Good Friday Time

 

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Very early in the morning the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law—the entire high council—met to discuss their next step. They bound Jesus, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor . . . Then the soldiers nailed him to the cross. They divided his clothes and threw dice to decide who would get each piece. It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.

. . . At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. Then at three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” . . . Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. When the Roman officer who stood facing him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, “This man truly was the Son of God!”  -Mark 15:1-2, 24-25, 33-34, 37-39

The clock marks the hours of the day Jesus died.  It begins “very early in the morning,”  So much happens in those first three hours, and by nine o’clock they are already crucifying Jesus.  At noon, when the sun would be at its brightest and the shadows at their shortest, darkness falls over the land, like the ominous darkness from thick clouds as a thunderstorm turns day into night.  Then, at three o’clock, Jesus cries out and breathes his last.

On Good Friday, I like to mark the hours. In my mind I hear the deep toll of a bell announcing these times to the world.

“Bong, bong . . .it’s starting.” 

“Bong, bong . . .it’s happening.”

“Bong, bong, bong . . . it is finished.”

On Good Friday, these tolling bells resonate with my emotions. I am sad, but it’s more than that.  Maybe it’s the hard reality of death, made more vivid by the tolling of the hours. Or the deeply uncomfortable truth that humanity can do such horrible things to one another. Whatever the cause, it has become my custom to spend time sitting with my sadness on Good Friday. And as I do, I also hear God’s words from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.”

Does Good Friday stir up feelings for you?  Be still and let God hold whatever troubles you, and consider the timelessness of the lake. There are no clocks here.  Sometimes there is complete silence and stillness.

When Jesus died it was as if time stopped and all creation held its breath and waited, mourned, despaired.

But time didn't stop. Death was not the end. Easter morning will come.

So for now, breathe and give thanks to God for life and breath and time and Jesus.

God Speed

The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper. --Genesis 39:23

God made Joseph prosper.  This is a central theme in Joseph's story.  It's why, at the end of the story, Joseph can confidently tell his brothers, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good" (Genesis 50:20). 

As I wondered about God prospering Joseph, I looked up Gen. 39:23 in Hebrew and found that
the word for prosper or success in Hebrew is צָלַח tsalach and, interestingly one of the word's primary meanings is "to rush."  Might this be where we got the phrase "God speed"?  It turns out that it is:

From Middle English phrase God spede (“may God cause you to succeed”), from God (“God”) + spede, singular subjunctive of speden (“to prosper”), from Old English spēdan, from spēd (“success”) (from wiktionary)

The first place the word tsalach shows up in the Bible is in Genesis 24 where Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to find a wife for Isaac.  The servant prays for success in his quest, and providentially the first woman he meets turns out to be a perfect match for Isaac.  When the servant first meets her, "The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful" (Gen. 24:21).  Had God tsalach-ed?  And indeed God did.

I'm intrigued by the idea that speed and success are connected as signs that one is experiencing God's favor.  When I was asking God about whether it was time to leave the church where I was pastor and take a call at a new church, I was overwhelmed by the speed with which that new call came, and that speed was one of the reasons I felt I was seeing God's hand at work.  I had expected to be looking for at least a year or more, since that's what others had told me to expect because the market for pastors is small.  I put my PIF (Presbyterian for resume) up on our search system in January.  Within a few days I had inquiries, by April I had a job offer, and I started the new position on June 1.  In church world, that is definitely God speed.  

The church I went to, on the other hand, had been searching for awhile and had begun to despair about whether they would ever find a new pastor.  One of the verses from the Bible that renewed their hope was Jeremiah 29:11:

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

But here the Hebrew word that's translated in the NIV as "prosper" is not tsalach, it's shalom, a word that's often translated "peace" but which has a broader meaning: completeness, wholeness, contentment, and, yes, prosperity. In my coming to that church, tsalach and shalom came together, quickly for me, and slowly for them.  Maybe not surprising, after all, since "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day" (2 Peter 3:8).  

Maybe God's speed is often outside our comprehension because, as John tells us, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5).  Light is the fastest thing there is.  Einstein theorized that nothing could move faster than light, and though scientists have found some plasma that moves pretty fast, it's still not as fast as light. (Read more at space.com)

I have often said I wished for a matter transporter like the one in Star Trek so that I could go visit people who live far away from me.  Curious about that, I discovered this:

We are stuck on the idea that 300,000 kilometres a second is a speed limit [the speed of light], because we intuitively believe that time runs at a constant universal rate. However, we have proven in many different experimental tests that time clearly does not run at a constant rate between different frames of reference. So with the right technology, you can sit in your star-drive spacecraft and make a quick cup of tea while eons pass by outside. It’s not about speed, it’s about reducing your personal travel time between two distant points. And that has a natural limit – of zero.

As Woody Allen once said: Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Space-time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening in the same place at once.  (Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-light-speed.html#jCp )

"It's about reducing your personal travel time between two distant points."  So I wonder if, when we're praying for someone, it is as if we have transcended the bounds of time and space, moving at God speed, if you will, to make a spiritual connection, even if we cannot experience that physically?

And maybe Woody Allen isn't too far off, if we consider that Ecclesiastes says something similar:

So, then, God made things happen for Joseph at God speed, and God made my job transition happen at God speed.  How have you seen God's speed in your life?

Wherever you are and whatever is happening with you, I wish you Godspeed.

Deep Calls to Deep

You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life.  But the scriptures point to me! –John 5:39

As I read Jesus’ words to the Jewish leaders this morning, I am reminded that just reading the Bible is insufficient.  The point of the reading is to point us to God, to prompt us to pray, to help us deepen our relationship with the one who inspired the scriptures. 

So often I approach my daily Bible reading as just one more item on my to-do list to check off.  There is satisfaction in checking the box, after all—a sense of accomplishment.  But pondering and praying takes more time, and too often I’m in a hurry.  It’s so hard sometimes to stop the forward motion and listen.  This is as true for my relationship with God as it is for my relationship with people.  It takes time to stop and listen, to say more than a passing hello and to really listen to the answer to “How are you?”

The problem is the lack of time.  The clock mercilessly ticks onward.  If I forget to keep an eye on the clock, it races forward and suddenly I am out of time.

Ecclesiastes 3 says there is a time for everything.  Can that mean that there is time to do everything?  If God supplies all we need (Philippians 4:19), does that include time?

God’s sense of time is far different from ours.  For God, a thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8).  Think how much we could get done in a thousand year day!

Paul understands our dilemma.  He says to make the best use of time, for the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16).  He warns us to use our time for good, and not waste it on “works of darkness.”  It’s not always easy to know how to spend time in God honoring ways, though.  So much of what we do is more of a gray area than a dark area.

Today’s reading from Jesus Calling[1] says that God speaks to us in the depths of our being.  Psalm 42:7 puts it so poetically—“deep calls to deep.”  If I take the time to think about it, I realize that my soul longs for this deep connection with God, and yet it’s so much easier to skim along the surface and not deal with these deep longings.  It takes time to slow down enough to let things sink deeper….to stop and take a breath and be still and know that God is God (Psalm 46:10).

This is the pitfall of Bible reading plans.  They should come with a warning: “Can cause you to read too fast.”  And yet there is a time for everything.  One summer I read the entire Bible in three months.  It was a huge time commitment and I absolutely could not allow myself to stop and ponder too much or I would fall behind.  Prior to that summer, I would frequently write journals and blogs about what I was reading in the Bible, but that summer there was no time for any of that.  There were benefits to that speed.  I gained a new understanding for how the pieces of the Bible fit together. I saw connections between the chapters and books I’d never seen before.  And when I was done, I got caught up on writing.  I couldn’t stop.  I’d spent all summer taking things in, and then they had to come out.

So I guess there is truly a time for everything.  God makes sure we get what we need when we need it.  When we’ve gone too long without finding that deep contact with God, our souls cry out and make us stop and be still, and then it’s like finding water in the desert as God touches our hearts.

And then it only takes a moment to say, “thank you.”

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[1] Sarah Young, Jesus Calling (Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2004)