus once he got to Jerusalem.

And here’s what I noticed.

Even though Jesus had been confronted by the religious leaders throughout his three years of ministry elsewhere, this time it came on him like an onslaught. He’d no sooner finish answering one question than another group of leaders would approach him with another. 

I share in the Look at Jesus course that the gospel of Matthew is known as a teaching gospel. This is a gospel where we find long sections of scripture where Jesus teaches and teaches and teaches in long, continuous strands. Sometimes the people listening to that teaching are his disciples. Sometimes it is the multitude of people following him around everywhere

In this case, Jesus launches into a teaching discourse with his enemies. 

For three straight chapters, we see him very pointedly telling stories that liken those religious leaders to people who completely mess up — a son who tells his father that he’ll work the family vineyard but then doesn’t; vinedressers who are hired to work a landowner’s vineyard but beat, stone, and murder everyone in authority who comes on the owner’s behalf to check on the land, even up to the landowner’s son; the original guest list for a king’s lavish wedding feast who decide their own affairs are more important than the wedding feast and even go so far as to kill those who come to invite them to attend.

Matthew makes very clear that the religious leaders know what Jesus is doing in these stories — that he’s talking about them. They can read between the lines of the stories, and they’re furious. 

The conflict doesn’t stop there, though. 

Jesus then begins his long and famous diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees. Not only does he first warn the people against them in no uncertain terms, but he then starts in on them directly with numerous “Woe to you!” vindictives. 

The confrontations Jesus has with the religious leaders earlier in his ministry are tame compared to those he engaged in Jerusalem the very last week of his life.

It’s as though the fire has been turned up — way up. And it’s about to boil over.

Palm Sunday, and Entering Holy Week

Hello, loves. 

When I shared the 2012 dates for the Look at Jesus course earlier this year, someone asked if I intended the first offering of the course to start with Holy Week. Truthfully, no. It hadn’t crossed into my awareness at all that the first week of the course would coincide with the week leading up to Easter. 

I consider it a serendipitous oversight now.

And that’s because this weekend, as I’ve been reading the Gospel of Matthew in preparation for the start of the course this week, I have found it very special to be reading the details of the last week of Jesus’ life at the same exact time the worldwide church is observing that same event.

It was rather surreal, for example, to be reading along in the pages of Scripture earlier today and to suddenly find myself in Matthew 21, which depicts the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem — otherwise known as Palm Sunday.

Which is today. 

I’ve decided, in observance of Holy Week, to post consecutively here from today through Easter, using the posts this week to share things that have struck me about the passion week of Jesus as I’ve read through the pages of Matthew, in particular, this weekend. 

Like, for instance, that it wasn’t until Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ — the anointed one all Israel had been waiting to arrive — that Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and his impending death.

Matthew records these words just after Peter confesses the truth of Jesus’ identity: 

“From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” 

— Matthew 16:21

In this, we see that Jesus knew his fate. He knew what awaited him in Jerusalem. He knew what had to happen. He knew what lay ahead.

But his disciples didn’t. Not until they’d professed him as the Christ, that is. Only then were they ready to learn what lay ahead. Even if they still didn’t fully understand it. Even if they weren’t really ready for it. Even if they would leave him once the persecution began.

This Is Spiritual Formation

God rewrote the text of my life

   when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.

— Psalm 18:24

A couple weeks ago, I was thinking about the way our lives de-form us.

I was reflecting on many of the pieces of my heart — large, sweeping sections of it down to the tiny nooks and crannies — that Jesus has come in and healed. These pieces and places that he’s healed and the way he’s then reconnected me to the true self he created in conceiving me — this is spiritual formation. This is the work of God (and us) in our life with him.

This is his intent. Healing. Wholeness. Freedom. Life. The extension of the kingdom into the places where we live.

How might God intend to rewrite the text of your life? What is it like for you to consider opening the book of your heart to his eyes?

An Invitation to Join Us

Hello, sweet dears!

Just wanted to share that registration for the Look at Jesus course will close this coming Sunday evening, and the course officially begins on Monday. Hooray!

I hardly know how to express to you just how much I adore this course. My first time teaching it last fall was an incredible experience — the dialogue and interaction between all who participated was so stimulating and grace-filled — and you probably already know there is nothing better in my book than spending time looking at Jesus and sharing about him with you.

In case you’re new here (ie., weren’t around when I launched the pilot course last fall), you can get a sense of my heart for this course and my heart for you in it through this video that I created last fall to share the story behind its creation.

Would you like to join us? Spots are still available, but registration closes in just four days. Click here to register.

xoxo,

Christianne