A little bit different of a post, sometimes my nerdish alter ego pokes it's head out (sometimes?) and I give into it like Jekyll does to Hyde...

Has it ever bothered you that Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to be crucified (that's not the part that bothers me) and that he will rise from the dead (that doesn't bother me either, I like that!) but that it will be three days between the two? And at one point He specifically says three days and three nights in the old earth. Now we typically think of Jesus being crucified on Good Friday (which was convenient) and walking out of the tomb Sunday morning.  Now I know there are really good theologians and Bible scholars who say that in the counting methods of the day that could equal three days and three nights...I don't know, must have been base 2 or something (that was for you, Scott Adamson!) There's for sure only two nights there, no matter how many days. I've always been bothered by that.  And I'll bet it's never crossed your mind!  Well, if you're interested at all, I think there's a lot of evidence that Jesus was actually crucified on Wednesday, but whoever heard of Good Wednesday?  Here's where I get that from:

Keep this in the back of your head: Jewish calendar days run from sunset to sunset (which means that famous song from Fiddler should have been Sunset, Sunrise. I'm just saying!).

The reason that Friday is thought to be the day of crucifixion is that the Bible is clear that the next day was a Sabbath day. Mark 15:42-43 says "It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). Since a normal Sabbath would begin sundown Friday and end at sundown Saturday, Jesus must have been crucified on Friday afternoon. Seems pretty clear cut, right?

Ah, but what if it wasn't a normal Sabbath? What if it were an abnormal...er, a different kind of Sabbath? Read John 19:31 "Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. Interesting, huh? A special Sabbath, John says. Come on, you have to admit that's a little intriguing!

You see, the Old Testament talks about more than just one kind of Sabbath, days where there would be no work done, that were set aside to be holy to the Lord. For instance, Leviticus 23 when talking about the Day of Atonement, it says, "You shall do no work at all. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. It is a sabbath of rest for you, and you must deny yourselves. From the evening of the ninth day of the month until the following evening you are to observe your sabbath." Other feast days designated this same way in Lev 23—Passover, (14th day of first month); Unleavened Bread (15th day of the first month).  

Now, we also know that the day following Jesus crucifixion was the Passover, John 19:14--14It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.  "Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews.

So what if the Sabbath that begins at sunset of the day Jesus is crucified is not the regular Sabbath, but is instead the Passover Sabbath. Jesus would actually then have been crucified on Wednesday, and put in the tomb before sundown of that day. The next day was the Passover Sabbath, the day following that would have been the Feast of Unleavened Bread Sabbath, and then the following day the normal weekly Sabbath, which would have ended at sundown on Saturday night.  The women come to the tomb at first light on Sunday morning and find the tomb empty.  Jesus would then have been in the tomb Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, potentially rising Saturday evening, and the empty tomb discovered by the women Sunday morning, the first chance they had to come and do the work of preparing the body, because they couldn't do it on a Sabbath of any kind.

In addition, your Honor, I would submit to you Matthew 28:1--1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. The word Matthew uses for the Sabbath here is actually in the plural, after "the Sabbaths." The Passover Sabbath, the Unleavened Bread Sabbath and the regular Sabbath. Your Honor, I rest my case!

I don't know if that really matters, you probably weren't as irritated by this I was, and I've probably confused you sufficiently that you stopped reading paragraphs ago.  But it is good to know that when Jesus says three days and three nights, it actually could have been that way.  Here's hoping you have a great Easter week, and don't forget to celebrate Good Wednesday!

 

 

That got your attention, didn't it?  I got invited to go to a spring training game at Tempe Diablo stadium yesterday and somewhere around the fifth inning, these three girls sat down behind us.  I didn't pay much attention till two of them headed down to the row in front of us and pretty aggressively approached two college age guys sitting there drinking beer. I thought maybe they were underage and wanted the guys to buy them a drink, but about 10 minutes later they came back up to the other girl.  Then they started talking about their lives. Strippers..well, dancers they said. At the ball park advertising. What they made. Jobs they'd been fired from. Boyfriends who didn't know what they did. Pregnancy. Abortion. 

I wish this story had a happy ending--like I turned around and told them how much God loved them and gave them hope and they were rescued.  But I didn't, they didn't, and it doesn't.  The more I've thought about it, the sadder their stories get.  How much they must hurt behind the facade. How hopeless their lives must feel. How much they just want to be loved...really loved.

I guess you don't have to be a stripper to want that.  I see people every day who I know a lot better than those girls who want the same thing--to be loved for who we are, not for what someone can get from us.  God loves us like that.  We're to love others like that.  When we do, everyone will know that we're followers of Jesus.  When we do.

I've probably told you this story before but now that I'm, er, slightly older than 40, I'm allowed to tell the same ones over and over and you should just nod like you would at your crazy uncle when he tells you about the first car he ever owned for the hundredth time.

Back in Indiana, our church was close to two other Brethren churches, so every so often, like once a year, we'd swap pastors for a Sunday...no I'll just leave it at that...and I ended up in Muncie, Indiana (where Close Encounters of the Third kind is set BTW) on a Sunday where I wasn't really feeling that well--high temp, kind of rung out. My message was from Proverbs about the importance of the Bible, and I was nearly done when a lady in the group raised her hand. That hadn't happened to me a lot at that point (we're a little more interactive now), and I thought, well, ok, what is it? She said, "I just wanted to say that i really don't agree with what you said earlier."  Yikes!  So, against my better judgment, I waded into that, and asked her what she didn't agree with, and she said, "You said that if your wife doesn't agree with you that you should get rid of your wife, and I just don't think that's right!" Double Yikes.

Now, remember, I wasn't feeling too well, so I immediately thought, Am I so delirious that I said something like that?  I really was at a loss, so I assured her that if I did say that I didn't mean it, and then just tried to finish before I blundered into some other small, minor heresy. 

I was shaking hands at the back afterwards (this was one of those pretty traditional kinds of churches), and trying to avoid all the wives while all the husbands were slapping me on the back and offering to buy me a drink...ok, that part's not true...when a teenage girl came up to me and said, "I know what you said."  First I was astounded that a teenager was actually listening to me (as I still am!). She said, "You didn't say that if your wife disagrees with you that you should change your wife, you said that if your LIFE disagrees with the Word of God, you don't change the word, you change your LIFE." (It's actually pretty good that the lady asked her question, imagine if she'd gone through life thinking that was what I'd said.  We cleared that up.)  What a relief! 

The reason that story came to mind was this whole ten commandment thing we're looking at and how God is describing for us what life should be like, how he created us.  What I find is that I am really good at rationalizing my behavior against what the commands say. I don't want to change my life, I want to change the scope or meaning of the Word.  Instead, we should be wanting to bring our lives in line with what God has established for us.  Philip Yancey, in "What's So Amazing About Grace" tells the story about a man walking into the dressing room of the actor W.C. Fields and finding him reading the Bible. Fields was embarrassed that he'd been caught and muttered, "Just looking for loopholes."  I guess if God's heart for us was to be mean and stern and take away enjoyable and pleasurable activities, then we might want to find a loophole. But if he really does love us, and he really wants us to be safe and whole and healthy, then maybe our loopholes are really still just deception.

And I just got to say it's a good thing Ann hasn't disagreed with me all these years!

Most of you know I have a casual interest in sports (if you define 'casual' as foaming-at-the-mouth-throwing-things-at-the-TV-not-speaking-to-my-family-while-i"m-watching-sports. Then yes, it's a casual interest.) But it goes beyond casual (see above) especially when I'm watching the Pittsburgh Steelers--or "super stillers" as we know them in western PA.  But now, I'm  just heartsick over recent news--Big Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of sexually assaulting a college student in a small Georgia town.  Seems he was out bar hopping late one night with a bunch of body guards, and the girl made the accusations after he left. We of course need to wait for the outcome, he is innocent until proven guilty, but it is depressing nonetheless. And the one comment I've heard the most in discussion is that even if he didn't do it and this is a result of his notoriety, he should have had more sense than to put himself in a position where these kinds of charges could be brought against him. 

As I thought about that, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind were words from the Bible struggling to the surface.  When these things finally make their way out, they always come out in King James English for some reason. These were: "Avoid all appearance of evil." I guess that doesn't sound very old English, but trust me, it is.  Paul writes it in 1 Thessalonians 5:22.  I think it's pretty applicable here.

Avoid (stay away from, like the plague) all (all) appearance (anything that looks like, smells like, acts like--it's a duck) of evil (bad things). If you couple this with what we've said recently about taking God's name (identifying with God and his character) in vain, that we should be bringing honor to God's name in everything we say, think and do, then I think Big Ben would have done well to employ this principle.  Stay away from anything that even remotely looks like evil or has the potential to evil.  Don't drag God's name (which you carry) into anything that resembles badness. Be a good representative, ambassador. Take this serious enough that you're willing to put aside anything that has evil connotations. Had Ben put that into practice, he might not have been in the situation he is now.

We need to be careful with that, when I was a kid that verse was used against all kinds of activity (don't drink, or smoke or chew or run around with gilrs who do) that ' not sure should really be considered evil.  And it's not a verse you should probably be applying to someone else other than yourself (like I just did to Ben...) But I do think we should be asking ourselves, "If I am a real, genuine, follower of Jesus, does this behavior (whatever that might be) reflect well on him?" 

To Ben: I hope these accusations aren't true. I wish you had stayed home and played scrabble that night. 

Here's what I caught myself doing last week. You know we've been talking about taking one day of rest out of the week, that God has made us in such a way that we need this for our spiritual, physical, emotional, and relational well being.  And I have to chuckle at how hard we fighting against the idea (it's like dragging my kids off to bed when they're little--"But I'm not tired, I don't need to sleep!" Then they become teenagers and sleep for 12 hours a day.)  So for me I'm trying to set aside Tuesdays as my Sabbath, and thinking about the 4th command and all, and I caught myself saying, "Okay, how should I schedule my Sabbath day? what kinds of things should I be doing, how can I fill this time with activity to make sure that I'm getting the most out of?" Just looking at my Sabbath schedule wore me out.

And that's not to say that we shouldn't have some ideas of how we should spend our Sabbaths, and I'm going to suggest some here in a sec, but I think we need to make sure this isn't just another thing on our to do list.  It's supposed to be refreshing, restful. You agenda anxiety people (you know who you are!) are going to want to strangle the enjoyment right out of this day.  And you "life just happens to you" people (you know who I am..er.. you are!) aren't going to put enough thought into it and miss out of what it can be for you. So let me give you some input, some ways that I'm learning to put this into practice.

1. you need to stop working at what you normally work at.  This is pretty basic.  6 days of work, one day of non-work. No going into the office. No bringing the office home. No watching The Office...no, that's a joke.  You can watch The Office as long as it doesn't make you think about your office and all the work you need to get done. And you really should stop thinking about your work too, as much as that's possible. Set it aside. It's possible. 

2. Don't just replace one kind of work with another.  If it's an "I have to..." whatever, it's probably work.  Most of you work five day weeks anyway, use the 6th day to do the stuff you "have" to get done.  If it doesn't refresh you, doesn't re energize you, you probably shouldn't be doing it! And that's gong to be different for all of you. What refreshes you is not going to refresh me (yard-work.) What energizes you won't energize me (yard-work.) What yard-works you won't yard-work...are you getting the picture? It should be a day of enjoyable things, restoring things.

3. Build some things in that connect you with God. Now most of your Sabbaths will probably be on Sunday, And I know that one of the things you'll want to do (this can't possibly be a "have to") is to use our worship worship as one of the ways you connect with, think about, thank, and focus on God. That's what it's designed for, you might as well use it.  And get somewhere where you sense God's presence,w hat some people have called your "thin places." (I love to be in my thin place!) Places where you easily commune with God, hear from him, talk to him. The beach, if we had one. The mountains. On a walk. Doing yard work (really?)

4. Connect with your spouse and kids.  In a relaxed way. Spending time with them. Listening, chatting, allowing for the oft chance that something important might happen!

5. Play a little. We all know that exercise is refreshing. Throw the ball with your kids. (or kick it, if that's your thing) Dust off the Monopoly board. Go to the park. Swing. Geez, do I have to think of everything for you?  Have you forgotten how to play? No wonder you need this day of rest!

Those are just some parameters. There's a lot of room for how you're built and what brings you rest here.  I think there's probably really only one hard and fast rule that should be followed--NO WORKING!

And for those of you who are saying, "I just don't have the time for this, I've got too much to do." Here's what I believe--if you'd be willing to start taking this day of rest, you'd find the remainder of your time, the other six days, that you were more productive and able to squeeze everything you needed to get done into those.  I think God would kind of multiply your other time because you were willing to trust him with this time. 

So I've decided to build a day of rest into my schedule, and I'm not going to lose any sleep over it!