September 1, 1996
What kind of qualities are the most helpful in getting you to the top of the ladder of success? If we take for granted that you actually have the skills needed to do the job, then you likely will be told to take the offensive, be bold, aggressive, assertive, forceful, and zealous.
It seems like businesses are looking for middle linebackers to take a killer instinct into the work place. Governments and politicians on both sides of the issue aggressively demonize the other side. It's hard to find anyone who really wants to play a genuinely friendly game of touch football!
The common assumption is that if you are not forceful and bold you will be ground up in the stampede. This assumption was developed into a full blown philosophy by Fredrick Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a German theologian Hitler studied and applied.
Nietzsche said the biggest mistake Jesus ever made was saying, "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth." He reversed it and made his own beatitude. It reads, "Assert yourself, it is the arrogant who take over the earth." See how this appealed to Hitler?
I suppose most of us in our more honest moments would admit we're not especially attracted to the quality of meekness. Most of us have experienced pushy people getting ahead, stepping on us in the process. We don't like it. So when things aren't going our way at home, or work, or in the neighborhood, our strategy of first resort- at least some of the time- is to push back!
But when we read in God's work that the proof of God's presence in our lives is a different response: Galatians 5:22, 23 says, "...gentleness and self-control." The word for gentleness is the very same word for meek in Matthew 5:5
Gentleness or meekness is a symptom of being filled with God's spirit. Does it surprise you that this is a character quality God says must be planted in your heart? Many of us would agree if it is ever going to happen it will take an operation of God to pull it off (I can't grit my teeth and do it), but why is God so insistent on this quality?
To answer that question let's first find out what this quality does not consist of. Then let's look at an accurate definition. Finally we can look at its relevance to our families, neighborhoods, jobs, and our church. How important is gentleness to our lives?
First, what it isn't: obviously it is not a know-it-all attitude; it is not demanding, dogmatic, pushy, domineering, overbearing, harsh, or abrasive. This should almost go without saying, but sometimes when preachers are done defining and redefining, some point that seemed obvious is suddenly confusing.
But now the not so obvious: The English dictionaries define "meekness" as: shy, compliant, passive, spiritless, submissive, weak, and yielding. It is no wonder we don't like the word. Here we see a graphic example of how language changes. In 1611 when the King James Version translators used the word "meekness" to translate the original word, prautes, it had a much different meaning in English. This is why we need to keep updating our Bible translations: because language is a constantly changing thing.
Another of today's dictionary translations of meekness is timid or cowardly; but Revelations 21:8 lists eight kind of people who will go to hell. Among them are the usual suspects: murderers, the sexually immoral, liars, but the very first quality listed is "the cowardly." Obviously meekness or gentleness is NOT the same as a spineless, weak kneed, fainthearted doormat because those people are going to Hell!
So now we must move on to a working definition. Aristotle defined prautes as the middle point between too much anger and too much apathy. A meek person got angry for the right reasons, at the right time and to the right degree. It is passion under control.
Gentleness is not weakness, rather it is a cool headed dignity, a poise, or composure that frees a person from compulsively proving how strong they really are. It was a word used to describe a spirited animal that had been well trained.
Hadden Robinson tells about a young soldier in the Greek Peloponnesian wars who wrote his fiancée about a gift he had for her. It was a white stallion. He described it as "the most magnificent animal I have ever seen. He responds obediently to the slightest command. He allows his master to direct him to his fullest potential." And then he wrote, "he is a meek horse."
No one would mistake this stallion for an old plow horse that would let you beat it and abuse it and it would just stand there. He meant it was a spirited, powerful horse, disciplined and under control. It was a powerful horse with composure!
Read Matthew 21: 1-13 (11:29)
Jesus is the perfect example of gentleness. He was never a bully nor was He ever a doormat. He could wash the disciples' feet, and He could rebuke them with very stinging remarks. He was not schizophrenic. He was all the power of God under perfect control and composure.
So what is the relevance of this quality for you and me? I think there is a lot of evidence to prove that the arrogant and pushy do not "inherit the earth." They may reek havoc for a while, but do they ever establish ultimate control?
Hitler applied Nietzsche's beatitude to the full and ended up in a musty, smelly bunker with his only option suicide. Down through history nations such as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome seemed invincible; leaders like Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin appeared in control.
Appearances are deceiving. At the height of his power, Stain slept in seven different bedrooms in a randomly selected fashion- each with an elaborate locking system. He always had five limousines travel together with the curtains drawn. He had a special guardian for his tea bags. Does he sound like someone enjoying his control? Or even in control?
Even if you want to consider an individual unknown, how far does a cocky, abrasive, know-it-all really get? No one actually wants a rude, self-seeking person as a close friend. Power hungry people are routinely lonely.
Pride, arrogance, or conceit is a weird disease. It makes everyone sick except the person who has it. And it usually puts a target on the back of that person. As the mother whale said to her baby, "When you get to the surface and start to blow, that is when you get harpooned."
Nietzsche's beatitude is really a curse. It is fairly accurate, even in this world to say: Cursed are the cocky, the arrogant, and the boastful; unhappy are the elbowing, the pushy, the crowding, doomed are the hot-headed, the unapologetic, and the rude- they are miserable here on earth and have no hope of heaven.
But the need for gentleness reveals our weakness. We cannot grit our teeth, bend our back, clinch our jaw and turn ourselves into gentle people. It is a result of the Spirit living in us. Without the Holy Spirit, people with strength use it selfishly, and people without strength hate those who have it. With the Spirit, you can be a content person, a person of composure, a person confident in God's resources.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Easter Sunday
Easter 2004
In one of history's most decisive battles, Wellington faced Napoleon at Waterloo. News of the final results came back to London by semaphore. All England waited as the word crossed the Channel by sailboat and then overland by a relay of these signals.
From the top of Winchester Cathedral a semaphore began to spell out the message, letter by letter, "Wellington defeated..." The next link in the relay caught this message just as dense fog settled in and obliterated the signal. Those two words shrouded Londoners with a gloom and despair thicker than the fog. All was lost. Wellington defeated!
After the mist lifted, the signaler sent his message again, just to be sure it got through: Wellington defeated the enemy! What a difference two words make. Despair became joy. The ego-maniacal Frenchman was defeated. England was safe!
A similar reversal happened between Friday and Sunday of Easter week. On Saturday the message was grim, " Jesus is defeated. The miracle worker is dead and buried. A big boulder seals his body in a rock tomb. It is all over." But Sunday sunrise brought new information, "He is risen. What He taught is true! Death is not the final word."
But it took longer than we might expect for this good news to sink in. Part of the problem was that nothing like this had ever happened before. But there were other issues as well. The Greek world which had some influence on the Jews of Jesus' day found the idea of a physical resurrection not only absurd -- to them it was considered creepy or offensive. To them the physical body was evil, always decaying...at death the decaying process simply accelerated its work. According to Socrates, the faster a person escaped the confines of the body for the freedom of the spirit the better.
Some Jews no longer believed in any kind of life after death; many did, but only at the very end of the age, after final judgement. This may help us understand why Jesus' followers never got it when Jesus talked about His death and resurrection. They presumed it was another complex parable that He frequently used.
When Jesus' followers watched Joseph and Nicodemus bury His body in the tomb, they firmly believed they would never see Him again until Judgment day. This may help us understand why everyone involved in this event was so confused when they discovered an empty tomb on Sunday morning.
Read Luke 24:1-12.
Looking back from our side of the resurrection, and after the whole story has been told, we tend to be a little hard on the disciples and their absence of joy at the empty tomb; especially the men and the mean way they treated the women.
But if we can get into their mindset - on their side of the first report of an empty tomb - it might be easier to understand their dullness. We might even begin to appreciate the steps they went through, going from a total absence of faith to an eventual, full blown confidence in Jesus' resurrection.
To repeat the story (and it's worth repeating) the beginning element that set the whole process in motion was the empty tomb. All four gospels report that the women were the first at the tomb. The women are uniformly surprised that the stone had been moved from the opening. This was unexpected. But much more confusing were the contents, or lack of contents inside the tomb.
Their expectation was that they would complete the burial procedure which had been cut short by the sunset on Friday evening- the beginning of the Sabbath. Because they were planning for this task, several of the women watched Joseph and Nicodemus place Jesus' body in the tomb! They expected to return to this same tomb and finish the funeral arrangements.
They expected to find a body. Not just any body, but Jesus' body. They did not reckon that it would be gone. They were certain they had gone to the right tomb. They were almost certain that no one had stolen the body.
They presumed they would find the "remains" of Jesus. Just as you might expect to find your bed when you turn the TV off after the late news and go down the hall to settle in. Instead all they found were the strangely evacuated grave clothes. It would've been like laying out a man in his suit and hat on a marble slab, then coming back the next day to find the suit still there, with the socks still inside the shoes and running up the pant legs, and the tie still in a double Windsor knot under the starched collar and tucked inside the vest, with the cuffs of the shirt just below the jacket sleeves and the hat laying neatly above the tie knot by about eight inches -- but no sign of the body.
The women wondered at what they saw. The word in verse four translated "wondering" is really a stronger word than that. It's only used four or five times throughout scripture. It is the same word used to describe how Herod felt after listening to John the Baptist preach (conviction, presence of truth, disturbing, yet attractive). It is the word used to describe the feeling the disciples had when Jesus announced that one of them was a traitor (self doubt, yet hard to believe...perplexed).
When Peter saw the arrangement, Luke says he was "astonished." He didn't know yet whether it was good or bad, but he suspected it was not a human scheme. Even if Jesus had not really died (and no one could live through what happened to Jesus) would He have simply gotten up, dusted Himself off and walked away without disturbing His grave clothes? The tomb was empty in an odd way.
On Thursday night and Friday morning the disciples had been unprepared for the horrifying spectacle of Jesus' arrest, torture, and death! This crucifiction event was not a part of their plans, not a part of their faith!
In almost exactly that same way, they were unprepared for what happened Sunday morning. They were like the scientist who recently confessed about the resurrection, "This is the sort of thing I would never believe, even if it really happened."
The second feature in the process of a new "boring" faith was the witness of angels. I wonder if those two messengers were a part of the choir that announced the good news to the shepherds at Jesus' birth? Whether they were or not, someone's witness is usually a part of our growing faith.
The angel's message is "Wake up, you don't go to a cemetery to find a living person!" They asked the women to remember the kind of person they had come to believe Jesus was: remember the words He spoke about His death. If they could make themselves remember, they would recall that there was always a harmony between who Jesus was and the things He said. If they remember who Jesus was and what He said, the empty tomb will begin to make sense.
Luke says of the women, "they remembered." Their faith was becoming real. The men in this episode were a little harder to convince. Like the women, they were not expecting this. Clearly the men were not back at headquarters posturing themselves to move out into the world as the vanguard of a new faith. Instead of telling the excited women who rushed back to the house with the news of angels and an empty tomb, "Oh sure, of course, we figured it would turn out like this!", they insulted them as if they had gone insane...they showed no sympathy! Each of them was as skeptical as "doubting Thomas" until they had personal evidence.
The truth of the resurrection was not something that exploded full grown in their minds on Sunday morning. Many times, saving faith starts with small steps- like a baby learning to walk. There may be some hesitancy, uncertainty, some stumbling, but these faltering steps can lead to full blown adult walking, mature believing.
Listen to these two sentences: The resurrection is a vast watershed in history, or it is nothing. Once accepted as fact, it tells more about the universe, about history, and about man's state and fate than all the mountains of other facts in the human accumulation of information.
You might not guess that these words were written by the editors of Life Magazine. Of course they were penned in 1956, before Time-Warner became one of the many apostles for a godless secular society. They were written at a time when thinking straight (not violating rules of logic to satisfy a wish), when thinking reasonable was expected for leaders to have influence. These words were written in a time when "the way you want life to be" is not more profoundly influential then the way life really is.
A few years ago a history book in the old USSR referred to Jesus as a myth, a non-person. The communists were notorious for rewriting history the way they wanted it to be. Legitimate historians from a variety of faiths laughed at this infantile projection of a wish into a text book. There is more historical data for the person of Jesus, the carpenter/rabbi from Nazareth, than there is for Julius Caesar and Charlemagne. Today you can't even find raving atheists on NPR denying the historical existence of Jesus. I hope I didn't go too far with that claim.
However, most non-believers have become comfortable with the idea that Jesus was a real person and lived an interesting life and died...period.
The church is alive today to say with the angels, "Do not get comfortable with the idea that Jesus is dead." Do not try to reconcile yourself to eternity in a cemetery. Because of Jesus' victory over death Christians are not defined by the past or a future in a grave yard. We are marked by the Spirit of Jesus and eternal life.
A few generations ago Simon Greenleaf, professor of law at Harvard, wrote about the reliability of the disciple's witness to the resurrection of Jesus. He made several points:
He pointed out the unpopularity of preaching the necessity of the cross to remedy every person's moral corruption, then said:
The church was founded on this one fact: Jesus defeated death. If the enemies of the apostles were serious about destroying the church all they had to do to be successful was disprove the resurrection. Failing this, all they could do was threaten, beat, flog and kill the followers of Jesus. Their impotence and the Apostles power to die both speak volumes.
The resurrection endorses the work of Jesus on the cross. The cross was not an accident of history that God set right by raising Jesus to life. The resurrection assures us that we can find spiritual life a the cross. Sin has a cure.
The cross is not medicine to deal with self-doubt or low self esteem. The cross is not an analgesic to help us deal with a slumping stock market or the high cost of college tuition (not that these are small issues). Yet the burning core of the gospel message is that : As we stand before God we are morally corrupt, sin-filled people facing eternal damnation, but, in the shed blood and broken body of Jesus we can find the cure. The resurrection is God's ringing endorsement of Jesus' work for us!
The cross reminds us of our spiritual bankruptcy. The resurrection assures us of God's power. The resurrection is God's bold print on history telling us there is victory already achieved over sin and death and hell. You and I must decide if we will exchange ungodly loyalties for a sold out loyalty to Jesus. It is not required that this faith explode full blown in your mind and heart the first time you hear it. But something this important, must be thought about and meditated on and given an opportunity to grow into the benchmark, the most basic part of our life that God intends it to be.
The resurrection of Jesus is God's good news for us, "This is what I want to do for you. Will you let Me?"
In one of history's most decisive battles, Wellington faced Napoleon at Waterloo. News of the final results came back to London by semaphore. All England waited as the word crossed the Channel by sailboat and then overland by a relay of these signals.
From the top of Winchester Cathedral a semaphore began to spell out the message, letter by letter, "Wellington defeated..." The next link in the relay caught this message just as dense fog settled in and obliterated the signal. Those two words shrouded Londoners with a gloom and despair thicker than the fog. All was lost. Wellington defeated!
After the mist lifted, the signaler sent his message again, just to be sure it got through: Wellington defeated the enemy! What a difference two words make. Despair became joy. The ego-maniacal Frenchman was defeated. England was safe!
A similar reversal happened between Friday and Sunday of Easter week. On Saturday the message was grim, " Jesus is defeated. The miracle worker is dead and buried. A big boulder seals his body in a rock tomb. It is all over." But Sunday sunrise brought new information, "He is risen. What He taught is true! Death is not the final word."
But it took longer than we might expect for this good news to sink in. Part of the problem was that nothing like this had ever happened before. But there were other issues as well. The Greek world which had some influence on the Jews of Jesus' day found the idea of a physical resurrection not only absurd -- to them it was considered creepy or offensive. To them the physical body was evil, always decaying...at death the decaying process simply accelerated its work. According to Socrates, the faster a person escaped the confines of the body for the freedom of the spirit the better.
Some Jews no longer believed in any kind of life after death; many did, but only at the very end of the age, after final judgement. This may help us understand why Jesus' followers never got it when Jesus talked about His death and resurrection. They presumed it was another complex parable that He frequently used.
When Jesus' followers watched Joseph and Nicodemus bury His body in the tomb, they firmly believed they would never see Him again until Judgment day. This may help us understand why everyone involved in this event was so confused when they discovered an empty tomb on Sunday morning.
Read Luke 24:1-12.
Looking back from our side of the resurrection, and after the whole story has been told, we tend to be a little hard on the disciples and their absence of joy at the empty tomb; especially the men and the mean way they treated the women.
But if we can get into their mindset - on their side of the first report of an empty tomb - it might be easier to understand their dullness. We might even begin to appreciate the steps they went through, going from a total absence of faith to an eventual, full blown confidence in Jesus' resurrection.
To repeat the story (and it's worth repeating) the beginning element that set the whole process in motion was the empty tomb. All four gospels report that the women were the first at the tomb. The women are uniformly surprised that the stone had been moved from the opening. This was unexpected. But much more confusing were the contents, or lack of contents inside the tomb.
Their expectation was that they would complete the burial procedure which had been cut short by the sunset on Friday evening- the beginning of the Sabbath. Because they were planning for this task, several of the women watched Joseph and Nicodemus place Jesus' body in the tomb! They expected to return to this same tomb and finish the funeral arrangements.
They expected to find a body. Not just any body, but Jesus' body. They did not reckon that it would be gone. They were certain they had gone to the right tomb. They were almost certain that no one had stolen the body.
They presumed they would find the "remains" of Jesus. Just as you might expect to find your bed when you turn the TV off after the late news and go down the hall to settle in. Instead all they found were the strangely evacuated grave clothes. It would've been like laying out a man in his suit and hat on a marble slab, then coming back the next day to find the suit still there, with the socks still inside the shoes and running up the pant legs, and the tie still in a double Windsor knot under the starched collar and tucked inside the vest, with the cuffs of the shirt just below the jacket sleeves and the hat laying neatly above the tie knot by about eight inches -- but no sign of the body.
The women wondered at what they saw. The word in verse four translated "wondering" is really a stronger word than that. It's only used four or five times throughout scripture. It is the same word used to describe how Herod felt after listening to John the Baptist preach (conviction, presence of truth, disturbing, yet attractive). It is the word used to describe the feeling the disciples had when Jesus announced that one of them was a traitor (self doubt, yet hard to believe...perplexed).
When Peter saw the arrangement, Luke says he was "astonished." He didn't know yet whether it was good or bad, but he suspected it was not a human scheme. Even if Jesus had not really died (and no one could live through what happened to Jesus) would He have simply gotten up, dusted Himself off and walked away without disturbing His grave clothes? The tomb was empty in an odd way.
On Thursday night and Friday morning the disciples had been unprepared for the horrifying spectacle of Jesus' arrest, torture, and death! This crucifiction event was not a part of their plans, not a part of their faith!
In almost exactly that same way, they were unprepared for what happened Sunday morning. They were like the scientist who recently confessed about the resurrection, "This is the sort of thing I would never believe, even if it really happened."
The second feature in the process of a new "boring" faith was the witness of angels. I wonder if those two messengers were a part of the choir that announced the good news to the shepherds at Jesus' birth? Whether they were or not, someone's witness is usually a part of our growing faith.
The angel's message is "Wake up, you don't go to a cemetery to find a living person!" They asked the women to remember the kind of person they had come to believe Jesus was: remember the words He spoke about His death. If they could make themselves remember, they would recall that there was always a harmony between who Jesus was and the things He said. If they remember who Jesus was and what He said, the empty tomb will begin to make sense.
Luke says of the women, "they remembered." Their faith was becoming real. The men in this episode were a little harder to convince. Like the women, they were not expecting this. Clearly the men were not back at headquarters posturing themselves to move out into the world as the vanguard of a new faith. Instead of telling the excited women who rushed back to the house with the news of angels and an empty tomb, "Oh sure, of course, we figured it would turn out like this!", they insulted them as if they had gone insane...they showed no sympathy! Each of them was as skeptical as "doubting Thomas" until they had personal evidence.
The truth of the resurrection was not something that exploded full grown in their minds on Sunday morning. Many times, saving faith starts with small steps- like a baby learning to walk. There may be some hesitancy, uncertainty, some stumbling, but these faltering steps can lead to full blown adult walking, mature believing.
Listen to these two sentences: The resurrection is a vast watershed in history, or it is nothing. Once accepted as fact, it tells more about the universe, about history, and about man's state and fate than all the mountains of other facts in the human accumulation of information.
You might not guess that these words were written by the editors of Life Magazine. Of course they were penned in 1956, before Time-Warner became one of the many apostles for a godless secular society. They were written at a time when thinking straight (not violating rules of logic to satisfy a wish), when thinking reasonable was expected for leaders to have influence. These words were written in a time when "the way you want life to be" is not more profoundly influential then the way life really is.
A few years ago a history book in the old USSR referred to Jesus as a myth, a non-person. The communists were notorious for rewriting history the way they wanted it to be. Legitimate historians from a variety of faiths laughed at this infantile projection of a wish into a text book. There is more historical data for the person of Jesus, the carpenter/rabbi from Nazareth, than there is for Julius Caesar and Charlemagne. Today you can't even find raving atheists on NPR denying the historical existence of Jesus. I hope I didn't go too far with that claim.
However, most non-believers have become comfortable with the idea that Jesus was a real person and lived an interesting life and died...period.
The church is alive today to say with the angels, "Do not get comfortable with the idea that Jesus is dead." Do not try to reconcile yourself to eternity in a cemetery. Because of Jesus' victory over death Christians are not defined by the past or a future in a grave yard. We are marked by the Spirit of Jesus and eternal life.
A few generations ago Simon Greenleaf, professor of law at Harvard, wrote about the reliability of the disciple's witness to the resurrection of Jesus. He made several points:
The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, under the greatest discouragements.
He pointed out the unpopularity of preaching the necessity of the cross to remedy every person's moral corruption, then said:
The laws of every country were against the teaching of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, bitter persecutions, imprisonments, and cruel deaths. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error.He goes on for several paragraphs thinking logically.
The church was founded on this one fact: Jesus defeated death. If the enemies of the apostles were serious about destroying the church all they had to do to be successful was disprove the resurrection. Failing this, all they could do was threaten, beat, flog and kill the followers of Jesus. Their impotence and the Apostles power to die both speak volumes.
The resurrection endorses the work of Jesus on the cross. The cross was not an accident of history that God set right by raising Jesus to life. The resurrection assures us that we can find spiritual life a the cross. Sin has a cure.
The cross is not medicine to deal with self-doubt or low self esteem. The cross is not an analgesic to help us deal with a slumping stock market or the high cost of college tuition (not that these are small issues). Yet the burning core of the gospel message is that : As we stand before God we are morally corrupt, sin-filled people facing eternal damnation, but, in the shed blood and broken body of Jesus we can find the cure. The resurrection is God's ringing endorsement of Jesus' work for us!
The cross reminds us of our spiritual bankruptcy. The resurrection assures us of God's power. The resurrection is God's bold print on history telling us there is victory already achieved over sin and death and hell. You and I must decide if we will exchange ungodly loyalties for a sold out loyalty to Jesus. It is not required that this faith explode full blown in your mind and heart the first time you hear it. But something this important, must be thought about and meditated on and given an opportunity to grow into the benchmark, the most basic part of our life that God intends it to be.
The resurrection of Jesus is God's good news for us, "This is what I want to do for you. Will you let Me?"
Thursday, April 14, 2011
I did this.
Lent #5 2004
Quentin Roosevelt left Harvard during his sophomore year to serve his country in World War I. In 1918 Quentin, the son of Teddy Roosevelt, was shot out of the sky in one of aerial combats early dog fights.
German propagandists took photos of his battered, broken body while it was still in the wreckage. Then, hoping to ruin American morale, they sent a photo of the picture to his mother Edith Roosevelt. Instead of letting herself be broken and intimidated by the picture, she insisted that it be displayed over the mantel, as a symbol of her family's pride in the sacrifice and service of her son for such a noble cause.
Mrs. Roosevelt pushed aside her grief and expressed her undying love for her son- by celebrating his bravery and refusing to abandon the cause for which he died.
The Apostle Paul expressed his feelings for Jesus in a similar way when he concluded his letter to the churches of Galatia with these words, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." What is it about a cruel method of executing felons that Christians find so compelling?
The Christian historian Luke introduces us to the hour immediately before the tortuous death of Jesus.
Read Luke 22:39-46.
Something is going on here that we can not see with our eyes. Invisible worlds are in conflict. If we could watch from a safe distance knowing what we know now- we would not mistake this scene for a cheap made for TV murder mystery. This is a passage recording an event that brings us to the edge of something cosmically significant and eternally important. There is a struggle, with the soul of the world in balance, and the battlefield is the heart of Jesus.
If you don't know it yet, know it now: you and I are key players in this drama. We will never be objective or disinterested watchers. It is because of you and me that Jesus has entered this battle to the death. At some phase in eternity you (from the day of your conception to the day of your death) you were on Jesus mind. And that experience of you in eternity in the mind of God is what has brought Jesus to this point in time. You are involved in this
Luke tells us Jesus was on His knees. The invisible burden was heavy. Normally, Jesus, like all his peers, prayed standing up with his head lifted, but I have -with you- for this moment, put Jesus on His Knees. I did that to Him! Sin is a heavy load to bear and the Psalmist says, "Everyone has turned away...there is no one who does good, not even one." And so now the one real exception to this rule is on His knees.
Luke tells us Jesus' involvement in this struggle was so intense His sweat and blood mingled and fell to the ground in great red splashes. I did that to Jesus. You did, too! The wise man asked a rhetorical question, "Who can say, 'I have kept my way pure: I am clean and without sin?'" (Proverbs 20:9).
Some folks don't think sin is that big a deal. They believe that if God cares about such a thing as moral failure then certainly He grades on a very liberal curve. This scene disputes that theory. The only reason Jesus is here sweating drops of blood is because of the horror of our sin.
Who would have dared to suggest that The Father God and His Son would ever enter into a tension of different wishes? Yet here is Jesus praying, "Father if you are willing, take this..." this is not my wish.
I did this to Jesus, and so did you! The prophet said, "We all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." This defines the essence of sin- choosing to do life my way instead of God's. It describes a whole rang of attitudes and behaviors. And this is what Jesus came to remedy. It is so universally horrifying and awful that the same prophet said, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags."
Erasing a stain that ugly is impossible unless God does it. And even for God it is a detestable project. It cost God nothing, so far as we can tell, to create the wonders of the universe out of nothing. He spoke the stars into existence, the planets, life without even taxing His reserves; He didn't even break a sweat! But to remedy the cancerous and deadly consequences of sin, it cost Him His own broken body and spilled blood. We can see Jesus was man enough to retch at the prospect!
I did that to Him, you did that to Him. The suffering of Jesus is described by two graphic words in this passage. The first is cup. Jesus prayed "take this cup from me." Whatever it means, it is something bitter and galling. Jeremiah spoke of "the cup filled with the wine of God's wrath." John in the last book of the Bible warns, "If anyone worships the beast...he too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath."
This is the cup that I caused Jesus to drain to the dregs. The Bible says, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." If this is true, you also caused Jesus to drink this bitter cup.
The second word describing Jesus' suffering is the word anguish. In verse 44 the passage reads, "and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly." I guess I am prejudice, but I believe that Jesus was not only the wisest man who ever walked this earth, but also the bravest. When Paul came to the end of his life he wrote, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." These words don't reflect much anguish- Paul was brave, but not like Jesus. In fact, many people both Christians and non Christians have gone to their death with a brave face. But I caused Jesus great anguish, and you did too! The most courageous man who ever lived, was for a moment brought to His knees in anguish over the horror of my sin and yours. It was not the death on a cross that brought Jesus to the ground in weakness. It is what that death meant: carrying the weight of the whole world's sin. My sin did that to Jesus- yours did too.
But the reason you and I are here today is not because of what we have done- it is because of what Jesus has done.
This bitter cup and painful anguish, He did that for you and me. The Bible says, "Christ (voluntarily) died for sins, once for all, the righteous (one) for the unrighteous (many), to bring you to God" (I Peter 3:18). He did that for me...and for you!
As Jesus was praying and fighting His way through this battle field, He came out on the other side of the conflict saying, "Not my will but Yours be done." He surrendered to His Father's will and ended the tension by agreeing with the Father.
There is more than one way to surrender. You can surrender to inevitable defeat..."I have no hope and no fight left, you win," or you can surrender to love. Jesus surrendered to the will of His Father, but also to the wisdom and love of His Father.
And in doing that, He volunteered to bear our sin. The Bible says,"Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). He did that for you and for me. I thoughtlessly and selfishly did that to Him, but He full of love, and without regard for Himself, did that for you and me.
The suffering of Jesus shows us the shape and size of our moral corruption. That was God's flesh and blood dying for us! The suffering of Jesus shows us the required magnitude and majesty of our remedy. That was God's flesh and blood broken and spilled FOR US! No other remedy would work!
In order for this generous offer to be effective, you and I must accept it. That means we must agree with Jesus that our sins did that to Him and trust His love to come work in us to make us different people. That is what you and I must do: confess our sin is what put Jesus on the cross; turn away from sin; trust Jesus' broken body and poured out blood to be our healing remedy; and go from here boasting only in Jesus and His merit.
Our culture has never heard the awful noise of a world wide death rattle like we are hearing today. The arts, medicine, ethics and law, education, politics, and science all are gasping to death from a polluted, terminally corrupt atmosphere. If there is to be any help two things must happen. First, we must stop pretending that there is no such thing as sin and evil. We must stop the childish notion that there is only differences of opinion and values, but no real universal moral standards! The idea that evil is an outgrown concept, this notion is a demonic accomplishment that must be reversed if there is to be any hope for our world.
Second, the world must begin to see the life of Jesus in us. If His great sacrifice does little to change us, why should the world be attracted to the suffering, but life-giving work of Jesus? You and I must become more like Jesus everyday if the world will finally find Jesus appealing.
Quentin Roosevelt left Harvard during his sophomore year to serve his country in World War I. In 1918 Quentin, the son of Teddy Roosevelt, was shot out of the sky in one of aerial combats early dog fights.
German propagandists took photos of his battered, broken body while it was still in the wreckage. Then, hoping to ruin American morale, they sent a photo of the picture to his mother Edith Roosevelt. Instead of letting herself be broken and intimidated by the picture, she insisted that it be displayed over the mantel, as a symbol of her family's pride in the sacrifice and service of her son for such a noble cause.
Mrs. Roosevelt pushed aside her grief and expressed her undying love for her son- by celebrating his bravery and refusing to abandon the cause for which he died.
The Apostle Paul expressed his feelings for Jesus in a similar way when he concluded his letter to the churches of Galatia with these words, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." What is it about a cruel method of executing felons that Christians find so compelling?
The Christian historian Luke introduces us to the hour immediately before the tortuous death of Jesus.
Read Luke 22:39-46.
Something is going on here that we can not see with our eyes. Invisible worlds are in conflict. If we could watch from a safe distance knowing what we know now- we would not mistake this scene for a cheap made for TV murder mystery. This is a passage recording an event that brings us to the edge of something cosmically significant and eternally important. There is a struggle, with the soul of the world in balance, and the battlefield is the heart of Jesus.
If you don't know it yet, know it now: you and I are key players in this drama. We will never be objective or disinterested watchers. It is because of you and me that Jesus has entered this battle to the death. At some phase in eternity you (from the day of your conception to the day of your death) you were on Jesus mind. And that experience of you in eternity in the mind of God is what has brought Jesus to this point in time. You are involved in this
Luke tells us Jesus was on His knees. The invisible burden was heavy. Normally, Jesus, like all his peers, prayed standing up with his head lifted, but I have -with you- for this moment, put Jesus on His Knees. I did that to Him! Sin is a heavy load to bear and the Psalmist says, "Everyone has turned away...there is no one who does good, not even one." And so now the one real exception to this rule is on His knees.
Luke tells us Jesus' involvement in this struggle was so intense His sweat and blood mingled and fell to the ground in great red splashes. I did that to Jesus. You did, too! The wise man asked a rhetorical question, "Who can say, 'I have kept my way pure: I am clean and without sin?'" (Proverbs 20:9).
Some folks don't think sin is that big a deal. They believe that if God cares about such a thing as moral failure then certainly He grades on a very liberal curve. This scene disputes that theory. The only reason Jesus is here sweating drops of blood is because of the horror of our sin.
Who would have dared to suggest that The Father God and His Son would ever enter into a tension of different wishes? Yet here is Jesus praying, "Father if you are willing, take this..." this is not my wish.
I did this to Jesus, and so did you! The prophet said, "We all like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." This defines the essence of sin- choosing to do life my way instead of God's. It describes a whole rang of attitudes and behaviors. And this is what Jesus came to remedy. It is so universally horrifying and awful that the same prophet said, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags."
Erasing a stain that ugly is impossible unless God does it. And even for God it is a detestable project. It cost God nothing, so far as we can tell, to create the wonders of the universe out of nothing. He spoke the stars into existence, the planets, life without even taxing His reserves; He didn't even break a sweat! But to remedy the cancerous and deadly consequences of sin, it cost Him His own broken body and spilled blood. We can see Jesus was man enough to retch at the prospect!
I did that to Him, you did that to Him. The suffering of Jesus is described by two graphic words in this passage. The first is cup. Jesus prayed "take this cup from me." Whatever it means, it is something bitter and galling. Jeremiah spoke of "the cup filled with the wine of God's wrath." John in the last book of the Bible warns, "If anyone worships the beast...he too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath."
This is the cup that I caused Jesus to drain to the dregs. The Bible says, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." If this is true, you also caused Jesus to drink this bitter cup.
The second word describing Jesus' suffering is the word anguish. In verse 44 the passage reads, "and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly." I guess I am prejudice, but I believe that Jesus was not only the wisest man who ever walked this earth, but also the bravest. When Paul came to the end of his life he wrote, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." These words don't reflect much anguish- Paul was brave, but not like Jesus. In fact, many people both Christians and non Christians have gone to their death with a brave face. But I caused Jesus great anguish, and you did too! The most courageous man who ever lived, was for a moment brought to His knees in anguish over the horror of my sin and yours. It was not the death on a cross that brought Jesus to the ground in weakness. It is what that death meant: carrying the weight of the whole world's sin. My sin did that to Jesus- yours did too.
But the reason you and I are here today is not because of what we have done- it is because of what Jesus has done.
This bitter cup and painful anguish, He did that for you and me. The Bible says, "Christ (voluntarily) died for sins, once for all, the righteous (one) for the unrighteous (many), to bring you to God" (I Peter 3:18). He did that for me...and for you!
As Jesus was praying and fighting His way through this battle field, He came out on the other side of the conflict saying, "Not my will but Yours be done." He surrendered to His Father's will and ended the tension by agreeing with the Father.
There is more than one way to surrender. You can surrender to inevitable defeat..."I have no hope and no fight left, you win," or you can surrender to love. Jesus surrendered to the will of His Father, but also to the wisdom and love of His Father.
And in doing that, He volunteered to bear our sin. The Bible says,"Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). He did that for you and for me. I thoughtlessly and selfishly did that to Him, but He full of love, and without regard for Himself, did that for you and me.
The suffering of Jesus shows us the shape and size of our moral corruption. That was God's flesh and blood dying for us! The suffering of Jesus shows us the required magnitude and majesty of our remedy. That was God's flesh and blood broken and spilled FOR US! No other remedy would work!
In order for this generous offer to be effective, you and I must accept it. That means we must agree with Jesus that our sins did that to Him and trust His love to come work in us to make us different people. That is what you and I must do: confess our sin is what put Jesus on the cross; turn away from sin; trust Jesus' broken body and poured out blood to be our healing remedy; and go from here boasting only in Jesus and His merit.
Our culture has never heard the awful noise of a world wide death rattle like we are hearing today. The arts, medicine, ethics and law, education, politics, and science all are gasping to death from a polluted, terminally corrupt atmosphere. If there is to be any help two things must happen. First, we must stop pretending that there is no such thing as sin and evil. We must stop the childish notion that there is only differences of opinion and values, but no real universal moral standards! The idea that evil is an outgrown concept, this notion is a demonic accomplishment that must be reversed if there is to be any hope for our world.
Second, the world must begin to see the life of Jesus in us. If His great sacrifice does little to change us, why should the world be attracted to the suffering, but life-giving work of Jesus? You and I must become more like Jesus everyday if the world will finally find Jesus appealing.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
A Healthy Obsession
Lent #4 2004
"Wake up, Jesse! Today's the big day." Jesse's mother called through his bedroom door as she had been requested. Jesse shot out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and tied his shoes. His mother had breakfast ready and he wolfed it down. Every year for several years he had managed to have his pickup first in line- for the county disposal's annual free day.
But Jesse always went in empty. He knew where the marshy, smelly, moldy locations were. It was easy digging and didn't take long to fill his bucket. With his bucket full and covered, he drove straight from the disposal to his bank. At his bank he was lead to his safe-deposit box- and there next to his college diploma, his all-state football plaque, his academic all-American certificate, his perfect Sunday School attendance ribbon, and his church youth group trophy for memorizing the book of Philippians- next to all his favorite stuff, he placed another years worth of rubbish.
Then he went home with a big smile. He felt like he had won the lottery. Jesse was addicted to garbage! It was his obsession. Anyone who has wrestled with booze or drugs understands how attractive garbage can be. Those who have destroyed their family by addictions to gambling or pornography are a bit jealous of Jesse. Jesse's obsession is harmless by comparison.
Is there such a thing as a healthy obsession? We want our children to focus on healthy role models, look up to the kind of people that have a positive lifestyle. In the apostle Paul's day, those would be the religious leaders. I wouldn't dare say that today. Maybe, a religious obsession is healthy?
Read Philippians 3:1-14.
For most of his young life, Saul/Paul was obsessed with getting religion right. And he was very good at it. He was heading for the top of the class. Then he met Jesus, and his focus went in a new direction. For the first time in his life, he had a healthy obsession.
Knowing Jesus became the burning core of Paul's religion. Verse 10 was his driving passion: I want to know Christ. The knowledge he was seeking was not curiosity satisfying information on the color of Jesus' eyes or His favorite passage of scripture. He was seeking a deep personal association with Jesus.
Occasionally the Bible will use the marriage relationship as a comparison with our relationship to God- to Jesus. It is not perfect, but it is more helpful than most other examples. When you love someone enough to marry them, the kind of knowledge you want is not intellectual facts and figures. This kind of knowledge can only grow with personal interaction.
I can not imagine signing up to hear a lecture on "the early history of Penny, how events shaped her character" if my other option was to spend a day at the beach with her. Information is helpful, but interaction is the best!
Paul mentions three ways he wanted to become intimately acquainted with Jesus. First, he wanted to know Him in "the power of His resurrection." Think of impressive sources of power available today: hydro-electric, wind and solar; fossil fuel power; and nuclear power. These powers are good, but they have been impotent when it comes to defeating the evil inside a person. Because of "human evil," these powers are even capable of great harm!
Because of sin we have all been born into a spiritual death- we are powerless, impotent- our souls are dead to the life giving presence of God's Spirit. The Bible says, "The mind of sinful man is death." The Ephesians were reminded before they became Christians that "You were dead in your transgressions and sins." But opening up to the resurrection power of Jesus brings in life. That whole passage in Romans 8:6 reads, "the mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit (of Jesus) is life and peace."
Jesus has defeated death, and using that same power has become the source of life. And that power source is available to all who will begin a relationship with Him.
Then Paul said something strange: he wanted to know the "fellowship of sharing in His sufferings." I don't think he as thinking of a real cross with spike and thorns. There was a spiritual war surrounding Jesus' mission to the cross. It climaxed in the Garden of Prayer. Would He or wouldn't He? This was a time of suffering.
When we resist the temptation to do our selfish thing instead of God's will there is a fellowship we can enjoy with Jesus in that victory. He fought the same temptation and gives us the resources to be victorious. When two soldiers fight back to back in the same battle there is a bond that forms. Jesus fought the battles we fought and will share His strength with us.
In addition to that kind of suffering, Jesus suffered for others in a way that we can join in. Not long ago, I mentioned to a small group that intercession is hard work. They looked at me like maybe I was lazy or a little weird. It's not hard work to go down a list and say, "God bless...; God save...; God heal..." but intercession like Jesus did, and still does, is feeling the pain of the one you are praying for an carrying that pain back to the Father's presence. That is hard work!
The deeper you love someone, the more you hurt when they hurt. When your child hurts, your prayers are filled with that hurt. When you begin to love someone, you will share in their hurts. You can't help it without stopping your love, but sharing is a salve. When you love Jesus, you will be hurt by the things that hurt Him, but your mutual sharing will bond you closer to Jesus.
Ultimately Paul wanted to be like Jesus in His death. Two things about Jesus death stand out. First, He was beyond the reach of temptation forevermore. The Garden of Prayer was behind Him forever. Sin was also dead to Him. That will happen for us, too, someday in Heaven because of the blessings of Jesus. In the meantime, Jesus can help us grow more and more dead to sin (Galatians 2:20); perhaps never out of its reach, but less and less attracted to it.
The second thing about Jesus death that sticks out is how short it was. That is the kind of death you and I want. Short and sweet. Knowing the power of Jesus presence, the privilege of sharing in Jesus' hurts, and the promise of eternal life: these were bundled together in Paul's obsession with Christ.
For Paul (and you and I) knowing Christ could never be a static experience. That would be like going through a wedding ceremony and then the bride and groom return home to live with their respective parents.
You never arrive at the finish line in relationships- unless you quit. Relationships are dynamic, living, and progressive. That is why Paul was careful to say he had not reached the finish line. He was pressing on- reaching for more, "forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."
There was more of Christ to know and he is focused on that goal.
If you were to ask Paul, "What really matters in life?" He would have a ready answer: knowing Christ.
I cannot think of another religion in the world that offers intimacy with God. For the Muslims, Allah is a far away sovereign who never crosses paths directly with followers. A relationship is not part of their vocabulary. Buddhists don't know of a god to get acquainted with. Jews can get acquainted with God's law, but not God. Hindu's believe they are gods- just struggling to get back to the original divine unity which by their definition is impersonal.
Jesus is God come to get to know you intimately! This makes Christianity unique in two ways. First, when we hear about the bad news, it is far worse bad news than any other religion. Every other religious system says there is a glimmer of hope for people to work out their own problems. Not every one may get it done, but if they focus hard enough they can "save themselves." And this is attractive to a lot of folks who want to be in control of their destiny. Christianity says- there is no human fix. It is hopeless.
When you go to a funeral and the guest of honor is laid out in the casket, it does the preacher very little good to go down and scream, "Get up!" Dead people cannot help themselves. People dead in sin are equally helpless and hopeless. We can not save ourselves anymore than we can crawl out of our own coffins.
But, and this is the second way Christianity is unique, the good news is far better than anything the world has ever heard anywhere else. God has intervened. He came in the person of Jesus and wrestled death into submission and is eager to share His victory. This victory is not just an unending life somewhere in the future. It is intimacy with the Creator and Savior today. One of Jesus' last prayers looked forward to the fruits of His victory at the cross. In John 17:3 He said, "Now this is eternal life: that they (you and me) may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."
Jesus' gift is the gift of intimacy and life with God.
"Wake up, Jesse! Today's the big day." Jesse's mother called through his bedroom door as she had been requested. Jesse shot out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and tied his shoes. His mother had breakfast ready and he wolfed it down. Every year for several years he had managed to have his pickup first in line- for the county disposal's annual free day.
But Jesse always went in empty. He knew where the marshy, smelly, moldy locations were. It was easy digging and didn't take long to fill his bucket. With his bucket full and covered, he drove straight from the disposal to his bank. At his bank he was lead to his safe-deposit box- and there next to his college diploma, his all-state football plaque, his academic all-American certificate, his perfect Sunday School attendance ribbon, and his church youth group trophy for memorizing the book of Philippians- next to all his favorite stuff, he placed another years worth of rubbish.
Then he went home with a big smile. He felt like he had won the lottery. Jesse was addicted to garbage! It was his obsession. Anyone who has wrestled with booze or drugs understands how attractive garbage can be. Those who have destroyed their family by addictions to gambling or pornography are a bit jealous of Jesse. Jesse's obsession is harmless by comparison.
Is there such a thing as a healthy obsession? We want our children to focus on healthy role models, look up to the kind of people that have a positive lifestyle. In the apostle Paul's day, those would be the religious leaders. I wouldn't dare say that today. Maybe, a religious obsession is healthy?
Read Philippians 3:1-14.
For most of his young life, Saul/Paul was obsessed with getting religion right. And he was very good at it. He was heading for the top of the class. Then he met Jesus, and his focus went in a new direction. For the first time in his life, he had a healthy obsession.
Knowing Jesus became the burning core of Paul's religion. Verse 10 was his driving passion: I want to know Christ. The knowledge he was seeking was not curiosity satisfying information on the color of Jesus' eyes or His favorite passage of scripture. He was seeking a deep personal association with Jesus.
Occasionally the Bible will use the marriage relationship as a comparison with our relationship to God- to Jesus. It is not perfect, but it is more helpful than most other examples. When you love someone enough to marry them, the kind of knowledge you want is not intellectual facts and figures. This kind of knowledge can only grow with personal interaction.
I can not imagine signing up to hear a lecture on "the early history of Penny, how events shaped her character" if my other option was to spend a day at the beach with her. Information is helpful, but interaction is the best!
Paul mentions three ways he wanted to become intimately acquainted with Jesus. First, he wanted to know Him in "the power of His resurrection." Think of impressive sources of power available today: hydro-electric, wind and solar; fossil fuel power; and nuclear power. These powers are good, but they have been impotent when it comes to defeating the evil inside a person. Because of "human evil," these powers are even capable of great harm!
Because of sin we have all been born into a spiritual death- we are powerless, impotent- our souls are dead to the life giving presence of God's Spirit. The Bible says, "The mind of sinful man is death." The Ephesians were reminded before they became Christians that "You were dead in your transgressions and sins." But opening up to the resurrection power of Jesus brings in life. That whole passage in Romans 8:6 reads, "the mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit (of Jesus) is life and peace."
Jesus has defeated death, and using that same power has become the source of life. And that power source is available to all who will begin a relationship with Him.
Then Paul said something strange: he wanted to know the "fellowship of sharing in His sufferings." I don't think he as thinking of a real cross with spike and thorns. There was a spiritual war surrounding Jesus' mission to the cross. It climaxed in the Garden of Prayer. Would He or wouldn't He? This was a time of suffering.
When we resist the temptation to do our selfish thing instead of God's will there is a fellowship we can enjoy with Jesus in that victory. He fought the same temptation and gives us the resources to be victorious. When two soldiers fight back to back in the same battle there is a bond that forms. Jesus fought the battles we fought and will share His strength with us.
In addition to that kind of suffering, Jesus suffered for others in a way that we can join in. Not long ago, I mentioned to a small group that intercession is hard work. They looked at me like maybe I was lazy or a little weird. It's not hard work to go down a list and say, "God bless...; God save...; God heal..." but intercession like Jesus did, and still does, is feeling the pain of the one you are praying for an carrying that pain back to the Father's presence. That is hard work!
The deeper you love someone, the more you hurt when they hurt. When your child hurts, your prayers are filled with that hurt. When you begin to love someone, you will share in their hurts. You can't help it without stopping your love, but sharing is a salve. When you love Jesus, you will be hurt by the things that hurt Him, but your mutual sharing will bond you closer to Jesus.
Ultimately Paul wanted to be like Jesus in His death. Two things about Jesus death stand out. First, He was beyond the reach of temptation forevermore. The Garden of Prayer was behind Him forever. Sin was also dead to Him. That will happen for us, too, someday in Heaven because of the blessings of Jesus. In the meantime, Jesus can help us grow more and more dead to sin (Galatians 2:20); perhaps never out of its reach, but less and less attracted to it.
The second thing about Jesus death that sticks out is how short it was. That is the kind of death you and I want. Short and sweet. Knowing the power of Jesus presence, the privilege of sharing in Jesus' hurts, and the promise of eternal life: these were bundled together in Paul's obsession with Christ.
For Paul (and you and I) knowing Christ could never be a static experience. That would be like going through a wedding ceremony and then the bride and groom return home to live with their respective parents.
You never arrive at the finish line in relationships- unless you quit. Relationships are dynamic, living, and progressive. That is why Paul was careful to say he had not reached the finish line. He was pressing on- reaching for more, "forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."
There was more of Christ to know and he is focused on that goal.
If you were to ask Paul, "What really matters in life?" He would have a ready answer: knowing Christ.
I cannot think of another religion in the world that offers intimacy with God. For the Muslims, Allah is a far away sovereign who never crosses paths directly with followers. A relationship is not part of their vocabulary. Buddhists don't know of a god to get acquainted with. Jews can get acquainted with God's law, but not God. Hindu's believe they are gods- just struggling to get back to the original divine unity which by their definition is impersonal.
Jesus is God come to get to know you intimately! This makes Christianity unique in two ways. First, when we hear about the bad news, it is far worse bad news than any other religion. Every other religious system says there is a glimmer of hope for people to work out their own problems. Not every one may get it done, but if they focus hard enough they can "save themselves." And this is attractive to a lot of folks who want to be in control of their destiny. Christianity says- there is no human fix. It is hopeless.
When you go to a funeral and the guest of honor is laid out in the casket, it does the preacher very little good to go down and scream, "Get up!" Dead people cannot help themselves. People dead in sin are equally helpless and hopeless. We can not save ourselves anymore than we can crawl out of our own coffins.
But, and this is the second way Christianity is unique, the good news is far better than anything the world has ever heard anywhere else. God has intervened. He came in the person of Jesus and wrestled death into submission and is eager to share His victory. This victory is not just an unending life somewhere in the future. It is intimacy with the Creator and Savior today. One of Jesus' last prayers looked forward to the fruits of His victory at the cross. In John 17:3 He said, "Now this is eternal life: that they (you and me) may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."
Jesus' gift is the gift of intimacy and life with God.
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