Seasons. An Advent and Lent Podcast By Willow Park Church

On Wednesday evening of Holy Week Jesus is again in Bethany at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, where dinner is given in his honour. During this dinner, Mary brings an alabaster jar filled with rare ointment of pure spikenard worth a year’s wages and anoints Jesus’ head with the entire contents. This is Mary’s extravagant way of acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah—the anointed King of Israel.

It would seem as though Mary is saying it’s time for Jesus to be publicly acknowledged as Messiah.

But some of the disciples angrily scold Mary for her extravagance, saying, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? It could have been sold for three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.”

If we are honest with ourselves and had we not known the rest of the story, then we would probably be saying the same thing.

We would expect Jesus to say that perfume worth tens of thousands of dollars would be better spent on feeding and clothing the poor than by wasting it on a single moment of outrageous worship. We would be inclined to agree that this kind of worship is a misspent endeavour.

But we would be wrong.

Jesus defends Mary by calling what she did a beautiful thing.

This leaves us with much to ponder. Is it not true that there is no higher priority than doing good works of justice?

Jesus indeed teaches us to provide for the poor—this is part of the second commandment to love your neighbour as yourself.

But the first command is to love God with all of your heart.

If we love God with no evidence of us seeking Justice in his name, do we truly love God?

And conversely, Justice that is not rooted in the worship of God has no coherent foundation.

So Jesus endorsed the extravagant anointing that Mary bestowed upon him. He even said that “wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” This emphasizes the truth that the gospel is not a salvation formula but the entire story of Jesus.

Jesus also mysteriously says that Mary has anointed him for burial, which is certainly not what Mary was intending. Mary thought she was anointing Jesus for coronation, but Jesus says she anointed him for burial. Both are true. Jesus is the anointed King, and his coronation did launch the revolution of God’s kingdom, but it also involved the burial of Jesus, because his coronation came by crucifixion and the revolution came by the cross. This is the gospel that is to be proclaimed in all the world.

As we read this again, place yourself at the table as Mary comes into the room.

When we think of the anointing of Kings, we think of official ceremonies like that of David and Saul being anointed by Samuel. But in this instance, a woman named Mary comes in and is overcome with worship that she anoints Jesus. She pays no attention to those around her and she is not embarrassed for her heart of worship and love for Jesus. Jesus defends this beautiful act of worship.

Music: Building you a Throne by Maximillian.

On Tuesday of Holy Week Jesus delivered his Olivet Discourse to his disciples, predicting that despite the impressive grandeur of Herod’s temple, within a generation the temple would be destroyed with “not one stone left upon another.” In the Olivet Discourse Jesus is not talking about the end of the world, but the end of the age—the end of the temple age. In John’s Gospel, when Jesus stages his protest in the temple and the authorities demand a sign to justify his actions, Jesus says the sign will be this: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” John then adds this commentary: “He was speaking of the temple of his body.” In other words, Herod’s temple is to be replaced by the body of Christ. A temple of lifeless stone will be replaced by a temple of living stone. This new temple of the body of Christ will not be fixed to a single geographical location, but will be a global temple located wherever two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus. In the New Covenant the chosen people are the human race and the holy land is the whole earth. In the Olivet Discourse Jesus gives the signs that will indicate that the temple age of ritual sacrifice and ethnic particularity is coming to an end. In this talk, Jesus describes the tumultuous events of the AD 60s and 70s—famines, plagues, earthquakes, the persecution of Christians found in the book of Acts, the rise of false Messiahs, the Jewish war that began in the year 66, and finally the Roman siege of Jerusalem that began in February of 70 and ended with the destruction of the temple on August 10. The destruction of the temple officially marked the end of the temple age and confirmed that the rule of the Son of Man as envisioned by the prophet Daniel had indeed begun with Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. The most important sentence in the Olivet Discourse is when Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.” In other words, people who were alive when Jesus was teaching in Jerusalem would live to see all of these predictions about the end of the temple age come to pass. And that’s exactly what happened. Now is not the time to sift through the Olivet Discourse looking for signs by which to alarm people about the end of the world. Instead, now is the time for us to be about the good work of being the new temple, the temple of living stones that is the global body of Christ. Now is not the time to focus on Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem—a prediction that came to pass almost two thousand years ago. Now is the time to work with Jesus in the construction of the New Jerusalem.

Music by: Salt Of The Sound 

LENT Day 41 (Holy Monday) Mark 11:12–23 

Jesus Disrupts the Temple On Palm Sunday 

Jesus arrived in Jerusalem but did not spend the night in the city. It was far too dangerous to stay in Jerusalem at night when the temple police could arrest him without fear of a riot. So in the evening, Jesus retreated to Bethany on the Mount of Olives and then returned to teach in the temple each morning. On Monday Jesus enacted two pieces of prophetic theatre that are highly significant. As he walked down the Mount of Olives from Bethany on his way to the Temple, he stopped to look for fruit on a fig tree. This was a theatrical performance—obviously, Jesus knew it wasn’t the season for figs. Upon finding no fruit, he spoke to the fig tree, saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” Then he continued his journey to the temple where he engaged in another fruit inspection, and failing to find the fruit of fidelity and justice—the fruit the Hebrew prophets always called Israel to bear—Jesus staged an even more dramatic performance of prophetic theatre. Jesus made a whip and drove out the sheep for the sacrifices, overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of the pigeon sellers, and shouted, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers!” Jesus is the climax of the Hebrew prophetic tradition. What is traditionally called the “cleansing of the temple” was not a cleansing at all, but a prophetic denunciation and a symbolic destruction of the temple. Six centuries earlier the prophet Jeremiah had denounced the temple as a den of robbers, meaning that the people of Jerusalem were using the temple as a hideout, believing that it gave them exemption from divine judgment for their idolatry and injustice. Jeremiah then predicted that the temple would be destroyed by fire that “will burn and not be quenched.” This prophecy came to pass about twenty years later in 587 BC when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by the Babylonians. On Holy Monday Jesus re-enacted Jeremiah’s prophetic protest—a symbolic act that the priests, scribes, and Levites would have easily interpreted. Just as Jeremiah had predicted the destruction of the first temple, now Jesus is predicting the destruction of the second temple. Like the fig tree, the temple was barren of the fruit that God sought and it would never produce fruit again. Jesus’ action of temporarily halting the temple sacrifices during Passover week was highly provocative and extremely dangerous. It was only due to his popularity with the crowds of Passover pilgrims that Jesus wasn’t arrested on Monday. Nevertheless this action accelerated the plot among the chief priests to find a way to arrest Jesus in secret and

Zahnd, Brian. The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey (pp. 168-171).

Today is the first day of Holy Week—the journey from Palm Sunday to the end of Lent on Holy Saturday. 

More than any week in the year this is a time for deep reflection on the life and message of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ triumphal entry on Palm Sunday sets up a confrontation with the principalities and powers represented by King Herod, the high priest Caiaphas, and the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. 

The Roman governor ordinarily resided at a Herodian palace in the coastal city of Caesarea, but during Passover (a feast celebrating Jewish liberation from foreign domination) the governor had to be in Jerusalem to suppress any uprisings that might occur during this volatile week. Coming from Caesarea, Pilate entered the city from the west, riding a warhorse at the head of the Imperial Calvary. The Roman governor’s entrance into Jerusalem was essentially a military parade. It was intended as a show of force to intimidate any would-be revolutionaries. Military parades, then and now, are how empires demonstrate that they rule the world through their superior capacity to wage war. 

When Jesus arrived at the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem, he deliberately enacted this five-hundred-year-old prophesy from Zechariah. 

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Jesus’ triumphal entry was the anti-military parade. It was a mockery of Rome’s intimidating show of military power. It also presented Jerusalem with a stark contrast between the way of war and the way of peace. At the beginning of Holy Week, Pontius Pilate and Jesus of Nazareth are at the head of two very different parades.  The question for us is which parade are we marching in—the military parade of Pilate that still believes the world is to be shaped by war, or the peace parade of Jesus that understands that with the coming of Christ war has been abolished?

Zahnd, Brian. The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey (pp. 165-168). Kindle Edition.

At Golgotha we find a crowd of cruel mockers and jeering priests and they only add to the horrors of that long day’s dying. But they aren’t the only people there, for at the foot of the cross we also find family and friends of Jesus, and this provides us with one of the most tender moments of the Passion. Even as Jesus is dying on the cross, his love and compassion reaches out to others as he commits his mother and John to a relationship of mutual care: “Here is your son. Here is your mother.” Looking down upon them from the cross, Jesus draws Mary and John into a new mother-son relationship: “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” What we have in this episode with Jesus, Mary, and John is a poignant picture of Jesus’ vision for his church—a community of faith centered around our Lord and his cross, caring for one another. We really should see the church as our mother; and the church really should think of its members as beloved children. I know the experience of church doesn’t always live up to this vision, and I know it’s easy to be critical of the church, but still I hear Jesus say, “Here is your mother.” I have no quibble with the Orthodox and Catholic veneration of Mary, but I do prefer to see Mary as a revered personification of the church. So when I hear Jesus speaking from the cross directing a disciple to care for his mother, I take it as a sacred plea from Christ to care lovingly for the church as our mother. And so my commitment to Jesus is in part expressed in a filial devotion to the church. Jesus is my Lord and Savior, but the church is my mother—a mother who both provides care and is to be cared for. I’m speaking of the church not as a cold (and sometime cruel) institution, but as the kind of community where many people have their only real opportunity to find love, acceptance, and dignity. As a pastor I know of many people where the church has truly become a mother to them. I know of situations where the church has treated specific people better than their own mother. At its best there’s nothing like the church. A place where Matthew 25 is just a normal day—a place where the poor are fed and clothed, the sick are helped and healed, a place where the immigrant is welcomed, and the prisoner is given dignity. A place where everyone is saint and sinner. A place where a judge and a felon can sit side by side on the same pew with equal status in Christ. A place where we not only carry each other’s burdens, but when necessary carry each other, because, despite our vast differences in education and opportunity, opinions and politics, we are learning to love one another like Jesus loves us—unconditionally. This is the church I believe in. Lord Jesus, help us to behold the church as our mother. And help us to care for our mother, the church, in such a way that she can provide motherly love and care for her sons and daughters. Amen.

Zahnd, Brian. The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey

38 The charge was written above him: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

39 One of the bad characters who was hanging there began to insult him. ‘Aren’t you the Messiah?’ he said. ‘Rescue yourself – and us, too!’

40 But the other one told him off. ‘Don’t you fear God?’ he said. ‘You’re sharing the same fate that he is! 41 In our case it’s fair enough; we’re getting exactly what we asked for. But this fellow hasn’t done anything out of order.

42 ‘Jesus,’ he went on, ‘remember me when you finally become king.’

43 ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ replied Jesus, ‘you’ll be with me in paradise, this very day.’

When we think of crucifixion we instinctively think of Jesus for obvious reasons. But this may cause us to think that crucifixion was something relatively unique to Jesus. It was not. The Roman Empire crucified hundreds of thousands of victims.

Indeed, one of the scandals of Good Friday is that Jesus was but one of three that day. Jesus was not even granted the macabre dignity of his own crucifixion but was among a trio of victims. Jesus doesn’t die as a lone sufferer, but as Immanuel among the sufferers.

On Good Friday we behold the gruesome spectacle of the God-Man nailed to a tree. This is the only theodicy that comes close to working. Yes, life is filled with horrible and undeserved suffering, but God does not exempt himself from it; rather God in Christ fully shares it with us.

As God the suffering of Christ is wholly unique; but as a human, his suffering is in solidarity with all human suffering. Golgotha is where divine impassability intersects with human suffering. Often human suffering seems pointless and meaningless, but it is pointless meaninglessness shared by God and Christ. And once God is involved it is no longer pointless or meaningless…for by his wounds we are healed.

Christ crucified with victims on either side of him also presents us with a powerful image: Jesus among the victims in solidarity with them, but simultaneously becoming the dividing point. To see Jesus Christ hung upon a cross wearing a crown of thorns, with victims on either side, is, perhaps, the most powerful single image of the gospel. Incarnation, forgiveness, and kingdom are all present. The three crosses of Golgotha also presents us with the image of choice—for how we respond to Jesus determines everything.

One of the crucified revolutionaries sees in Jesus the possibility of a new kingdom and believes.

This victim sees the inscription, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” and believes that Jesus truly is a king with a kingdom and asks to be remembered in this coming kingdom.

To this dying man, Jesus promises union with him in Paradise.

The other crucified revolutionary, though himself a victim, can’t resist participating in the old way of victimizing others. This is the seductive power of scapegoating—even as he dies on a cross, this victim finds cruel solace in joining the crowd in blaming another. But when we deal with our fear and anger, our pain and shame by blaming others, we achieve union with the satan, and that keeps us locked in our own self-imposed hell.

One thief sees in Jesus the possibility of a new kingdom centred on forgiveness and belief. The other thief cannot resist the old satanic way of exporting guilt through blame…but only one response leads to the Paradise of union with Christ.

Lord Jesus, we look to you on the cross wearing your crown of thorns and believe in your kingdom of love and forgiveness. Jesus, remember us and lead us into the blessed Paradise of union with you. Amen.

Music: Salt Of The Sound - In Prayer - Jesus Keep Me Near The Cross

The Soldiers Mock Jesus

16 The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17 They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18 And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” 19 Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross.

Today’s reading is only one verse, but it contains an enormous message—when Jesus came to the end of his strength, there was someone there to carry his cross for him.

As Jesus faltered under the load of the cross, Simon of Cyrene

was given the supreme honour of carrying it for him.

From the story of Simon of Cyrene we are reminded that there are limits to what we can bear, but when we reach those limits God will send someone to help. David was the great hero who had killed Goliath, but there was a giant David couldn’t kill. When Ishbi-benob, the brother of Goliath, was about to kill David because the king had grown weary in battle, Abishai came

to David’s rescue and slew the giant. Elijah was the mighty man of God who called down fire from heaven and prevailed in his contest with the four hundred prophets of Baal. But when the prophet fled from Jezebel and was depressed, curled up in a fetal position under a broom tree praying to die, God arranged for Elisha to become his companion and to share his prophetic mantle. And when Jesus Christ the Son of God reached his limit and could carry his cross no more, there was Simon of Cyrene to carry it for him.

Some days we can slay Goliath with a slingshot, some days we can’t. Some days we can call down fire from heaven, some days we’re curled up under the broom tree. Some days we can handle anything, some days it’s all too much. That’s when we need someone to help us. There was a giant David couldn’t kill, so Abishai did it for him. There was a trial Elijah couldn’t handle, so Elisha was given to him. And there was a cross Jesus couldn’t

carry, but Simon of Cyrene was there to carry it for him.

This is the beauty of the body of Christ and why the church is so necessary.

Christianity is not a solo project; we can’t go it alone. David couldn’t do it by himself. Elijah couldn’t do it by himself. Even Jesus couldn’t do it by himself. And you can’t do it by yourself.

Some days we have the honour of being Simon of Cyrene and helping a brother or sister carry their cross when it has become too much for them. On other days we are the ones in need of a Simon of Cyrene. Whether we are helping or being helped, it’s all the grace of God.

Reliction question.

Reflect on a time when you have needed the help of someone to carry a burden.

And when have you been asked to help carry a burden for someone? Thank God for both those moments.

As the Roman governor Pontius Pilate—a man infamous in history for his cruelty—condemns Jesus to crucifixion, Barabbas is drawn into the sacred drama. Who was Barabbas? To understand the identity of Barabbas is to bring the tragedy of Good Friday into sharp focus—perhaps sharper than we would like. In understanding Barabbas, films like The Passion of the Christ have done us a disservice. Barabbas was not a deranged serial killer as depicted in Mel Gibson’s movie. Why would a crowd ever clamour for the release of a common murderer? 

If we imagine Barabbas as a homicidal maniac, we will never imagine ourselves among the crowd shouting, “Give us Barabbas!” But we should. Barabbas wasn’t a common criminal, he was a national hero. Barabbas wasn’t a serial killer, he was a political prisoner. Barabbas wasn’t a murderous bandit, he was a revolutionary leader. Barabbas was a Jewish insurgent who had led an insurrection against the Roman occupation and who had killed someone during the uprising—probably a Roman soldier or a Jewish collaborator. Barabbas would have been viewed as a popular hero among much of Jerusalem’s population who longed for liberation from foreign occupation by whatever means. Barabbas wasn’t the Boston strangler. Barabbas was William Wallace or George Washington or Che Guevara. That casts Barabbas in a completely different light! Some ancient New Testament manuscripts give us the revolutionary’s full name as Jesus Barabbas, that is, Jesus Son of the Father. Jesus Barabbas is a rival messiah! 

On Good Friday we are given the choice between two versions of Jesus—Jesus Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth calls us to the way of peace by loving our enemies and the practice of radical forgiveness. Jesus Barabbas is willing to fight our wars and kill our enemies in the name of freedom. Recently a well-known megachurch pastor said, “When I’m looking for a leader I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find.” Whether he understands it or not, this evangelical pastor is saying, “Give us Barabbas!” For many American Christians, the politics of Jesus are dismissed as impractical and so they kick the can down the road saying, “maybe someday we can turn our swords into plowshares, but now is the time for us to build more B-2 bombers and stockpile nukes so we can kill all our enemies.” The crowd that gathers on Good Friday shouting, “Give us Barabbas!,” is far more plausible and numerous than most of us imagine. If we think that killing our enemies is compatible with Christian ethics, we are in effect saying, “Give us Barabbas!” But Lent is the time to rethink everything in the light of Christ. We are not called to scrutinize the Sermon on the Mount through the lens of the Pentagon; we are called to follow Jesus by embodying the kingdom of God here and now, no matter what the rest of the world does.

Music by Simon Wester

Peter had made a rash vow that he would never desert or deny Jesus, even if it meant prison or death. And in the garden of Gethsemane Peter had bravely drawn his sword and used it in defence of his master. But when Jesus disarmed Peter and healed the wounded man in the arresting party, all the fight went out of the brash fisherman. If Jesus wasn’t going to fight for himself, why should he risk his life? So Peter fled from the garden. But later Peter secretly followed Jesus all the way into the courtyard of the high priest to see what would happen. And that’s where things began to fall apart. Perhaps without even knowing what he was doing, Peter denied having any association with Jesus to a servant girl. Later he did it again. And when a group of bystanders said they didn’t believe his denials because his country bumpkin Galilean accent gave him away, Peter cursed and swore he didn’t know the man! That’s when the rooster crowed. Matthew tells us what happened next in a short, painful sentence. “And he went out and wept bitterly.”

I suppose we’ve all heard that rooster crow—the rooster of conviction that alerts us to how we’ve failed to live up to our lofty promise to faithfully follow Jesus. And we’ve all known the bitter tears of self-reproach induced by our failure.

Yet this is one of the things I love about the Bible: it makes no attempt to cover up the sins of its seminal figures. We know about the crimes of Moses and David; we know about the failures of Abraham and Elijah; we know about the sins of Peter and Paul. Yet Moses and David, Abraham and Elijah, Peter and Paul are still presented as heroes of the faith.

In the Bible all the saints are sinners. And we who are sinners called to be saints should find comfort in this. It’s not sin that disqualifies us as disciples of Jesus, but quitting.

Peter denied Jesus, but he didn’t quit, and he was forgiven and restored. Judas betrayed Jesus…and hung himself. Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and Peter’s denial of Jesus were not categorically different sins; they may have differed in culpability, but they were similar. If Peter could be forgiven and restored, so could Judas. When you hear the rooster crow, you may weep bitterly for a while, but don’t give up, don’t quit. The rooster’s crow of conviction doesn’t signal the end of your journey, it just helps you get back on track. Just as Jesus restored Peter, Jesus can restore you.

Music by Simon Wester (Used with permission) 

11 Jesus went on: ‘Once there was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger son said to the father, “Father, give me my share in the property.” So he divided up his livelihood between them. 13 Not many days later the younger son turned his share into cash, and set off for a country far away, where he spent his share in having a riotous good time.

14 ‘When he had spent it all, a severe famine came on that country, and he found himself destitute. 15 So he went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into the fields to feed his pigs. 16 He longed to satisfy his hunger with the pods that the pigs were eating, and nobody gave him anything.

17 ‘He came to his senses. “Just think!” he said to himself. “There are all my father’s hired hands with plenty to eat – and here am I, starving to death! 18 I shall get up and go to my father, and I’ll say to him: ‘Father; I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I don’t deserve to be called your son any longer. Make me like one of your hired hands.’ ” 20 And he got up and went to his father.

‘While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and his heart was stirred with love and pity. He ran to him, hugged him tight, and kissed him. 21 “Father,” the son began, “I have sinned against heaven and before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son any longer.” 22 But the father said to his servants, “Hurry! Bring the best clothes and put them on him! Put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet! 23 And bring the calf that we’ve fattened up, kill it, and let’s eat and have a party! 24 This son of mine was dead, and is alive again! He was lost, and now he’s found!” And they began to celebrate.’

25 ‘The older son was out in the fields. When he came home, and got near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the servants and asked what was going on.

27 ‘ “Your brother’s come home!” he said. “And your father has thrown a great party – he’s killed the fattened calf! – because he’s got him back safe and well!”

28 ‘He flew into a rage, and wouldn’t go in.

‘Then his father came out and pleaded with him. 29 “Look here!” he said to his father, “I’ve been slaving for you all these years! I’ve never disobeyed a single commandment of yours. And you never even gave me a young goat so I could have a party with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours comes home, once he’s finished gobbling up your livelihood with his whores, you kill the fattened calf for him!”

31 ‘ “My son,” he replied, “you’re always with me. Everything I have belongs to you. 32 But we had to celebrate and be happy! This brother of yours was dead and is alive again! He was lost, and now he’s found!” ’