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Editor’s Note: I don’t often write a full manuscript when I’m asked to speak (unless its a wedding). Tonight I had the honor of giving the message at Shoreline Community Church’s Good Friday gathering. To keep within the time slot, I wrote it all out. Seemed like a shame not to publish it here 🙂

Good Friday.

We’re here to commemorate what can, without any exaggeration at all, be called the darkest day in human history: the day Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried.

Good Friday?

We celebrate a cross, a crown of thorns, and the brutal, violent, bloody torture and death of a man whose most notable crimes were healing the sick, raising the dead, and touching the untouchables.

We recall a night filled with betrayals, mock show trials, and angry mobs. We look back to a hill called “the place of the skull” where three men were impaled and displayed publicly so the entire community could watch them die a slow, agonizing, excruciating death.

And we call that “Good Friday.”

By most measures, this could not be called a good day. It wasn’t a good day for the closest followers of Jesus, who within the next few days will be scattered, broken, lost, and disillusioned. It was not a good day for anyone who had dared to let themselves believe that this Jesus was telling the truth, that He had really come from God with a message of love, forgiveness, and new life.

As they were walking along the seven mile road from Jerusalem to the tiny, insignificant village of Emmaus three days later, two of those followers met a stranger who asked them what had happened. They laid it out for him:

Luke 24:19-21
“Jesus of Nazareth,”…“He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”

“We had hoped.” Everything they had believed is now proven to be a lie. Their plans for the future evaporated. The very foundations of their lives shattered. It’s an admission of defeat, bound up in regret, sorrow, and longing. “We had hoped.” Past tense.No longer.

Ever had a Friday like that? Or a Monday? Or a Tuesday? If we’re honest, most of us would say we’ve been to that seven mile road where dreams end. We’ve had that kind of Friday. The day you realize that no matter what you do, how hard you try, it isn’t enough. If we’re telling the truth, deep in our hearts we all know that something isn’t right with this world – with us. We know there is a problem, that we’re a million miles away from how things were meant to be. And it’s crystal clear on this kind of Friday.

The Friday when that person you love is taken away from you. The day when you’ve betrayed your best friend. When your family abandons you. When you’ve broken someone’s heart. The day you learn that son or daughter or husband or wife isn’t coming home. The night it hits you that everything is falling apart, and it’s all your fault.

“We had hoped.”

God saw our Fridays. He saw the limitless beauty of the world He created consumed in chaos and death. He saw us, His children, so far from His home we could never find our way back. He saw us lost in our fears and failures. He saw it before he hung the stars, before He rolled out the universe.

He knew something had to be done, and He was the only one who could do it. So He made a tree to hold His son’s broken body. He looked across the vast expanse of time, and formed this Friday.

Romans 5 (MSG)
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

In blood and sweat and tears and betrayal and mockery and sacrifice and death, God proves once and for all that He is for us. All of our fears and failures, our lies and murders, all the things we’ve done wrong that we meant to do – these he adds to the account of His perfect, blameless only Son, and sends Him to receive the death sentence in our place.

Romans 5 (MSG)
Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life!

What joy! What hope! It’s forever settled – everything I’ve ever done was written on that cross before I was born, covered in His blood, buried in that tomb. My freedom is secured, mine for the asking. It’s the greatest Friday in human history – once and for all, in plain sight for all the world to see, emblazoned on our hearts and our history, God proves that He is all-loving and all-good. And three days later, on Easter Sunday, we see that He is all-powerful, that not even our greatest enemy, Death, can hold Him. He walks out of the tomb under his own power, leaving behind our broken past and announcing our bright future.

Imagine it. He walks from that tomb, clothed in life, holding the keys of death, Hell and the grave. He finds his way through the streets of the city, past the gates, and out to the seven mile road to Emmaus, where he meets two broken-hearted disciples, in the middle of nowhere, on the way to nothing. And he walks alongside them – and us – on their road – and on ours – and holds out hope, reception, mercy, grace, and new life to everyone who will simply believe it and receive it.

And that’s why we gather tonight to worship, to pray, to remember the body and blood of Jesus with the symbols of bread and wine. As the Apostle Paul said,

Romans 5 (MSG)
Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!

This truly is a good, Good Friday.

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A few years back I became acquainted with the phrase “Jesus Riding a Dinosaur.” It’s a meme that’s been around for quite awhile, so you can Google that (if you dare). The basic thought behind the saying is that Christians are idiots. More specifically, they are backward, ignorant, uneducated, and generally incapable of intelligent thought. The phrase itself is the result of a logical progression of thought topped with an absurdity stated for emphasis: Some Creationists have attempted to reconcile paleontology and the Bible by theorizing that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted on the planet at some point in the past (as opposed to most paleontologists, who hold the exact opposite hypothesis). This is seen as an idea so bereft of any basis in rationality that it deserves mockery. The result is the conflation of that theory with the life of the Savior as a blasphemous taunt: “Jesus Riding a Dinosaur” t-shirts, mugs, and so on. I was introduced to the phrase by a co-worker, talking about how dangerously stupid religious people in general are: “They’re the kind of people who think Jesus rode a dinosaur.”

And that’s how easily a lot of people in America write off faith. The reality of the Twitter Generation is that complex conversations about difficult subjects don’t happen as much anymore. We have an arsenal of 140 character witticisms with which we can easily dismiss anything we can’t quite grok. I’ve heard a lot of them in the last seven years due to a flip-flop I’ve made – from full-time pastor to full time software developer / volunteer pastor (but still full-time Jesus follower). Easy brush-offs like “the Bible was put together by Constantine”, “The church is full of hypocrites”, “Christians hate gay people”, and “have you seen ‘Jesus Camp’? ‘Nuff said.”

Most of these quips are not fair, and not even close to true (it may be controversial, but I, for one, do not believe Jesus rode a dinosaur). But they do serve as convenient conversation killers. Want to bring up faith in Jesus? I will shut you down with my quick wit. As I’ve run into this dismissive attitude toward faith over and over (especially here in Seattle), it’s lead me to a disturbing realization:

Most American churches may not have the slightest clue how to actually reach their culture. It’s hard to hear, but let it sink in, because it really may be true: No matter what events you put on, how well you advertise, how beautiful your buildings and brochures are, or what you give away in your visitor packets, the people you are trying to reach are not coming to your church unless they become followers of Jesus first.

I know that’s confusing. I mean, how could anyone become a follower of Jesus without first attending a church? How would they know how to say the Sinner’s Prayer (you know – the prayer the Disciples prayed). That’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes I think we’ve created a hermeneutic that stipulates the first act of a seeker must be darkening the doors of a local congregation. Maybe I think that because so many churches spend so much time, energy and money on invites, promotions, parties, and events that are focused on gathering in first-time visitors.

Let me give a subjective, anecdotal analysis. I’ve been immersed in a segment of the culture we are trying to reach for seven years and counting. I am convinced that many of the people churches are trying to coax into a worship service are not just ignoring the invitation – they are downright hostile to it. They wouldn’t “check out” a Sunday morning worship service, any more than I would stroll into a seance, no matter how casual your dress code is or what kind of coffee you serve. If your church’s first time visitor gift were an Escalade with diamond studded rims, they’d pass. They don’t trust churches or pastors or Christians any more than they trust used car salesmen or televangelists. They aren’t harboring a secret sense that maybe they need to turn their life over to God – they’re quite sure there is no such thing as God, and considering whether or not he exists would be as idiotic as a 40 year old who believes in Santa or the Easter Bunny.  They’re not “seekers”. They’re the opposite.

It’s a bleak picture I’m painting. I believe it’s the truth, but I don’t believe it’s the whole story. As I write this, I am reminded of Romans 10 (quoted here from The Message):

^14-17 But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims,

A sight to take your breath away!
Grand processions of people
telling all the good things of God!

But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus started out as a baby? God was entirely capable of creating a fully-formed, mature body for him to inhabit. He could have descended from heaven in the same way he ascended back to it. But He was born. He was helpless. He chose to be weak, to experience the world He made exactly as we do – from the cradle to the grave. He did all this because it was the only way we would see who He really was. Scripture says that while we were still his enemies, He died for us.

He came to us because we wouldn’t come to Him.

In theology, we call this “incarnation.” He came to show us that we had been sold a lie – God was not at all like we imagined him. He did not fit our stereotypes, catchphrases, or religious systems. He walked among us so we could touch him, hear him, see him, argue with him, spit on him, tear his flesh, pierce his hands, stab his side. In simple stories he told us about his true nature – that he is the loving father who races to embrace the prodigal; the founder of the feast who welcomes in the poor and the homeless; the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

This all boils down to an inescapable conclusion, a simple truth that is becoming the guiding principle of my life and ministry:

The people who aren’t coming to your church aren’t going to consider the message of Jesus until they come face to face with a real live, honest to goodness Christian. So we must go to them.

Even the most skeptical scoffer can come to respect true acts of righteousness like visiting the fatherless and the widow, giving to the poor, and practicing kindness. Even a hater can recognize integrity, honesty, humility, and hope. It is powerfully effective to confront prejudice and misinformation with truth. We treat life, death, money, sex, power, fame, and stuff very differently, and that must be seen to be believed.

It’s time we retool our churches to fulfill their original charter – our gatherings are not just a place to invite people to, they are to be training centers, from which we are sent out to our homes, our schools, our places of business. Sent to be the physical incarnation of Christ in the world – the living representation of the life-giving power in his words and work.

We are surrounded by so many Jesus wants to call home. They’re not coming to your church, but you will see them at your kids swim meet, at your work meeting, sitting next to you on the bus. They’ve never heard of your pastor (even if he’s famous in Christian circles), unless he’s done something to make the local or national news in a bad way. They don’t care how big your church is or that you have a Starbucks in the lobby. They don’t think your worship band is hip. And unless your life and testimony prove otherwise, none of that will ever change. If “the people who aren’t coming to your church” are reached, it will be by the “preaching” of a co-worker, fellow soccer mom, friend, neighbor.

My task as a pastor, then, is not to reach the city with my well-honed Sunday Sermons and globally available podcast, but to build up, equip, and prepare the church for the act of incarnation, scattering to every place where the lost live and work and play, where they will contradict the lies and correct the preconceptions. No, we don’t believe Jesus rode a dinosaur. But we do believe a lot of other wild and crazy things. Let me tell you more…

 

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“What is a Christian?”

It’s a simple question with at least a thousand answers. For the most part, those answers center around an understanding of the Christian faith as a cultural system – a tribe. We view following Jesus as a framework – a group of people who have a common language, clothing style, set of approved and disapproved activities – even music and art.

This is not a phenomenon limited to categorizing the Church – in the West especially, we are an increasingly tribal society. We gravitate toward those who see, act, feel, think, and live like we do – or like we want to. We organize our activities, our work, our free time around our tribe.

So we apply our tribal view of the world to our understanding of faith. To follow Jesus, then, must mean to join the Jesus tribe, to assimilate the Jesus culture. Since the moment Jesus left the Eleven gazing  slack-jawed at the sky on a mountaintop outside Jerusalem, humanity has been trying to nail down just what these “little Christs” are all about. Consider the accounts from the book of Acts alone – everywhere the Disciples went, they we’re met with an attempt to label their lives and their message:

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EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s been almost a year since I’ve published here. Almost a year since my father passed away unexpectedly. It seemed better to be quiet, to process personally. And if you know me, that’s not how I work — so it’s been a very different season. Now I feel once again ready to publish. More on that some other day…

I read an article this year about the tectonic shift in they way we use a bedrock technology – the telephone. In our day of texting, instant messages, Facebook posts, and even good old-fashioned emails, a phone call seems unnecessarily intrusive. Imagine the nerve of picking up the phone and calling someone! A phone call requests immediate attention, but the rest of our methods of contact can be consumed and responded to at the recipient’s discretion.

The Information Age has changed the way we interact in a myriad of ways. A thread woven through all of them is a new ability we have been bequeathed. Formerly the domain of only the very rich or very powerful, its heady power has been bestowed upon the masses. It is the opportunity to broadcast.

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