Here’s the April reading plan. Happy reading!
Are you ready to be astonished? I’m sure the women who went to Jesus’ tomb on that first Easter morning weren’t going prepared to be astonished. We rarely live expecting to be astonished. Yet astonishment came anyway to those women. They were astonished that their friend and Lord was still alive. We should be astonished by the same thing. Our resurrected Lord works on our behalf everyday. Let’s get our eyes open and get ready to be astonished by the work of God’s hand in the world.
One of the most important lessons that Jesus’ example taught us about God is what he thinks of women. Jesus obviously treated the women in his life with respect and honor. Just look at the women present at his burial in this passage. Two were mentioned, but it reads like there were more there, women who had been involved in his ministry.
The Bible speaks of different roles for men and women, but it never says that men and women have different worth in front of God. Jesus always showed value to women. Men, we need to follow his example. The women in our lives are not objects or possessions; they are people in whom Jesus died. Let’s treat them like that.
It has always striking to me when reading the Gospels that Jesus would say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Wasn’t Jesus God? How can one forsake himself? Was there a time on earth where Jesus stopped being God? Of course, I’d heard the typical pastoral response to that quote – God couldn’t look at Jesus when he had the weight of the world’s sin on him. There may be some truth to that. I don’t know. It’s not actually in the text. A teacher of mine reminded me though that this was simply a quote from Psalm 22 (as are the other “last sayings of Jesus” in the Gospels).
In his time of greatest trials, Jesus turned to Scripture he had put to memory. Even in his last breaths, he was giving us a model of honoring God. Wow! I’ve never forgotten that.
Barabbas was a lucky man. He was a common criminal, in league with rebels who murder. He deserved to die. But Jesus died in his place. Jesus died so Barabbas didn’t have to. I wonder how Barabbas lived the rest of life. Did he live like the criminal he was before his near death? Or did he live with renewed purpose, meaning, and morality? Did he live like a man who had received a great gift? We don’t know. We know nothing else about the man. But I wonder.
Remember the scene at the end of Saving Private Ryan where an elderly Private Ryan is standing at the grave of the man who had risked everything for his life in the days following D-Day? He asked his family to tell him that his life had been worth the price the others paid for him. I hope Barabbas lived a life that was worthy of the man who died in his place 2,000 years ago.
But Barabbas isn’t the only person that Jesus died in the place of. The Bible says he died in your place as well (Romans 5:8). He was your substitute on the cross. The question is, has your life been worth it? He died for you so you can live for him. Knowing what he gave up for us should change how we look at and how we live our lives.
Are you living a life that’s worthy of the price Jesus paid?
It’s hard to imagine the kind of restraint Jesus had to show while he was being beaten and mocked in front of the Sanhedrin. He could have easily fought back. He could have defended himself. He didn’t because of us. He loved us so much that he took the abuse without fighting back. And of course, he would eventually face execution on the cross because of that love.
It’s very humbling to understand that Jesus had that kind of love for us. In 1 John 3 we’re told that his sacrificial love for us should be a model of how we love others. Are you willing to take criticism and abuse from others for someone else? Many of us will automatically say yes and then point to our families. But of course people will die for friends (and family), Paul says in Romans 5. The question is, will we love our enemies with that kind of sacrificial action?
That’s a whole other question.
It’s easy to fault the disciples for falling asleep while they were praying. I mean they were in the midst of one of the most important dramas in history. Jesus, himself, was with them and had verbally given them an important task – praying for him during one of his most difficult hours.
But they couldn’t do it. They were worn out. They ended up falling asleep. But before we’re too hard on them, we better look at our own lives. How often do we fall asleep on an important task that God gives us? We let everything else get in the way. We get distracted. God has given us an important task in the greatest drama in history – the reaching of the lost for Christ and it’s so easy for us – for me – to get distracted.
I’m glad we have a forgiving God!
I hope I’ll always be affected by the observance of the Lord’s Supper. It’s a stark reminder that Jesus paid a high price because of my rebellion against God. He paid the price with his body and his blood.
That first Lord’s Supper occurred only the day before Jesus’ death. I’m sure the full weight of what Jesus said didn’t really hit the disciples present until after the resurrection. But it stuck with them after that. The book of Acts implies that the early church (led by these disciples) observed the Lord’s Supper every single week. And it was the focal point of their gathering together – and I believe an engine for their ministry efforts.
They came to realize that their lives had been defined by what Jesus did for them on the cross. His broken body and spilt blood had changed them forever. They were now new people.
While we can’t sit in the same room with Christ as the disciples did when they observed this first Lord’s Supper, we can make sure that during our next observance of the Lord’s Supper, we let the words about the broken body and the shed blood take root in us. We must let the truth of Christ’s sacrifice for us motivate us to tell others about Christ.
The Lord’s Supper can be the first act of a great missionary drama in our lives. If we can be transformed by Christ’s sacrifice, we should want to see others changed as well.
I’ve always thought it was rather strange comment by Jesus that the “poor will always be with you.” At first glance it seems rather callous. But I think Jesus knew something that we often overlook. True worship (which I believe was the motive behind the anointing in this passage) is the first calling of our lives. Remember, the two-fold summary of the law that Jesus gave us in an earlier passage? (Love God and love others.) There is a priority to those commands. Jesus says loving God is our first priority. Why? It isn’t because God is an egomaniac. It’s because there’s an order to the universe and God is at the top of that order. When we worship him first and foremost, we’re acting within our divine design. Sure, it’s important that we care for the needs of others, but if we do that without expressing love for God in the process, we’re not doing the number one thing God created us to do.
Happy Easter! Looks like we’re a day too early to get into the Passion narratives. Instead the focus of today’s passage in the Gospel according to Mark is the return of Jesus. He hits a theme we’ve talked about before. No one knows when Jesus will return. That means we need to be ready at all times. What does it mean to be ready though? It means that when Jesus returns we need to be about his work. We need to be allowing God to change us internally, and we need to be used to make an impact upon the world for Christ.
Jesus could return at any moment. Are you ready?
