For This Reason 20

[HKHaugan]

A good rabbi friend said to me once, “Wherever you find two Jews you will find three opinions.” Of course I laughed and we talked on about that. But it led into a deeper foray on his part when we got to the discussion about Jewish conversion to being Christians. He asked “Why can’t Jesus just be accepted as the Christian Messiah?” In other words, leave Jews alone. You know those moments when you don’t have a ready answer? Well that was one of those moments because all kinds of ideas were running across my mind and each one would have led into a lengthy unresolved discussion.

Then, and I know you’ve been through this, you pondered the question later and had the answer you wished you had had at the moment. For me that was “Because He was Jewish.” I think if he had asked “Gentile Messiah” I would have had a more ready answer. But in fact, “Because He was Jewish” is the answer. He was Jewish and steeped in Judaism from birth. His context in family and community was totally Jewish. His daily practice of study was Scripture, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. His worship was practiced at home and in the Temple. Judaism was all He knew. It was His physical and spiritual lifestyle. It was His heritage. He was raised in a ‘we-they’ atmosphere of ‘Jew-Gentile.’ He was Jewish ‘to the bone.’

But there was something different about Jesus. He saw His context as a foundation for something more, far more. From within and from without He could feel the movement of something above Himself, a spiritual nudging, a spiritual envelope that needed opening, a spiritual drive that needed satisfying. There was something beyond being an ethnic Jew, ethnic political survival, legal obedience and the rituals whose deeper meaning seemed to be lost in the leaders and people all around Him. There was no heart in their practice and that’s what He felt deep inside. His heart ached for the spiritual emptiness of the people He grew up with. Yet every bit of what He had been taught from birth He felt in His heart. Why didn’t they?

But even more He believed all of it fully in His mind, trusted it completely in His heart and walked in it faithfully in His Spirit. It all pointed to something more than Joseph, Mary, His brothers, His heritage---it was His Father in Heaven, His Father’s Will and the call of His Father. What He knew in His heart was His calling to be the Messiah for all time, but first for the Jew and then for the Gentile. This was no longer an ethnic struggle but a heart struggle in Jew and Gentile alike. All people are images of God, but images gone astray.

Jesus knew what the problem was, He knew its origin and He alone knew what had to be done. He read the prophetic passages that spoke of the suffering, the rejection and the pain of the coming Messiah. They would be on His shoulders. The heart struggle would be there in Him and He would feel its gruesome impression and oppression that had fallen on everyone around Him. It was every human’s struggle, a struggle over which they had no power. That He knew. There would come a day, a very specific day when He would experience that struggle internally and that day would come on a cross where He would be left alone, embracing for everyone the sin He had never known and crying out on that cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Yet not my will but Thine be done.” That moment would be the moment of faith that only He alone was able to bear, the agony of aloneness as we human beings know deep inside. Only He knew the eternal consequences, the final struggle that death brings us to, total separation from His Father, eternal aloneness.

The human struggle in all of us? Sin.

Sin had incited the heartless entourage of self-indulgent thoughts and behaviors the devil had planted deep in the human soul from Adam on. His Father’s Word was correct, “Every inclination of a man’s heart is only evil all the time (Gen.6:5).” Tell me sin that causes aloneness in every heart doesn’t exist. Tell me that sin isn’t felt in pride, the dominant factor in how we behave. Tell me that sin doesn’t release the spirit of lust for acceptance, wealth and status that drives the ego engine. Tell me that sin’s subtle suggestion that misunderstanding with its ‘I-thought-you-understood-defensiveness,’ our pesky dislikes, hate and manipulation are just slight errors in judgment. Tell me that the spirit of control is not a problem in relationships. Tell me that we don’t feel the tug between ‘the good I want to do I don’t and the evil I don’t intend but do’ doesn’t include all of us. Tell me what really goes on in your mind from moment to moment is perfect, pure and positive. Tell me you can handle any situation. Tell me these things and I will sell you my shares of stock in UFO landing franchises which I will personally print up just for you.

Sin is the spiritual condition behind all division. There is no end to the divisions sin has caused in the world. First, two things common to all division are decision and the fear of making one. Second, pride is the cover for fear and counts for the heartache it causes. Third, fear of exposure leads to blaming someone or something else. Fourth, rationalization is the method of explanation for behavioral justification---‘This is why I did it.’

Sin is the spiritual drive within that separates us from God, from ourselves, from others and from the physical environment. It’s marked by pride, fear, defensiveness, self-justification, rationalization and, most of all, aloneness. It has shades of color like anger, rage, scheming, bitterness, revenge, lust, envy and jealousy, all of which isolate and alienate the person giving in to it.

Sin is all about me, what I want, what I desire, what I feel, what I am, what lies I tell myself and others, what I avoid and the temptations in every area of my life I entertain if not in practice then in thought. Sin is the stimulant in self-deceit and self-justification when I have to answer for something questionable and the acrobatic rationalizing I engage to give it reason. Then of course the guilt that follows like the dog chasing its tail until he realizes he can’t catch it. Sin is exhausting. Its total exhaustion Jesus endured on the Cross and exhaustion from it killed Jesus there.

Our life too will one day be exhausted and we will die but what Jesus showed in His death was the faith to die, to die believing in Him as He believed in His Father. Just as Jesus died in faith giving up His Spirit so we too will give up our spirit. But just as Jesus gave up His Spirit it was His Father’s will to have the same Spirit raise Him from death, its aloneness and eternal separation from Him. So we, who are in Jesus, when we die, will give up our spirit in faith and it is the Father’s will because of Jesus that we too will be raised just like Jesus and live with Him forever. It is in the Resurrection faith where our reason for sharing Jesus is rooted. “For this reason…!”