Surprise Ending

John 21:21 NIV

When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Are You Surprised By How Things Have Gone?

I like a story with surprising twists and turns.  Whether it is a book or a movie, I want it to have some unpredictability to it. I have recently been reading To Kill A Mockingbird.  It has been fifty years since I read it the first time and I had forgotten enough of the storyline to be caught off guard by parts of the book.  Yet based on popularity alone, it seems that most Americans want their stories to go as predicted.  The cute couple eventually gets together, the villain is caught, the aliens are destroyed, the good guys survive and win in the end.  Every once in a while a La La Land comes along that catches me by surprise but generally like most, I want stories to end the way I expect them to end.  There is comfort in predictability.  I get Campbell’s Tomato Soup because I know how it will taste and it is good enough for me.  That is why I choose Gala apples and vanilla ice cream.  I know what I will find when I bite into it.

When I was young and studying chemistry I was surprised to discover that electrons did not revolve around the nucleus in simple and predictable orbitals.  New information threw the old pictures of atomic structures out of whack.  It turned out that electrons move about chaotically.  One can never predict where a given electron will be.  It might be within a certain area but its action is irrational and chaotic and you cannot even know where it is when you try to find it.  Many philosophers describe the universe in a similar way.  There is chaos and unpredictability to it.  “The universe is irrational without any intelligence behind it”, they contend.    Some people are comfortable with that notion.  They like the idea that nothing is certain or trustworthy.

When it comes to Christianity, the majority of church people believe there is one place of certainty and predictability.  It is God.  They speak of Him in ways that a mathematician speaks of her field.   We want our God to be predictable, mathematically determinable.  If we do this, God does that.  When this happens, it is because God has this in mind.  God is stable.  He goes this way or that but always in a logical and understandable process.   We want God to be reasonable and sensible to us.  There must be formulas that he follows, certain equations that determine His actions.  No one would design a god who can’t be counted on to run smoothly, to make His payments and provide His dividends.  The world has its eye on a mathematical God.  Do you?

Job and his friends were certain that God was bound up in rules and obligations…that there were formulas they could use to predict his actions.  What makes the book of Job so disorienting is that all the main characters discovered the Lord was not programmable.  He did not give Job an easy life because Job was honest, moral and generous.  Job’s friends knew God had to behave in certain ways and when He didn’t, they decided something must have been wrong with Job.  Like the jurists in To Kill A Mockingbird who could not recalibrate when the evidence went against their determinations, Job’s friends could not comprehend that God would put Job through so much pain and suffering it Job was not a bad man.  They thought God was mathematical when He isn’t.

Jonah had the same problem.  He had in mind a mathematical God when he heard God tell him to go to Nineveh and preach judgment to the people there.  Jonah did not expect that kind of job.  The Lord was predictable to him.  A terrible and cruel people like the Assyrians would be burnt to a crisp by God.  They didn’t need any warnings…just fire from heaven.  Yet that was not what happened.  God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent, they took it and God mercifully gave the Assyrians the opportunity to try again.  That did not fit Jonah’s God formula and he fell into a deep depression over his miscalculations.

Consider the strange case of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah.  He was young when he became king, just eight years old.  His grandfather was perhaps the cruelest and most ungodly king Judah ever had.  Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end — besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.   As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?   (2 Kings 21:16-18 NIV)  His father was no better a king and after two years of reigning, the people were so fed up with him that he was assassinated.  That left Josiah as next in line.  After eighteen years being king, Josiah ordered that the Temple of God be cleaned and restored.  For nearly sixty years it had been a center of pagan worship and it fell into ruin.  Josiah though loved the Lord and when a book of the Law was found in the wreckage, Josiah turned his life over to God and dedicated himself to following Him wholeheartedly.  Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:1-3 NIV)

How would God treat such a man as this, let alone a king like him?  It would seem that God would do with him as he did with Josiah’s great-grandfather who also was faithful to the Lord.  When faced with a great international threat and insurmountable odds, the Lord intervened on Hezekiah’s behalf and wrecked the army that came against him and the people.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  (2 Kings 19:35 NIV)  Plug in the variables, use your God formula and you have your answer for how things will go.  When the Egyptians formed a great army and posed a threat to Josiah’s kingdom, Josiah pulled together all his fighting forces and went up against the Egyptians in battle.  Everything would turn out fine he probably told his wife and kids as he left to go battle the Egyptians.  His generals he reassured that if they fought hard, the Lord would bring them victory.  Everything fit the God formula.  Good king.  Growing faith among the people!  What could go wrong?

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.  (2 Kings 23:29 NIV)  So what do you make of that?  What should any good Christian brother or sister just trying to follow Jesus faithfully make of it?  How does that fit into the mathematics of God?   Even the Apostle Peter wanted to know what algebraic equation to use when trying to calculate the Lord’s plans for him.  As he and the other apostles were meeting with Jesus on the shore of Galilee after Christ rose from the dead following His crucifixion, the Lord revealed to Peter what would come of him.  “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."  (John 21:18 NIV)

This  was in fact Jesus’ way of telling Peter how Peter would die.  That certainly didn’t fit into the equation Peter had of how God would deal with him and it must have thrown him.  It would have thrown you.  He then asked the Lord about the Apostle John, "Lord, what about him?"  (John 21:21 NIV)  He wanted to recalculate God with a better equation.  He thought He knew and understood God but now He realized he didn’t.  Christ’s reply took it all out of the realm of mathematics.  Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."(John 21:22 NIV)  In other words, “Don’t try to predict what I will do.”  “Don’t think I can be understood with a calculator.”  The Lord is not bound by the rules of physics or logic.  His actions are not determined by what you think is best.  He does as He pleases whenever He wants.  He is absolutely free. 

There is only one way to think along God’s lines.  There is only this law through which He operates.  It is the Law of Love.  Not your love.  Not my love.  Pure, undefiled love is how you see into God.  John the Apostle, who knew Jesus as well as anyone has made this clear when He stated,  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8 NIV)  The only way to get into God’s mind is to love His people.  You are as confused about Him as a rock in a creek bed if you do not love.  Love is the map to His personality, it is the glasses through which we understand His actions.  The lowest of minds can think along the lines of Jesus if love is at play but the great intellects of the world are at a complete loss to comprehend even the smallest thing of God without love.  How can you understand God and know what He is doing with you?  Stare with fixed attention upon Jesus crucified, His hands riveted to the horizontal beam with rough iron nails, His feet fixed to the vertical wooden beam with another nail and the blood drops oozing down from his head.  That is how you understand what He is doing with you.  Watch Him as He dies to take from you your sin.  Gaze upon Him as He dies to give you a new and perfect life.  That is how you figure Him out.  It is love through and through that decides for Christ what He will do at any moment.  It is love that determines His actions.  Take heed to this.  The only ones who get a grasp on God and understand His ways are those who love and invest with love in the lives of others.  Let this be the way you think about all you see of God and hear about Him.  Let it be your rule of thumb whenever you look for what the Lord may be doing with you.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV)  It may be a surprise ending when it comes to what happens next for you but you can be certain of this.  It will be because God loves you and died to save you from your sin.

Easter Blindness

Luke 24:15-16 NIV

As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.

Have You Missed Something Lately?

Several times I went to Russia to teach for a few weeks at a Christian college in Moscow.  Although I did not speak any Russian, my lecture was translated to the students in Russian.  This meant for extended lag times when I waited for the translator to finish before I moved forward with my teaching.  I kind of liked the gaps; it gave me time to compose my thoughts and make sure I was staying on topic.  It made it a bit tedious for the students though as they had to wait for me to say what I had to say before they could find out what it was.  However, there was an interesting dynamic to this class that it took me a while to recognize.  I tried to entertain the students a bit by giving funny anecdotes from my life and sometimes I realized there were students laughing before the translator finished.  At first I thought maybe the translator was saying something funny or making comments about what I had said.  This happened several times and because I was insecure, I assumed that maybe the translator was adding to what I was saying to make my lectures more interesting.  Then of course it dawned on me what was happening.  Some of the students were laughing before the translator finished translating because they understood English and were laughing along with me as I told my stories.  It was like within my class there was a secret society of English speakers who I was not aware existed.  They could have remained embedded there for the full time I taught if they had not let the cat out of the bag by laughing before the translator repeated my stories.

There are many times when we don’t pick up on crucial information…like when we don’t realize how angry our wives are, or when we don’t notice that our husbands don’t like what we just cooked.  Perhaps you have talked about someone and didn’t realize that person was right behind you.  You might find out that there was a deduction you could have taken off your income tax but didn’t know about it until it was too late.  Maybe you had not realized one of your children wasn’t doing his schoolwork until you saw his report card.  Maybe you thought you were having a great conversation with someone only to discover the person didn’t like you.  Have you ever believed you were doing badly at work only to have your boss complement you for what you are doing?   You might have discovered someone close to you had cancer but were not aware of it.  Maybe you found out when you were in school that a classmate had a crush on you and were oblivious to it.  Our world has lots of secrets it keeps from us…some because we aren’t paying close attention, others because we don’t have a way of accessing the information.  Easter Sunday was one of those days when what seemed to be the case, wasn’t always as it seemed.

The first Easter was a day full of surprise.  After watching Jesus brutally beaten, his skin shredded by a Roman flogging, and then suffer his agonizing death on the cross; Jesus’ disciples and close friends were emotionally devastated.  Some were afraid for their own lives; others were in shock over what had happened to Jesus.  No one was prepared for the events of Easter Sunday and it took them all a while to realize what had happened.  This becomes clear when we take a close look at what transpired. 

Somewhere near dawn, Mary Magdalene and some other women came to the tomb of Christ hoping somehow to put anointing spices on His body.  They were of course well aware that a heavy stone had been placed in front of the tomb entrance and there guards were stationed there to keep Jesus’ body from being removed.  How they planned on pushing back the stone, we have no idea.  Perhaps they thought they could talk the guards into doing it for them.  When Mary Magdalene and another woman got to the tomb, they found the stone rolled away and the guards gone.  This shattered Mary Magdalene’s already fragile psyche and she rushed off to tell the disciples that Jesus’ body had been stolen.  Peter and John hustled back with Mary Magdalene trailing far behind them.  When she got to the tomb, Peter and John had already been inside and ran off another way carrying with them the startling news that something supernatural had taken place in Jesus’ tomb and His body was gone.  At the tomb, two angels greeted Mary Magdalene but she was so distraught she did not know it was angels talking to her.  Let’s listen to John the Apostle’s description of what happened. 

Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"  "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him."  At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. (John 20:11-14 NIV)

There are two interesting assumptions Mary Magdalene made that are very normal and understandable and they are related.  The first is that the angels she met inside the tomb of Jesus were not angels.  Who she thought they were is anyone’s guess but she certainly did not realize they were angels.  Either she completely overlooked the tell-tale signs or there was no evidence for her to consider that would lead her to recognize them as angels.  Immediately, Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus but shockingly, she didn’t know it was Jesus.  Neither His voice nor His look gave Him away.  "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"  Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." (John 20:15 NIV)  Why did Mary Magdalene, staring straight at Jesus, not know it was Him?  This is of course a mystery to us.  The same thing happened with two disciples who were walking away from Jerusalem toward the small village of Emmaus.

They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.  As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.  He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"  They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"  "What things?" he asked.  "About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied.

(Luke 24:14-19 NIV) Here these two disciples were; talking about Jesus of Nazareth, not knowing the entire time they were talking to Jesus of Nazareth.  Like Mary Magdalene, Jesus was unrecognizable to them even though He was perfectly Himself.  Luke says these two disciples were “kept from recognizing him.”  What that means we have no idea but that is the case.  What should have been so easy to realize, that they were with Jesus, was a complete secret to Mary Magdalene and these two disciples.  They could not see God right in front of them.

It is getting more and more difficult for people to realize they are having God moments.  Like Mary Magdalene they are either kept from seeing God at work or they aren’t open to noticing Him.  The Bible is filled with ordinary moments becoming extraordinary experiences with God.  The prophet Jeremiah noticed an almond tree branch and God confided in Him that He was “awake” to accomplish all He promised to do.  Likewise, when Jeremiah came across a tilted boiling pot, the Lord informed Him that disaster was coming upon Jerusalem from the north.  How did David have the inspiration for writing one of the most well-known poems in literature, the 23^rd Psalm?  He did his job watching sheep for his dad and he thought about how much God cares for us.  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.  He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. (Psalm 23:1-3 NIV)

James the brother of Jesus watched plenty of boats sailing upon the Sea of Galilee and thought about how such a small item as a rudder could force a big boat to turn.  At some point, the Lord pointed out to Him that the rudder of a boat is like a tongue.  Both are small but each has a huge impact.  Paul the Apostle spent time on farms and saw how the branch of a wild olive tree could be grafted into the trunk of a cultivated olive tree.  He then heard from God that the Lord did the same thing by bringing Gentiles into the Kingdom of God through the Jewish people.

There are perhaps a hundred different moments when God can break into your day and speak to you.  You might be blind to it like Mary Magdalene or like David you might see as clear as day God moments.  Something as simple as a trip to the mechanic or a stop light could be the moment God breaks through to you.  You could be preparing dinner when the Lord has something to say to you or working out in the gym when He shows you something.  If an almond tree can be a great revelation for Jeremiah, what might a rose bush be or a conversation with one of your children.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves at least this.  God does not need our help to conquer death or anything else for that matter.  He didn’t search out the disciples on the road to Emmaus because it was essential he get advice from them on how to strengthen and encourage the rest of the disciples.  He came to the disciples because He loved them and wanted them to live in Him rather than just hear of Him.  You too are on the road to Emmaus.  God may say something to you at any moment.  He might show you something when you are not prepared to see it.  Our Lord does not just want you to read about Him, He wants you to have personal experience being with Him.  Praise Him.  Think about Him.  Ask Him questions.  Thank Him for what He gives you.  Gradually you will become aware of Him and you will know how to recognize Him speaking to you.  Sometimes you will think God has spoken to you but it won’t be Him.  As you keep turning to Him again and again though, you will hear Him and it really will be Him.  He will be present with you and your heart will skip a beat because you will know Jesus Christ Himself is there right where you are.  No longer will it be a story about Him; someone’s statement about Him, it will be you with Him and He will speak to you so that you know it is Him.  It will be your Easter Sunday!

Feast or Famine

In the parable of the Great Banquet, the Lord explains how it really is with God's Kingdom.  Someone said to Jesus, "Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."  Christ's response was chilling.  He told a story about a certain man who hosted a great feast.   However most of his invited guests did not bother coming.  Because there was still so much food and space, he ordered that his servant go out and invite anyone he saw to the banquet but just a few came.  Not wanting all his good food to go to waste, he told his servant to go far and wide and get all he could to come and feast with him.  Now here is the surprising point Jesus was making.   None of those who were invited but didn't bother coming will get a taste of His banquet.  As the story progresses, the recurring theme is that the vast majority of those invited to the great feast never bother coming and have ridiculous excuses for not making it.  Do we realize the implication?  Not many people will be taken into the Lord's great banquet because they don't want to come!  Is it possible that our view of success is much different than our Lord's view?   Do we expect that all sorts of people, multitudes and multitudes will fall in love with Jesus and make their home with Him and thus we will be successful in our Christian duty?  God's view is that the servant will give out the invitation to life with Christ and the servant will do it again and again, giving out countless invitations but all the while just a few will join in God's Kingdom and be a part of His family.   Our expectation is misplaced.  God never promises that the masses will be Christian, that there is to be an avalanche of enthusiasm for God's Kingdom.  He insists the opposite and makes it clear this is what He means.  Broad is the way that leads to destruction and many enter into its tumult.  But narrow is the way leading to life and very few take that route.  The Christian should be "scared to death" that those close to her will "burn their bridge" to God and be cast outside the Gates of God's New Jerusalem.   It ought to terrorize us that "good people" will weep great tears of horror when they find out what their rejection of Jesus Christ has done!  We mustn't be so foolish as five of the virgins in Jesus' parable who did not think it mattered what they did about the invitation to join Christ in His hall of mercy and grace.  The door, when slammed shut, will make a most dreadful sound for those outside.

"'Sir', the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'  Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.  I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'"    Luke 14: 22-23 NIV

The Twists of Life

The element of surprise is pronounced in even the most dreary life but it should never be frustrating or cause for despair in the Christian.  The Christian is the one person who has certainty that each facet of life is in the hands of God and always being guided for his or her good.  It is never otherwise...whether it be the car wreck or the identity theft or the throbbing in the shoulder.  If it is not true that all things are being worked by God for our good, then it is the great farce, this Christian life. Decide for yourself with unforgiving ferocity.  Jesus Christ loves you and is making every twist of your life beneficial to you, no, more than that, every part of your life is the gift of God to you and it is as lovely as the morning dawn.   Who is this that appears like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, majestic as the stars in procession? (Song of Songs 6:10 NIV)