Six little men and a young boy run down a long portal pursued by a glowing face of Light and a booming voice that bellows, “Return what you have stolen from me. Return the map. Stop!” They don’t stop but fall into the outer darkness. That’s how the story begins in the old movie: Time Bandits.

The six little men (like the six days of Creation) had been hired by the Supreme Being to fix holes in the fabric of spacetime. However, they had just stolen the map that identified the location of these holes, and so they were running from God. They were planning to use the map to steal things throughout spacetime and then escape through more holes. One of those holes led to Kevin’s bedroom, and another out of his bedroom. That’s how Kevin found himself running from the Judgment of God, along with other little men.

And I think that explains the human condition. If you say, “I’ve never stolen a map, and I’m not running from God,” you’re wrong.

John 12:23-25: “... The hour has come for the Son of Man, to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth, and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life [psyche: soul] loses it, and whoever hates his life [psyche: soul] in this world will keep it for eternal life [zoe].”

Did Jesus hate His own soul in this world? Does a seed hate its lonely self in this world for the sake of another? Does it pray “Save me from this hour!” like each one of us?

John 12:27-29: “Now is my soul [psyche] troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose, I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.”

They all hear something, but they don’t hear “The voice of God.” Maybe they don’t want to hear, for what they would hear just won’t fit in their psyche? These are the people that have the map.

In Exodus 19, the Israelites arrive at the Holy Mountain. They must not touch the mountain, but in verse 13, they are told to “go up into the mountain” at the sound of the long trumpet blast. In verses 16 through 19, they hear a long loud “trumpet voice [qowl],” tremble with fear, and then plead with Moses, saying, “Do not let God speak with us, lest we die” (20:19). So, God writes his Word in stone and has Moses place it in a coffin, also called an “Ark.” Of course I’m talking about the Law, the knowledge of Good and evil — the Map.

In Genesis 2, Adam and Eve see it, or Him, hanging like fruit on a tree. They take the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is also “The Life.” And then they hear “the Voice [qowl] of the Lord walking in the garden,” and they run and hide deep in their own psyches. They’ve stolen the map.

People think Scripture is a map. Someone was once surprised to find W. C. Fields reading the Bible and so asked him what he was doing. He replied, “Looking for loopholes, my dear. …Looking for loopholes.”

Some think John’s Revelation is a map — with loopholes through which we can avoid the Judgment of God — but it’s not a map; it’s a testimony to a person. It’s titled “The Revelation of Jesus.”

John 12:31-33: “...Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw [romance] all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

When we don’t “get” the image of God — who is Jesus —

We don’t get the logic of Love — which is the sacrifice of Love: “to lose your life and find it.”

And so, we run from the Judgment of God — which is to run into nowhere and nothing. It is to run from the Light and so hide in your own shadow.

I can’t begin to explain this without three pictures that I share in sermons all the time.

#1) The first image I often share is a picture of a timeline, with the numbers 1 through 6 on the timeline and all surrounded by the number 7. An arrow from the End of the timeline (7) extends to a cross on top of the number 6 on the timeline.

This is the way the authors of Scripture and those in the early church viewed time. Chronological time has a beginning and end, and it can be divided into 6 days (aions: ages), all contained within a 7th day that is unlike all the other days; it’s eternal (aionios: “of the age,” the age to come). That day is filled with Light and the manifest presence of “I Am.” It’s not the absence of space and time, but the presence of all of space and time in every moment, and every moment in all of space and time. Death, darkness, and evil can only exist on the timeline, for shadows and lies can only exist on the timeline, for they are dependent upon separation in space and time.

On the 6th day, God made adam (humanity), and on the 7th day, “everything is good,” and “It (all) is finished.” We are each experiencing our own creation in the 6th day, with the 7th day (eternity) in our hearts — yet not so that we can find out what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11). So, even if we have the map, we can’t read it.

#2) The next illustration I like to share is a picture of a bunch of people with red lines extending through each of them, representing blood flow between them, and the Holy of Holies in the midst of them. It looks like worshipers around the old stone temple; but when I draw an outline of a man around all those worshipers, it looks like life in the Body of Christ. It’s the “Last Adam,” in whom all is one and one is all and none are alone.

On the 6th day of creation, God breathed his Breath, the Breath of Life, into some “adamah (ground)” and the first adam (human) became a living soul. He must’ve looked like my grandson, James. When I first held James, I exclaimed, “He’s perfect!” And yet something was wrong — he wasn’t aware of myself, his self, or self itself; he didn’t know that he was alone. That first adam contained the Life of God and was in the very presence of God. And God said, “It is not good for the adam to be alone.”

In the beginning, Adam had life, but he wasn’t living that life; he wasn’t breathing. In the beginning, I am the breath of God, not knowing where I came from, who I am, or what I do. I am a spirit of God dreaming that I am my own creator, unaware of the one who constantly holds me — my Helper.

Last week, I had my first conversation with James. My daughter caught it on video. He grunts at me, and I grunt at him, and we hug. It has 3.2k views on Facebook so far — it’s life! When you pray, you may feel like you are only grunting, but the angels gather round, look in wonder at you and your Father, and exclaim, “Look! He’s perfect! An adam is beginning to live the Life — the Life of God.”

There’s only one Life, and yet all of Him flows through all the vessels in His body — no longer vessels of wrath but vessels of Mercy. So, how do we get from our own individual earthen vessels to Life in the Body of Christ, which is the Kingdom of God? How does the Judgment of Love become the judgment of each and of all? Is it the law (Knowledge of Good and evil) or a life, even the Life?

#3) The third image that I often share in sermons is the painting, "Mystery of the Fall and Redemption of Man" by Giovanni da Modena (1420). This is a picture of a man hanging like fruit on a tree in the middle of the garden of Eden, and the garden of Calvary, and the garden city of the New Jerusalem. It’s all one tree.

In Genesis 3, God arranges for the Adam (Eve and Adam and each of us) to encounter our True Helper. He is the Voice that made them, but now in flesh and hanging on the tree in the middle of the garden. The Adam hears a lie, not knowing the Good, and so takes the Life by breaking the vessel. Adam and Eve begin to know that He’s not a map leading to treasure; He is the treasure. They haven’t made themselves good or alive but trapped themselves in death and evil. They hear the Voice that made them and flee; they each hide their true self in a false self, alone in fig leaves, shame and fear... like each and every one of us.

But there is Seed in the fruit. And at the sound of the Word that is heard, the Seed germinates in the temple of the soul, the veil rips, and the Voice draws the Adam back to the tree that we now see as the cross. And we begin to know that although we did our very worst, He has always remained the very best. Although we each take His Life, he has always given His Life on the tree of Life in the Middle of the New Jerusalem coming down — the Bride and Body of Christ. He is the Judgment of Love; there is only one Judgment. He never changes; he is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

As He cries, “It is finished,” and delivers up His Spirit, He saves us from ourselves and draws us all back to Himself from the inside out. For the judgment that made us is now the judgment rising from within us. The Voice that we once ran from is now our very own voice. This is the romance of God. And so, we freely choose to be what we actually are — the Image and Likeness of God. “It is finished.”

In Time Bandits, just when the Evil One has Kevin and the bandits cornered, and all appears to be lost, the Booming Voice and Face of Light catches them, destroys evil, manifests as a man, and reveals that he “let them borrow the map.” “After all,” he says, “I am the Good One.”

The Revelation of the eternal Judgment of God is the death and resurrection of Jesus. And yet eternity touches time at every moment on the timeline displayed in image #1. That moment is always called “Now.” By the Grace of God, at any moment you can turn, face the light and see yourself reflected in the Father’s eyes. That’s not just wishful thinking.

Jesus said, “My Father is your Father. Abide in me.” In reality — that is, in the 7th day — you are in Him, for He is in you. And as you look out of His eyes into the face of “Our Father,” the Voice says, “You are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased. I have glorified my name in you, and I will glorify it again.” That judgment doesn’t change; but that judgment changes you.

Surrendering moment by moment to this judgment will probably look less like the end of Time Bandits, or some other apocalyptic Hollywood production, and a little more like the cell phone video my daughter made of me and James looking each other in the eye and grunting.

Never run from the Judgment of God, Our Father, but always run to the Judgment of God, for it is always Good. It’s Life. And now you know, not because you stole a map, but because you are known by the Life, who is your “Helper,” risen and living in and through you.

“A dumb ass spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.” That’s 2 Peter 2:15 from the Revised Standard Version (also KJV and ASV). For some reason, it speaks to me. Of course, Peter was initially speaking of Balaam and his ass (his donkey).

On October 3, 2024, as I sat in my office stressing over a sermon, my wife stuck her head in the door and said, “I was praying for you, and I heard Jesus say, ‘Remind Peter of Balaam’s ass.’ Does that mean anything to you?” And I said, “Oh yeah! I think that’s the most encouraging thing I could hear right now.”

John 12:12-13, The next day [after Mary sacrificed a fortune by breaking the alabaster flask of perfumed oil over the feet of Jesus as he dined with Lazarus], the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So, they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

Historians point out that at this same time, the Roman Governor Pontus Pilate, would have also been entering Jerusalem from the other side — entering on a war horse.

John 12:14-16a, “And Jesus found a young donkey [a young ass (RSV)] and sat on it, just as it is written, ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt [an ass’s colt]!’ His disciples did not understand these things at first...”

I’m sure they thought, “A young ass — half an ass? Jesus, this is half-assed.”

John 12:16, “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.”

John quotes Zechariah 9, expecting his listeners to know the context.

Zechariah 9:9 (RSV), “...Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.”

Then Zechariah goes on to prophecy the most fascinating things about Greece. It’s weird because Greece wasn’t a big deal in Zechariah’s time, but by Jesus’ day, “the Greeks” had become the evil empire. In 175 B.C., the Greek King Antiochus IV Epiphanies, attempted to eradicate Judaism, sacked Jerusalem, pillaged the temple, and erected an altar to Zeus in the holy place.

In Zechariah 9:16, Zechariah writes, “On that day the Lord their God will save them as the flock of his people.” [“Them” is “the sons of Zion (the Jews)” AND “the sons of Greece.”]

John 12:19-20, John continues, “So the Pharisees said to one another... ‘The world has gone after him.’ Now among those at the feast were some Greeks...” John then makes a big deal out of these Greeks who want to know Jesus. Then writes, “And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come...’”

John is saying that all this stuff in Zechariah is happening in that moment. Read Zechariah and you’ll be constantly reminded of the Revelation (all of it). And from chapter nine to the end, you’ll be reminded of the next seven days in the Gospels (passion week). And strangest of all, it all seems to happen on one day: “That day.”

I’m convinced that John believes that when Jesus hung on the tree in the garden on the sixth day of the week, lifted His head, and cried “it is finished,” as He delivered up His spirit... it really was finished; creation was finished, we were finished, and eternity invaded time, whether we believe it or not, whether we’re awake or still asleep. And so, all of us are truly One for “One has died for all” that all would die for One and for all, and wake from the illusion that each of us is our own creator.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female,” writes Paul, “for you all are One in Christ Jesus.” And The Word of God did all of this by riding into Jerusalem on a little dumb ass.

The Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”

It was a problem for them. Would it be a problem for you? It was a problem for them because the world included the Greeks, and if the world went after Jesus, it would not be going after them.

John 12:23-25, And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man, to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth, and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life [psyche] loses [destroys] it, and whoever hates his life [psyche] in this world will keep it for eternal life [zoe].”

Notice that we have translated two very different Greek words with one English word: “Life.” The two words are “psyche” and “zoe.” Jesus said, “I am the zoe.” And Hebrews tells us that Jesus has an “indestructible zoe.” So, what do we mean when we say that Jesus (the indestructible life) died? Jesus also had a psyche — also translated soul — and we just read that it can be destroyed... and made new. The zoe cannot, and yet, apparently, it can be trapped and alone — for a time, as if entombed.

Perhaps the best explanation of this is on the communion table in front of us every Sunday morning. The earthen vessel, the cup, is like a psyche — a physical body and psychikos (soul) body, constructed of the “adamah” of this world as it travels through space and time. In the beginning, God breathed his Zoe into you (the breath, and the life is in the blood), and you became a living soul (psychen zosan: a zoe psyche); you were inspired, in-spirited; ; you can picture the wine being poured into the cup.

So, what does it mean to love God? Picture the wine being poured back into the pitcher (It looks like death, doesn’t it?) And what does it mean to love your neighbor? Picture wine poured into your cup and now being poured from your earthen vessel into another earthen vessel.

And what does it mean to sin? Well, just don’t “lose your zoe.” To sin is to turn your psyche into a sealed container, like a sealed alabaster flask containing the most expensive perfume — except that what you contain is utterly priceless; it’s the Life of God. To sin is to entomb the zoe in a prison that is your own self-centered psyche. To sin is death; and according to John, we’ve already died.

And what does it mean to live? It means to die to death, which is the death of death, the second death — which is to break your psyche (your earthen vessel) and bleed your zoe (the Life of God) into another vessel, even as that Life is bled into you. And eternal Life is this communion of Love which never ends, for it is the End and the Beginning; it’s eternal Life in the Body of Christ.

Picture a river of wine, a river of Life, a river of blood, flowing between all the earthen vessels and back through the pitcher, such that the moment of giving is always the moment of receiving. Now, each and every vessel is a blood vessel — no longer a vessel of wrath, but a vessel of mercy. It’s not a picture of pain and death; it’s the very definition of life, health, and joy in a living body. It’s the seventh sign that is the substance to which John’s entire Gospel has been pointing.

In the Revelation, the New Jerusalem coming down looks like the Old Stone Temple, but it’s made of living stones that happen to be us, and every stone is worshiping — that is, offering the sacrifice of praise — just like Mary in Bethany. Got the picture?

God is Love. Jesus is the Life of Love incarnate in a body that is us. Jesus is the Logic (Logos) of Love, coordinating, animating, and delighting in his own members. “No man hates his own flesh,” writes Paul.

Self-centeredness, the “survival of the fittest,” is the psyche of hell, especially if it’s wrapped in religious jargon. It doesn’t explain life; it explains death. And most people seem to think that it’s the only thing that there is. They think death is life. Life is NOT the survival of the fittest; Life is the sacrifice of the fittest, for all and in all and through all. The sacrifice of the fittest is the psyche of heaven; it’s the logic of love. Just ask a biologist: Life itself is a communion of love — one cell working with another cell, one body part bleeding the Life into another body part.

When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, He’s literally descending into the belly of the beast to liberate His people from the body of the whore (“Come out of her, my people”). Those people are us, His Bride. He’s storming the gates of hell in order to destroy the works of the devil, set all of us free, and bring all of us together in Himself. He’s destroying the Psyche of Hell and replacing it with the Logic of Heaven. And for that, He needs something far more powerful than a war horse.

The Greek word, “dunamis” is usually translated as “power”; it’s where we get our word “dynamite.”

“Exousia,” (literally, “out of beingness”) is also translated as power, but also “authority.” It’s the power of the “Author,” His Word; it’s the power of Love; it’s the power of romance.

Dunamis is the power to force a person to act against their own will. Exousia is the power to transform another person’s will such that they freely will what they had not willed before — this new desire wells up from within them like a fountain. That’s the power of the Word of Love.

We don’t “get” the Image of Love: Jesus. And so, we don’t get the Logic of Love: Sacrifice. And so, we’re tempted by war horses, dynamite, and politicians that have no real power. And yet, He still chooses to storm the gates of hell on little dumb... donkeys.

In Revelation 19, John writes: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Then I saw the heaven opened and behold a white horse! ... The one siting on it is called the Word of God... from his mouth issues a sharp two-edged sword.” He cuts the flesh from “all people.” And he implants himself in all people as a seed, the logic of love, that will bind us all together as his body and bride.

You may be dismayed by politicians and think “What can I do? I feel like a little dumb ass.” But when you tell someone about Jesus — why you like Jesus and why you know he likes them — you do something far more powerful than all the dynamite in this world; you carry the Word that makes all things new.

The donkey is our Lord’s war horse. And the Slaughtered Lamb has always been the Lion who has always been the Slaughtered Lamb. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things... and He delights in doing this through me and you.

One particular day about forty years ago — as a new youth pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church — a missionary took me, a friend, and my father on a tour of the Old Tijuana City Dump. I saw the worst poverty that I’ve ever seen, all within a couple of miles from California. For $1,000, my youth group could build a little house in that dump that might house 12 people — and over the next few years, we built several.

On the way home to L. A., near Disneyland, someone spotted the recently finished “Crystal Cathedral,” and we decided to pull off and take a tour. At one point, our tour guide showed us the organ. With great admiration, she gave us the specs and the cost (something like $2 or 3 million). Then she caught herself and said, “But of course, it’s not our organ. It belongs to Jesus.”

In an instant, I thought of the people in the dump and the fact that whatever we do to “the least of these” we do to Him. I did some quick calculations in my head and then grabbed that woman and screamed in her face: “Jesus doesn’t want a pipe organ! Why wasn’t this organ sold, and the money given to 26,000 of ‘the least of these’ just a few miles away from this very spot?” I grabbed her and I screamed . . . in my mind — not in reality. However, I was filled with what I would call “righteous anger.” I felt wrath; I was a vessel . . . of wrath.

In John 12, Jesus stops in Bethany, where He recently raised Lazarus, on His way to Jerusalem to be sacrificed for Passover.

John 12: 2-7, “So they gave a dinner for Him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples... said, ‘Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?’ He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief ...Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone, she has kept it for the day of my burial.”

Ouch! Judas makes a lot of sense to me. A denarii was a day’s wage. If you have a full-time job, how much do you make in a year? That’s what Mary poured out on Jesus’s feet (as well as body and hair, apparently) at a dinner party! And in Matthew and Mark, Jesus calls it a “kalos ergon: (beautiful thing).” This is the first and only “work” that Jesus calls “kalos: beautiful and good” in all of the Gospels.

People want “practical application points.” Here it is: Do this. Next Sunday, we’ll invest the annual budget in a communal holy pizza party and foot massage to the glory of God! ...Or not. Although we’d have the facts, we might be missing the plot. So, what was it about Mary that made her deed so “good”? Here are a few ideas.

Something about Mary:

#1. Mary was impractical. When people ask, “Why be good?” it just reveals that they don’t know The Good and don’t love “The Good.” What Mary did was good for nothing, just Good. . . like God.

#2. Mary was unrestrained. She was following no program. There was no “law” that she was trying to fulfill. Mary chose the Good in freedom. That’s what I call “free will.”

#3. Mary was free. So, what was she thinking? Maybe she wasn’t thinking....

#4. Mary wasn’t calculating. She wasn’t asking “Is 10% enough?” She broke the bottle.

#5. Mary was passionate.

I’m guessing that Mary doesn’t even know that Jesus is going to die in six days; she just knows that He is Good and in Him is Life. “It is for my burial,” says the Plot . . . after the fact. Mary wasn’t comprehending; she was being comprehended — seized by the power of a great affection.

I once experienced Jesus, weeping in me, for me, and through me. We wept over a trauma that I had refused to feel that had turned into anger, bitterness, and wrath, all dammed up in my soul... We forgave it, we “let it be,” and wept it out of me. He wept the trauma out of me and turned it into Joy. It was the Mary that wept with Jesus at the funeral, who also anointed Him at the great banquet.

#6. Mary was living in the Now. Now is the moment in which the Plot writes His Story in us, in time. Now is the moment eternity touches time, and time becomes eternal. You can only dance “Now.”

#7. Mary is dancing, and it was an intimate dance.

#8. Mary was intimate.

Each and all of us have surrendered to the wrong helper, been abused, sealed our souls, and assumed that our True Helper — our ‘ezer’ — does not desire our unrestrained, free, intimate, and passionate surrender. But apparently, He does.

#9. Mary was sacrificial. And

#10. Mary was Happy.

Whenever I talk about “sacrifice,” I sense this dark cloud settling over the room, and I think it’s because we’ve been told that sacrifice means that God hates one thing in order to feel better about another thing — that God kills his own Son to feel better about us. That may be what pagan deities (like Molech) desire, but that’s not what God, our Father, desires.

Think about it: Mary is sacrificing everything. And Jesus doesn’t hate the sacrifice; He delights in the sacrifice. And Mary is swept away in this communion of delight.

Have you ever given like that? I bet you have. Perhaps you don’t remember it, for you weren’t calculating; and if you do remember it, you probably didn’t call it “sacrifice” but something else.

I once bought a diamond for my girlfriend whom I planned to make my wife. When the jeweler would show me a diamond and quote me a price, I found myself wanting to grab him and yell, “Harry, I don’t’ care about the diamond; charge me more! Harry, I’ve got this girl! Harry, I can’t buy her love; she’s already given me her love, and I want to give her mine! I want to serve her! I want to bleed for her! Harry, I’m breaking the bottle and pouring it all out! Harry, I don’t have to do it; I want to do it! Harry, I’m a prisoner of Love.” I called it Love. “Harry, it’s impractical (I was spending all my student loan money). It’s extravagant. It’s Love! Is that wrong, Harry?”

You can make an argument that Judas was right. Judas didn’t dislike Jesus; he greatly admired Jesus — he wanted to be Jesus. And so, he could use Jesus to feed the poor, heal the sick, banish the oppressor, and establish the Jewish Nation State of Israel — "his nation” and “his place.” And so, he judged Mary’s sacrifice to be a “waste,” just as I judged the worship of that tour guide at the Crystal Cathedral to be a “waste.”

All the work we did in the dump would’ve been a waste, except that we found ourselves worshipping Jesus in temples of clay. And, weirdly, the kids in my high school youth group never seemed happier. It wasn’t a waste.

Mary would’ve gotten this smelly oil all over Jesus: feet, clothes, head, and hair. When He hung on the tree, the sky grew black, and the earth shook, I bet He could smell Mary and know that He wasn’t alone. To Him, that was worth more than 300 denarii; it was worth His body and blood. Perhaps He is alone in your trauma and on your tree, waiting for you to weep with Him there in order that you would laugh with Him at the Great Banquet.

Jesus broke for Mary at Lazarus’s funeral, and Mary broke for Jesus at the dinner. And Jesus would be broken for all in six days. And we will all be broken for each other until all are bleeding and none are broken, for all are one and each is constantly lost and found in an ecstatically happy communion of Sacrificial Love called Eternal Life.

But Judas, like the Sanhedrin, is dammed (for a time). . . like the creek is dammed next to my house.

Each one of us in an alabaster flask (an earthen vessel), containing the “breath of life.” God creates this self, and yet at some point, each of us begins to create a self-centered self. And so, the Life of God is dammed in a prison that I think is myself. The Judgement of God is to save me from that old vessel of wrath and turn me into a vessel of Mercy — a blood vessel in the living body of Christ. The Judgement of all is to unite each and all in Christ, constantly losing our lives (The Life is in the blood) and finding our lives and the Life in each other in Him.

The Old Stone Temple was to be a banquet hall in which the fragrance of sacrifice would fill the house as a pleasing aroma. And yet, because it seemed that we are the sacrifice that God desires (and we are), and because it was required by law (and it was), and because people thought it was a way to get things from God (they didn’t understand), it was all TERRIFYING.

And yet, all of this is now happening at a house in Bethany, six days before Passover, because Mary chooses to sacrifice herself in freedom — not because she has to, but because she wants to; not to get from God but to give to God. And she’s not dead but fully ALIVE, and not terrified but ecstatically HAPPY.

Mary is waking up to the eternal Judgment of God. She’s waking from the illusion that she’s writing the story, and she’s surrendering to the story that has always been written. We all take The Life, trying to make ourselves Good, and we all die; we sleep, according to Jesus. But God gives His Life — who is The Good — and when we know it, we wake from the dead and begin to Live His Life. We become what we truly are: The Beautiful Thing, The Body and Bride of Christ, His Living Temple, The New Jerusalem coming down.

He is the Seed in the fruit (Eve’s Apple) that rises from the dead in each and all of us, drawing us back to the tree, where together we surrender “The Life.” And lo and behold, He pours it right back in... from the bosom of the Father. And the moment of giving becomes the moment of receiving. That’s no longer death; it’s Eternal Life in the Temple of the Living God.

#11. Mary is worshipping. A sacrifice of praise costs a self-centered ego but returns all things new.

#12. Mary is alive; Mary is awake. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.”

So, Worship. That’s the impractical practical application point: Wake up, Dead Man.

Depressed, lonely, and anxious, I was advised by my counselor to read a good book.

• I read a book titled, Snow White. But then I got to page 78 and read that she bit the apple and lay “lifeless on the floor.” How depressing! I stopped reading and threw the book in the trash.

• Feeling lonely, I read a book titled, Dumbo. But then I got to page 31: “The other elephants turned their back on him.” Rejection! Just what I’m trying to avoid. I stopped reading — into the trash!

• The Lion King held promise, but then I got to page 53: “’If it weren’t for you, your father would still be alive,’ snarled Scar.” Utterly traumatizing! I don’t want anything to do with that story. Trash!

• Beauty and the Beast: I got to page 7: “That makes you no better than a beast—and so you shall become a beast.” I want beauty, not beasts. I don’t even want to think about beasts. Into the trash.

So, I decided to read my old journal. It reminded me of the apple, rejection, failure, and the beast. I thought, “No one should ever read my journal. It belongs in outer darkness.” I threw it in the trash.

I read my Bible and all hell broke loose: fruit from a tree, people born in sin, children who nail their father to a tree, and a lot of beasts. I went to throw it in the trash and thought, “Hey, maybe I could just read parts of it and read it to take knowledge of Good and evil that I could then use to re-write my story, so I’d never bite the apple or end up in the trash.”

Of course, I’m joking. And, of course, I’m not joking at all.

In John 1, we learned that all creation is a story that God is telling and has already told. Jesus is the Beginning, End, and Way in between. Jesus is the Word of God, the Plot. The Plot is revealed on the sixth day of creation, sixth day of the week, just after the sixth hour of the day, when hanging on the tree in the garden, Jesus cries, “It is finished.” That’s the edge of the seventh day, when “everything is good.” It’s also the beginning of the seventh sign that is the substance: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

John 11 is the sixth of seven public signs in the Gospel of John: The Resurrection of Lazarus.

The name “Lazarus” shows up 17 times in the New Testament in two places — here in John 11 and in Jesus’s “story” of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. “Lazarus” is the Greek form or the Hebrew name, “Eliezer.” Eliezer was Abraham’s faithful servant, actually his Syrian slave. You can read about him in Genesis 15 and 24. He literally sacrifices everything (the inheritance of Abraham) for the love of God, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and the Jews.

The Rich Man in Jesus’ story (with five brothers and “the law and the prophets”) looks just like Judah, father of the Jews. And Lazarus (Abraham’s bosom buddy) looks just like Eliezer. Remember the Rich man is in Hades and Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham. If so, the Rich man will inherit everything promised to Abraham, but Lazarus has already inherited Abraham and all things with him. He’s “in his bosom.”

You can see why a Jew — and a Pharisee in particular — might feel a little ambivalent about the name “Lazarus” and the events in John chapter 11.

As we preached last time, Jesus seems to arrange for all this drama: Lazarus is sick, Jesus delays, and then he arrives after Lazarus is dead and everyone is weeping.

John 11:23, “Jesus said to [Martha], ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

The implications are staggering. It means that the plot to all of space and time is “the Resurrection.” And we’ve already learned that Life is an eternal communion of sacrifice in freedom called Love. God is Love and Jesus is the Word of Love — the Plot to everything that’s anything.

John 11:33, “When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept. The Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’”

John 11:44, “[Jesus] cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus come out.’ The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.”

Can you imagine the scene? All that sorrow turned into Joy. They would be hugging Lazarus and each other — all of them, “bosom buddies” (like Abraham and Eliezer). They had lost Lazarus and found Lazarus and all things with him.

Imagine that scene: Those that had lost their lives and found them at the funeral.

And imagine this scene: Those that attempted to save their lives and lost them at the Sanhedrin.

John 11:46, “But some of [the Jews] went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council [The Sanhedrin] (The Sanhedrin was composed of the rich and powerful of Israel, who believed that they controlled the story) and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs?” (READ THEM!) If we let him go on this, everyone will believe in him (What’s the problem with that?) and the Romans will come and take away both our place (they met in the temple) and our nation. But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish (He wants to sacrifice Christ to save himself, his place, and his nation).’ He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.”

So, the High Priest of Israel attempted to seize control of the story by taking the life of Christ on the tree called the cross. And Jesus, the High Priest of all creation, writes the story of creation by giving His life on that same tree, the cross.

Caiaphas sacrifices Christ to save himself but damns himself, while Christ sacrifices Himself to save Caiaphas and set all of us free. Caiaphas attempts to take Christ’s life as a penal substitute. But Christ gives His life that he would live his life in each one of us. Jesus is the Scapegoat who offers Himself as the Sin Offering, the Burnt Offering, and the Passover Lamb. He freely surrenders Himself to the Father in order that, with Him, we would freely surrender ourselves to the Father and so be bound together as one — the resurrected body of Christ.

Like Caiaphas and Adam, we all attempt to write ourselves out of the story that God is telling —that’s called sin. But with His Word, God writes us back into the story — which is the story that God has been telling all along — that’s called Grace. With the Word of Grace, God creates Faith. That’s how humanity is made in the image and likeness of God — and that story is called “the Gospel.”

John 11:53, “So from that day on, they (the Sanhedrin) made plans to put Jesus to death.”

They have all the facts and don’t know what any of them mean. They have the signs, but reading them doesn’t even occur to them. They have the Law but hate what it describes: The Life of Love.

They have perhaps the greatest prophetic word ever uttered; they have “knowledge of the Good”—that one would die for all — and so, they crucify the Good, and the Life. They have all the events in the story, and they don’t know what any of them mean; they don’t know the Plot.

If you trust the author, you surrender to the events in His story (history); You let them move you with sorrow and delight through conflict and resolution. You experience the facts, and that’s how you come to know the plot — the plot which reveals the meaning of every event in the story. The Plot doesn’t change, but you can only know the plot by allowing the plot to change you and make all things new.

John 12:10, “The chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well.” THAT’S CRAZY!

Who would NOT want to see Lazarus raised from the dead? Who would NOT want to see Jesus (The Resurrection) raised from the dead? Who is it that so thoroughly hates resurrection stories?

Maybe all of us. . . at least part way through. One day as I was complaining to the Lord in prayer, my wife heard Him say, “There is no resurrection without crucifixion.”

We all hate resurrection stories and try to avoid them, but people in power who exercise the most control are usually most successful at NOT becoming one — a resurrection story — at least for a time. Do you see why they might believe in Christ at the funeral and yet be incapable of believing at the Sanhedrin?

I have so often wondered why the institutional church, who has all the facts, has such a hard time believing what Scripture so clearly says: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.”

This week in prayer, I think I heard an answer: “It’s not only that Pharisees don’t want everyone to rise from the dead; Pharisees don’t want anyone to rise from the dead, for that’s NOT a story that they can write.” They don’t know that they’re already dead, that they’ve already bitten the apple, been born without faith, gotten their Father killed, and become beasts or the beast.

Every fairy tale we tell our children is a resurrection story that ends with “And they all lived happily every after.” Children believe, but adults are addicted to writing their own story. The Pharisees-r-us.

When I refuse to truly read His Story, I refuse to read my own story with Him, and I refuse to read others’ stories. I think I’m casting them out, but I’m trapping myself all alone in outer darkness —like trash. So, what happens to the Pharisees?

Well... no one’s story is over until they come to the End, or the End comes to them. Jesus is the End, the Plot, and the Resurrection. He descends into Hades, destroys every chasm, and makes all things new.

But still, I would suggest going to more funerals to weep with those who weep and spending less time worrying about the Sanhedrin and saving “your nation” or “your place.” You must lose your life to find it in the story; that’s the Plot — the Logic (Logos) of Love.

This is the testimony of Pete Hiett, founder of the Hiett Hotels and the Hiett Bethlehem. He shut the door on Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, for he figured that it was good business. He was always counting. “Forgiveness is like a swear word to a businessman,” said Pete. But Jesus would not shut the door on him.

On Pentecost, in the upper room of the Downtown Hiett Jerusalem, Pete fell to his knees and cried out, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” He felt God smile and heard Jesus say, “Pete, you are more than welcome. Welcome to the Peter Hiett, where you can truly be, for you know that everything that’s anything is free.”

In his own words: “As long as I thought that I could create my dreams, I couldn’t dream of my Creator and, actually, anything or anyone that He had created. I saw that everything that’s anything is free including me — the real me.”