I was asked to reflect on our time together at Bethel Seminary and my time at the seminary in specific. As many of you know, I entered seminary through the back door. Prior to moving back to Minnesota (where my wife and I grew up), I had completed a Master of Arts in Biblical Archaeology of the Old Testament. I spent three years applying to PhD programs in Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. I always imagined that I would serve the church in ministry but, in my head, that would come after a long Academic career. When I wasn’t accepted to any of the top five schools for that field, and job prospects following a second-tier education were less than ideal, I spent a good amount of time grieving what I thought my life would be.

Perhaps some of you also know that I grew up as an atheist. I used to pick fights with Christians. One of those people that I used to pick fights with, told me in the last year, that she couldn’t believe that I was in seminary to be a pastor because I used to make her cry following our discussions. It wasn’t until my heart was softened at a regular youth group meeting that I came to know Jesus as my lord and savior. I quickly found myself thrust into leadership roles and I could think of no better way to spend my life than studying God’s redemptive history. Not from the moldy basement of a library but where it happened, in the dirt of Israel and the ancient near east.

While I could spend the remainder of my time talking about how impactful Bethel seminary was on my faith formation, I think that the texts chosen for our reflection this evening call us to focus on each of our futures in ministry and therapy instead. I am so thankful that the story of Esther was chosen for our reflection this evening. As we graduate from Bethel Seminary tomorrow we are entering one of the toughest church climates to be faced by the American Church. By almost every measure the religious “nones” are increasing among the youngest generations. Millennials and Generation Z (the current batch of freshmen over at the college) have serious reservations about the importance of the church and faith in their daily lives. Racial tension is at a significant high and the world faces the largest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.

We have spent these years at Bethel Seminary “for such a time as this.” While the biblical text may not have been written to us, it was definitely written for us. As the unchurched and post-churched “nones” increasingly question the relevance of the Church in the world today we need to take what we have learned here: How to approach the text in a rigorous and theologically informed manner, drawing on our own experience of spiritual formation, in order to influence the church and culture through virtuous leadership.

Easy, one-line answers aren’t enough. Those who are on the margins of church and faith want to be listened to and they want to be called into a mission and vision that is greater than themselves! In response to those needs, I pray we, as the future church, begin to reclaim a robust praxis of Christian hospitality that seeks to see Jesus in the “least of these” around us – whether inside or outside the church. I’ll be honest, a praxis of hospitality is dangerous. It calls us to invite “others” into our lives of faith risking not only our possessions but the relationships closest to us. Fortunately, we need not look any further than Jesus for the normative practice of hospitality as both stranger and host. Hospitality calls us to engage the stranger and guest, but it also calls us to allow ourselves to be changed by that relationship as we practice presence with them. Hospitality demands that we listen to their story of pain and hurt, empathizing with their alien identity, for we are all seeking a homeland, all guests in the kingdom of God, subject to God’s gracious benevolence towards us. We have all been well-trained for the individual vocations that lay before us. While the challenges of graduate school are great, our greatest challenges lay in the future and we will have to draw on everything we have learned here to navigate that future well as we rely heavily on God’s grace through those challenges ahead.

As you face those challenges may you be sustained by God, in Jesus through the power of the Holy spirit. May you listen well, seeking to connect and empathize with those both inside and outside the church. And May you ever grow deeper in your life of faith as you lead others into deeper discipleship of Christ; for you have been trained “for such a time as this.”

Recovering the the art of hospitality has weighed heavily on my heart over the course of the last year. When we think of hospitality today, normally we think of professional services: hotels, hospitals andrestaurants. But it wasn’t always that way. Hospitality was one of the distinguishing marks of the early Christian communities. It set them apart from the rest of the Roman world that was dependent upon classism and patron/client relationships. The hospitality of the church meant that all waited for one another to share the Lord’s Table, regardless of class or ethnicity, and share they did – a full meal. If you would like to know more about the nature of Hospitality in the early church I can think of no better resource than Christine Pohl’s Making Room.

This story is familiar to us. It provides a nice bookend for the gospel narrative. Just as Jesus was born into this world in a lowly state, rejected and alone; he died in a lowly state, a criminal on the trash-heap of the Roman Empire. The image of the rejected family is so ingrained that the standard manger scene leaves Mary giving birth in a lean-to barn, unsupported by anyone but a very nervous Joseph. Our Christmas carols celebrate Jesus meager beginnings and adopt a nearly naive understanding of his humanity. Thus “Away in a Manger” begins with,

No crib for his bed The little Lord Jesus Lay down his sweet head

and later notes that

The cattle are lowing The poor baby wakes But little Lord Jesus No crying he makes.

I have little doubt in my mind that little baby Jesus cried – often! “Gentle Mary laid her child” sings about how Jesus was laid

Lowly in a manger; There He Lay, the undefiled, To the world a stranger. Such a Babe in such a place, Can he be the Savior?

This narrative of meager beginnings simply ignores the cultural realities of first century Palestine. The innkeeper is likely a completely fictional character. His existence in our christian pageants is more reflective of Christmas traditions based on the culture, geography, and climate of New England than on the culture, geography and climate of ancient Bethlehem. What’s more the traditional narrative depicts Mary as derelict in not realizing her condition until the last minute and Jospeh as negligent in not being able to provide comfortable lodging for his very pregnant betrothed. Both assumptions ignore the cultural realities of the original nativity some two thousand years ago.

Simply put, the Lord of the universe was not brought into this world rejected and alone. He was brought into this world surrounded and loved by the very extended family into which he was born. The text of Luke’s nativity account is clear but we have obscured it with two thousand years of tradition.

Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:4-7 ESV).

Retelling the Nativity Story

The story we tell from this information should look very different from the Christmas pageants we are so accustomed to watching our children perform. It should begin with Joseph and Mary making the 11-15 day journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem well in advance of her due date, possibly even before her third trimester. Luke simply tells us that “while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.” There is no reason to believe that this was a last minute trip to Bethlehem. While there were generally limits on the amount of time hospitality would be extended to strangers; Joseph was a family member, a skilled craftsmen who could continue his work in Bethlehem as easily as in Nazareth.

The influx of family members for the census meant that Joseph’s relatives were playing host to a large number of guests from elsewhere in Judea. This meant that the upper-room or guest room was already occupied by the time Joseph and Mary arrived. The lower stables (inside the house) where animals were kept to warm the household in winter, was quickly cleaned out and arrangements were made for Mary and Joseph to stay there instead.

At some point in time, Mary realized it was time for the baby to be born. She likely told one of Joseph’s female relatives who promptly ran to fetch Bethlehem’s midwife. The midwife entered the house, removed any male presence, ritually cleansed the home of any evil spirits and gathered Joseph’s female family members. The midwife and Jospeh’s female cousins and aunts attended to Mary during the birth of Jesus, welcoming him into the world in their loving presence. Jesus would have been presented to Joseph, who, accepting his adopted son, used a nearby manger for his the baby’s bed. Thus, Jesus was born into this world, surrounded and supported by Joseph’s loving family

The In-most room

That story bears significant differences from the one we are used to, but they are differences that are demanded by a richer understanding of the cultural setting of Jesus birth. Perhaps the most striking difference is the location of the birth: inside the home of one of Joseph’s relatives. The translation of kataluma as “inn” has obscured this setting. In all likely hood this did not refer to an ancient hotel or paid establishment. Luke uses the term in 22:11 to refer to the room in which the last supper took place, as does Mark 14:14. We know from archaeological remains that in insula style houses this usually referred to the “upper -room” or “in-most room.” As the highest and most secluded room in the house this would have been the room guests were offered for lodging in order to honor both the guest and the extreme benefaction of the host. When Luke describes a paid establishment, a proper “inn,” he uses a different word (pandecheion) as in the case of the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:34.

Frequently the in-most room or upper-room was placed above the in-home stables. Animals like sheep, goats, and donkeys were frequently kept inside the house for two reasons. First, bringing the animals inside protected them from predators and allowed the family to keep watch over them in relative safety. Second, during the winter months the animals provided a significant source of heat for those sleeping in the upper room. The census registration likely meant that Joseph’s family had a significant number of guests staying with them. By the time Mary and Joseph arrive the upper room was already occupied. Since the shepherds were in the fields at night, the stables were likely not being used to house animals. When Joseph and Mary arrived needing shelter the stables were cleaned and arrangements were made for Joseph and his young betrothed to stay there.

Ancient hospitality regulations

The complete and utter rejection of Mary and Joseph by Joseph’s extended family simply doesn’t make sense in a culture and society that depended upon hospitality regulations for survival. While hospitality was extended to strangers as a way of negotiating a village’s foreign policy, hospitality was demanded for members of your own family, tribe or clan. While the traditional position argues that Joseph’s family looked down upon Mary’s pregnancy, the fact that Joseph maintained his betrothal would have signified his adoption of the yet unborn child and the expectation that His family also accept Mary as his bride to be. To not offer Mary and Joseph hospitality in their travels would have brought shame to Jospeh’s extended family in Bethlehem. Had Joseph’s family failed to offer them lodging, surely Mary would have suggested they stay with Elizabeth and Zechariah, likely just a short walk away from Bethlehem (Luke 1:39-40).

What’s more, offering and receiving hospitality was couched in religious terms for the faithful Israelite. Israelites were expected to extend hospitality to strangers, alien sojourners and family, because they themselves were strangers in a strange land under the divine hospitality of Yahweh. Yahweh, not the Israelites owned the land. It was Yahweh, as a hospitable host, that provided for their benefaction and as such it was expected that the Israelites would extend that same hospitality to strangers and family (See especially Deuteronomy 26:5-11; Psalms 23:4-6; 29:12; and Isaiah 58:6-7). Had Joseph’s family failed to offer Mary and Joseph a place to stay they would be turning their back on their divine call to show gratitude for the blessings which Yahweh had bestowed upon them.

Midwives

My wife is nurse. I take great pride in knowing that nurse midwives may have been one of the oldest professions in history. I have little doubt that a skilled midwife attended to Mary during the birth of Jesus. Nearly every village of any considerable size had a professional midwife. Bethlehem would have been no different. Giving birth was a dangerous business for both the mother and child in the ancient world. Midwives had both clinical and legal authority during this turbulent period in women’s lives. Clinically, midwives ensured the safety of the mother and the newborn child by ritually cleansing the place of birth and initiating clinical interventions when necessary. Midwives would clear the house of any men, children and unmarried women. Frequently they used birthing stools, massage and music to ease the pain of labor. In the case of breach or inappropriately positioned deliveries more skilled midwives may have attempted turnings.

Legally, the midwife was responsible for the ensuring that the newborn was adopted into its new family. Having cut the umbilical cord, the unwashed newborn would be held up to cry. This cry “was considered a legal petition to join the household and become a member of the village” (Matthews and Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel, 72). Adoption and acceptance was indicated with a hymn of praise by the father. Having been adopted, the child would be washed and clothed, conferring legal standing in the family to the child. The fact that Jesus was wrapped in clothes and laid in a manger confirms that he was adopted into Joseph’s family, tribe and clan (Luke 2:7).

What it means for us…

While I don’t pretend that the way I have recounted the nativity story is the only way you might choose to envision Jesus’ birth. I do hope that this re-telling which attempts to attend to some of the cultural details of the first century world pushes back against the more traditional understanding of the nativity story. Scholars continue to debate the importance of the distinction between kataluma and pandacheion and whether or not that has any bearing on how we understand the nativity story. The greater force to be reckoned with though, are the serious breaches of hospitality regulations inherent in the traditional nativity account. The rejection of Mary and Joseph would have brought shame to Joseph’s family, no insignificant reality in a culture more attuned to varying levels of honor and shame. Finally, the traditional account fails to acknowledge the real presence and use of midwifes in the ancient world. Giving birth was a dangerous activity. It still is. Midwifes helped to mitigate the danger and ensured that the newborn was legally adopted into his new family.

Yes, Jesus was born in a stable, but that just so happens to be one of the few places childbirth might have normally taken place inside an extended family house. What’s more our images of Mary struggling alone with a panicked Joseph pacing back and forth are illusions. Jesus was born into the loving arms of Jospeh’s female relatives and likely Bethlehem’s better known midwives.

You see, God chose to become Emmanuel, God with us, not just to be a human, born of a mother and father, but to be a person with all of the familial relationships personhood implies. Yes, Jesus was born, Mary’s son, adopted by Joseph, but he was also adopted by Joseph’s family. From the very beginning, from his very birth, Jesus was bringing people together. The picture we should hold of the first Christmas is not just Jesus, Mary and Joseph with a few shepherds hanging about, but of Jesus, Mary, Jospeh, and a dozen extra aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and a number of Shepherds excited to welcome this new boy into their family, tribe and clan. It is not the meager estate of Jesus that makes him good news to the poor, humble and outcasts, but the fact that he brought together the poor, the humble and the outcast at his birth that makes him such good news.

As he was born into this world bringing people together; his ministry, life, death, resurrection and ascension sought to bring people together. As you consider the birth of the messiah this Christmas may you remember well the words of the prophet Isaiah for “God has accomplished the birth of a savior the deliverance of Israel and gentiles alike” (Isa. 26:17-18). May you also remember that you, like Jesus, are not rejected and alone. If you look hard enough, seeking your fellow brothers and sisters, may you find that you are in this world, maybe for the first time, surrounded and loved.

May God’s blessings be upon you this Christmas season and may you remember that God’s greatest desire two thousand years ago was to know you in your full humanity.

I lied because I was obstinately independent. I lied because I thought Christians were fools. I lied because it was socially expedient. It was the quickest way to get out of the uncomfortable conversation with my grandmother. By the time my grandmother died, I was an avowed atheist who liked to pick fights with Christians about their beliefs.

But then a friend who wasn’t afraid of my debates asked me to join him at a youth service to learn more. With the persistence of my grandmother he invited me again and again. And I relented. I discovered the pain of my stubbornness. I recognized my failure to be and do good apart from God and I came to learn that Jesus was the way of hope even in my brokenness. God had a plan that sought to redeem all things to his purposes, possibly even my life.

The Grace of a Conquistador

Having committed to faith in Christ though I quickly learned that God expected me to make manifest his kingdom. I flourished under these expectations, learning to live into the new identity God had given me.

At first, I was overzealous. Completely flip-flopping in my debates with Christians from avowed atheist to avowed apologist. The faith, its doctrines, and especially my thoughts on them had to be defended and I was just the man for the job. I would be the one to prove the bible true. Each and every doubt or question had a solution waiting to be conquered along with the people who voiced them.

My way of being hadn’t changed much post conversion. Like Benedict Arnold, I had simply switched sides. I still sought out the conflict, the fight and the debate.

Unfortunately, it is hard for a conqueror to communicate grace to the conquered.

On too many occasions my breath carried the odor of toe-jam. The after taste of which was less than satisfying. In her novel Gilead, Marilynn Robinson’s character John Ames perhaps said it best.

​Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense

But defend I did! Vigorously at that.

From Atheist to Apologist to Participant

I have a second grade daughter that is fantastic at mathematics. Her teacher sends home extra work for her because she finishes the regular work too quickly. Last week she wanted me to look over her homework and I noticed she had made a mistake.

She totaled the sum of 713 and 129 as 832 rather than 842. When I said that she might want to check her work she insisted that her answer was correct. Even after we did the problem another way, broke it down and solved it on a calculator she still insisted on her answer. There was no convincing her that the tens place should be occupied by a 4 rather than a 3.

She is her father’s daughter after all. As both an atheist and an apologist I had approached the problems of the biblical text in the same way. Obstinate defiance. I refused to see the evidence right in front of my face and admit the truth because doing so would somehow reflect my own fallenness, my own ability to make mistakes.

The irony is that it is precisely fallenness, that proclivity to make mistakes, that God wishes to redeem. In defending the full humanity of Jesus, Gregory of Nazianus, 4th C. CE Archbishop of Constantinople, argued that whatever Jesus “has not assumed, he has not healed.” At the time, Apollinaris had been arguing that Jesus was fully human except for his divine logos (or mind). To Gregory this was tantamount to saying that the human mind was beyond redemption – even the redemption offered by God.

I like to think that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. If he was willing to enter fully into our humanity in Jesus, then it seems likely that he was willing to enter into that humanity during his self revelation in scripture. In seeking to partner with human authors and audiences God entered into our proclivity for encultured expression, miscommunication, misjudgement and error. He did this in order to do what he as always done: to heal that which he assumes, to redeem it (even its cultured expressions), transform it and draw it to a new place and purpose more conformed to himself.

I realized that I shouldn’t be an atheist or an apologist. I was simply called to be a participant in a story that was so much bigger than either of those categories, bigger than myself. I discovered that my relationship with God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit was not made up of one answered question after another, but manifest as part of the larger story of God’s redemptive history.

• A history that is filled with ambiguity and tension.
• A story that is filled with love and grace but also wrath and judgment.
• And a story of the reality of present suffering and of glorified futures already manifested in renewed identities.

I discovered that God has always sought those he calls to himself where they are at, in their own broken contexts, in order to bring them to a new context.

I search the archaeological and cultural backgrounds of the biblical text because I no longer see the biblical text as something to be affirmed or negated. It simply exists in the tension of the messy middle created by the combination of divine intent and human instruments. It simply reveals a God that is constantly calling us to participate in the greatest story of transformation ever told. Its title is ‘The Renewal of All Things,” atheists, apologists and participants included.

The Bible is not to be affirmed or negated. It reveals the God calling us to participate in redemptive history.

This father’s day I was reminded of Henri Nouwen’s description of the prodigal’s father in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son:

May you be that type of father, and may you recognize that you have that type of father already, this fathers day.

In the first half of the 6th century BCE a bunch of Judean officials let their anxiety get the better of them. Stressed out and overworked they betrayed their best hope for salvation, the Prophet Jeremiah, and left him for dead at the bottom of a pit. All to often the stresses of modern life put us in the same situation. Either we, like the officials, are stressed out and over worked and we eventually snap at those close to us, or we, like Jeremiah, find ourselves knee deep in excrement suffering at the hands of those we would hope to help.

Winter wasn’t the best time for warfare in ancient Israel. People and chariots got bogged down in the mud of the winter rains making the deployment of troops difficult. Those same winter rains also fed the water systems of besieged towns making it more difficult to choke out the willing resistance of a town’s defenders.

By summertime, the conditions for warfare improved. The heat of summer desiccated the land and cisterns were left with little more than the mud and street filth that had washed into them the previous winter. When the cisterns were this low, “Drinkable” water was skimmed from the top of a cesspool of mud, street garbage, and human and animal waste. It was at the bottom of one of these “water sources” that the prophet Jeremiah found himself at the end of a siege in the summer of roughly 588 BCE.

From ca. 597 to 588 The Judean King Zedekiah ruled as a puppet king under the close watch of the Babylonians. In 588, Nebuchadnezzar, having destroyed much of the Judean hinterland, again besieged Jerusalem itself but his plans were cut short. The troops of an upstart Pharaoh in Egypt (likely Hophra of Jeremiah 44:30) required Nebuchadnezzar’s immediate attention, forcing Nebuchadnezzar to end the siege of Jerusalem. For Jerusalem the pressure was released.

Suddenly, Zedekiah found that he was in charge without big brother always looking over his shoulder. Unfortunately, “Puppet kings,” by definition, don’t make good leaders. They’re not supposed to. So, lacking strong leadership the Judean court began to devour itself. Jeremiah, as one of the more outspoken voices proclaiming that the destruction of Jerusalem was inevitable and that Judeans should surrender to Babylon in order to submit to God’s will, found himself attacked.

The Judean officials claimed that Jeremiah was “weakening the hands of the soldiers and the people … seeking their harm” rather than their welfare (Jeremiah. 37:4). Nothing could have been further from the truth, yet the weak Zedekiah relented and allowed the Judean officials to throw Jeremiah in the bottom of a cistern.

The water levels of the cistern described in Jeremiah 38:6 indicate that it was late summer by the time Jeremiah was lowered into the mire. The officials, unable to kill Jeremiah outright, likely hoped he would either starve to death, or more likely contract a fatal disease from the excrement in which he found himself.

Things haven’t changed much.

We live in Jeremiah’s world too. Faced with the stresses of modern life we either find ourselves knee deep in excrement or we allow our anxieties to throw others into the mud.

In his classic discussion of the effects of anxiety on family systems, Edwin Friedman has argued that “nature abhors a vacuum in emotional systems ” (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue). Ten years of relentless pressure, especially the kind the Babylonians could place on a city, leaves an imprint of stress and anxiety. In the absence of the Babylonians, the Judean officials continued to carry that emotional baggage around and they created an enemy out of Jeremiah, the very person that was most advocating for their restoration.

All too often we are like those Judean officials. We live our lives stressed out. Pressures of time and activities and keeping up with the Jones’ are constantly being applied to our families, our businesses and our churches. When we finally get a weekend off, or that project gets finished, the pressure is relieved yet our anxious state remains. Like post-traumatic stress we carry the previous day’s battle with us and fill the emotional vacuum with new enemies, even among friends and family.

I know I’ve snapped at my kids after a long day or been unjustifiably  annoyed that the house wasn’t the way I imagined it would be when I got home. Like the Judean officials I was attacking the best assets in my life – friends and family. I could have been enjoying a period of rest and playfulness, instead I turned it into another battle to be won.

Other times we find ourselves, like Jeremiah, suffering at the hand of an anxious system that refuses to abide an objective voice. The Judean officials could have easily passed Jeremiah off as a false prophet: A crackpot who didn’t know what he was talking about. Zedekiah could have stood up to his officials instead of continuing to meet with the imprisoned Jeremiah in secret. Neither party were  willing to step up to the plate and heed Jeremiah’s proclamation of the eventual destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. They let their anxiety get the better of them and Jeremiah suffered for it.

You’ve probably experienced that too. You’ve stuck your neck out at work to advance a good idea only to have your head lopped off. You’ve been slighted, passed up, ignored or outright abused, even by those who would otherwise claim to love you. Or your own anxiety has thrown you into a pit. You’ve given up everything for your kids, or your husband or your Job, in the hope that if you give one hundred and ten percent things will improve. Yet you never find your way out of the stress and anxiety of everyday life. You’re stuck in the mire with no way out of the pit.

Whether we find ourselves throwing other people into cisterns or we are knee deep in excrement ourselves, we should draw inspiration from the leadership of Jeremiah. Indeed, we can avoid much of the stress and anxiety of modern life if we can conform our lives to four characteristics displayed during his ordeal.

1. Keep Calm and Carry on in the will of God

At the beginning of the siege, when everyone else was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, Jeremiah had the presence of mind to purchase some land from his cousin (Jeremiah 32:15). This is no small detail in the narrative. Even though Jeremiah knows that land will be ripped away by Babylon he determines to follow God’s command and fulfill his duty as the leverate redeemer of the land. Not only does this act prove that Jeremiah prioritizes God’s will in any situation but it also shows that Jeremiah remains hopeful that Zedekiah will heed his advice and the calamity of the Babylonian destruction can be avoided.  Even when imprisoned, Jeremiah’s primary concern is not the injustice of his imprisonment but that he may continue to air his “humble pleas” before the king (Jeremiah 37:20).

We too, need to maintain objectivity by drawing on the will of God for our life. We can avoid much of the anxiety of everyday life if we allow ourselves to be led by the will of God.

2. Trust in the steadfast love of God for you

In the midst of Jeremiah’s imprisonment, in the midst of a siege, knowing full well that Jerusalem is going to be laid waste, Jeremiah recalls the covenants that God made with Moses and David (Jeremiah 33). He draws on the psalms and proclaims that we must continue to “Give thanks to the Lord of Hosts/ For the Lord is Good, / His steadfast love endures forever!” (Jer. 33:11)

3. Seek the help of another leader

Jeremiah is rescued from the cistern by an Ethiopian official of Zedekiah named (appropriately) “Servant of the King.” What’s interesting is that Zedekiah seemingly has no problem with Jeremiah’s suffering until a foreigner, a Cushite, points out its injustice (Jeremiah 38:5,9).

Like Jeremiah, we need outsiders (mentors and other leaders) to speak truth into the situation of our suffering. Sometimes we are unable to rescue ourselves from the mire. We must lean into the leadership of others in our lives; Jesus most of all.

4. Allow the end of things to continually break into the present reality.

Even when the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple is at hand, Jeremiah allows the light of future restoration to press in and illuminate his darkest vision. He reminds us that God will “restore the fortunes of the land” (Jer. 33:11), that the promises will be fulfilled, that the righteous branch will one day execute true justice and righteousness (Jer. 33:14-15).

Even if we, in the stresses of our modern day life, can only see the light of justice and righteousness dimly we are called to act according to its eventual complete illumination. Like Jeremiah, we are called to buy land knowing it will be restored and we are called to hope for those that throw us into mud knowing we will be restored.

Facing anxiety and anxious systems isn’t likely to go away any time soon. Jeremiah faced it in the ancient world, and we will continue to face it in our modern context. Whether we find ourselves throwing people into pits or in a pit ourselves we can draw on the example of Jeremiah to remain calm, trust in God’s direction for our lives, seek the help of others, and allow the truth of our eventual restoration to define our present state of being.

While I think the film will be popular among many church-goers as a new arrow in the quiver of apologetics, I doubt many serious biblical scholars will agree with its conclusions. Indeed, those conclusions are widely connected to a historical theory which has been carefully negated in scholarship (even among otherwise orthodox biblical scholars). Because of this, I fear that the film’s popularity with churches will wind up leaving the church ridiculed for trying to fire another broken arrow at the “white tower establishment”.

Patterns begins with a straightforward enough concept: The Bible describes an exodus event for which, according to many scholars, there is little to no extra-biblical corroborating archaeological or historical evidence. Taking seriously the record of the biblical text, Mahoney, a self-described “reluctant participant,” engages in what he calls a “scientific method” of identifying the exodus in the historical record. This method attempts to match the chronological “pattern” of the exodus described in the biblical text to evidence of that same chronological pattern in the archaeological and historical record.

Mahoney comes to a crisis when, as noted above, he finds there is little evidence of that “pattern” in the time periods normally associated with the exodus event. Stymied by professional archaeologists, even those who are otherwise sympathetic to traditional interpretations of the biblical text, Mahoney turns to the theories of David Rohl and John Bimson who, instead of accepting the normal dates associated with the reigns of Egyptian kings, have argued for revising the traditional chronology of Egyptian kings by pushing forward and expanding the king list by nearly 200 years.

This would allow the archaeological remains associated with earlier Egyptian dynasties to coincide with a 1450 date for the exodus. Fantastically depicted in the film’s best feature, an imaginary expanding “wall of time” shows how the different levels (biblical chronology, Egyptian chronology etc.) are aligned by Rohl, Bimson and Mahoney’s chronological shift.

It’s no surprise that the film is billed as “provocative” and “game-changing.” Mahoney opts to change everything we think we know about Egyptian history in order to get it to match more closely with the biblical chronology. But, contrary to what the filmmakers would have you believe, there is nothing new here, just a dejected theory. Indeed, most of the scholars interviewed in the film, even those who believe in a traditional biblical dating of the exodus, reject this revised chronology and opt for less-sensational, less provocative, less game changing, more accurate and more nuanced descriptions of the archaeological evidence of the exodus.

Unfortunately, those alternative positions are never fully articulated in the film, nor, for that matter, are any specific problems with the revised chronology. By short handing particular perspectives, the film becomes biased towards Rohl’s revised chronological solution, when other solutions could have been discussed. When I asked Mahoney Media why that was the case, Steve Law, the film’s co-writer, indicated that test audiences wound up becoming fatigued by “too much information.” Ultimately he indicated that “To us, the emphasis given in the film to the general idea of chronological revision not only was more cinematically engaging, but also has the most explanatory potency.”

This is the problem with the documentary format. It is not the best format to put forth and test supposed “new” ideas and solutions no matter how much they are qualified by “perhaps’s” and “could’s.” Time constraints mean that creditable opposition is never addressed. In “Patterns,”  all scholarship becomes flattened in a “them” vs. the revised chronology paradigm. The film lumps together traditional biblical maximilists and secular minimalists in a gang of “archaeological giants” that the revised chronology will take down with nothing but a sling and a prayer.

Apparently, arguing that secular scholars might be right in the date of the exodus but wrong in the details is simply not as provocative as claiming that scholars have everything under the sun about the exodus wrong. This is the problem with the medium Mahoney is using to argue for the historicity of the exodus. When it comes to the box office, the more provocative solution is always the best one, but when it comes to doing good historical, archaeological and biblical research, a theory’s glitz bears little on its accuracy. Real historical research is pounded out in the dialogue of hundreds of articles and papers, and refined in the open response to accusations of error in hundreds of pages – a 2-hour time limit and audience fatigue is not a problem.

In six hundred theaters tonight, viewers will come away from the film with no idea that they have just picked up a broken arrow. They won’t know that the revised Egyptian chronology is not a new theory and has been shown to create as many problems for biblical chronology as it solves. For instance, the stratigraphic sequence of the archaeological record in Israel doesn’t change even if we change the chronology of the Egyptian kings and associated material remains in Egypt. Major synchronizations between the biblical text and the archaeological record in the Iron Age wind up being pushed out of sync by Rohl’s revised chronology, for the periods of the Judges, the united monarchy and thereafter. (For a more detailed discussion of the problems the revised chronology creates, see Bryant Wood’s article here . For a fuller articulation of the very cogent alternatives to Rohl’s chronology, read Hoffmeier’s Israel in Egypt)

Simply put, Mahoney doesn’t consider a large enough data set. When trying to link the biblical chronology to the archaeological record we can’t just account for the pattern of the exodus: the arrival of the Hebrews in Egypt, their multiplication and enslavement, the eventual judgment of Egypt and subsequent exodus and conquest of Canaan. We also have to account for every period thereafter: the arrival of the philistines, and period of the judges, the united monarchy, civil war and Shishak’s attack, and the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

What we know about the stratigraphic and historical sequence of the latter set in Israel makes the chronological revision suggested by Mahoney untenable. In the end, by over-emphasizing the revised Egyptian chronology, Mahoney abandons the critical scientific method that led him to question mainstream archaeological thought in the first place.

Ultimately, “Patterns of Evidence” will leave viewers with the erroneous impression that the bible can be proven true by archaeology, but the historicity of the biblical text is not dependent upon the vicissitudes of historical preservation. Archaeology will not prove the veracity of the bible. Archaeology informs our understanding of the biblical text and the biblical text informs our understanding of the archaeological record. While we cannot fully understand one without the other, neither “proves” nor negates the other. And really, we shouldn’t ask them to.

I have written quite a bit about Elijah before (find more posts here). I guess you know a story is good when, each and every time you return to it, it has something more to reveal, some new element you’ve never noticed before. The story of Elijah is that way for me.

Recently, in preparing for a teaching, I noticed Elijah travels to a place I had never noticed before – the Negev wilderness

Two Mountaintops

By the time Elijah finds himself in the wilderness, he has already had one mountain top experience where Yahweh showed up powerfully in the form of thunder, lightning and rain. This created a problem for Elijah though. After the triumphant clarity of the initial mountain top confrontation with the Prophets of Baal, something far more opaque crept into Elijah’s psyche when he was confronted by Ahab’s foreign wife Jezebel:

The God who answered my prayers looked an awful lot like the God the prophets of Baal were praying to. He showed up as a strike of lightning, a voice of thunder, and a fertility giving rain throughout the Jezreel valley. Exactly how Baal would have shown up!

When Elijah met Jezebel there was a very real possibility that Elijah didn’t know who the god was that had fulfilled all his prayers on Carmel. Elijah had come to a major crisis of confidence. He doubts himself, he doubts his god and he runs for his life before Jezebel.

Eventually, he finds his way to a second mountaintop experience, this time at Sinai, where God shows Elijah that, even though he can manifest himself in earthly phenomenon like the other gods of the ancient near east, he was different. He was also transcendent, otherworldly, able to manifest himself in the “thinnest of silences” or nothing at all.

The Wilderness Between

In the journey between those two mountains, Elijah finds himself submerged in the wilderness. There, in the desert, his crisis of uncertainty is so great that he wishes for his own death. Take a look at 1 Kings 19:3 and 4:

“Then [Elijah] was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beer-Sheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’”

1 Kings 19:3-4

If you are anything like me, a passage like this leaves you wondering a few things…

• Who are Elijah’s fathers? We don’t hear about his father anywhere else in the text.
• Why, exactly, is Elijah no different from his fathers?
• And finally, why does that similarity require his death?

As you might have guessed, rarely is the setting incidental to the story. Elijah is a day’s walk into the wilderness around Beer-Sheba, most likely this meant that he was somewhere just north of the wilderness of Zin.

That location should ring some bells for you because it just so happens to be nearly the exact location of the Israelites when, fleeing Egypt, they commissioned twelve men to spy out the land which was to be their inheritance. Only Joshua and Caleb would return from that trip into the Wilderness of Zin and the southern lands of Judah believing they could accomplish what the Lord had set before them, as the rest of the spies were plagued by doubt. A doubt that would spread like wildfire and necessitate the death of a generation before the children of Israel could enter the Promised Land.

Elijah believes himself to be struggling with a doubt on par with that of his fathers, the Israelites who failed to enter the land of Canaan when they were supposed to, necessitating his death just as it necessitated theirs. This is deep doubt indeed!

But as I continued to study this part of the story I was caught short. I marveled at not having noticed it before. Elijah’s second mountain top experience at Sinai was not God’s initial response to Elijah’s doubt. Indeed, God responded to Elijah’s doubt right then and there, in the wilderness, in the middle of Elijah’s dark night of the soul.

The writer of the book of kings tells us that while Elijah slept under a tree in the wilderness…

“an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.”

1 Kings 19:5-8

What was God’s initial response to Elijah’s doubt?

Was it judgment? Did God say, “I guess you’re not actually part of my family after all!”

Nope.

Was it condemnation? “Elijah, I can’t abide your questions and suspicions any longer.”

Nope.

Was it Rejection? “Perhaps you shouldn’t be serving in ministry right now; I’ll find a new prophet.”

Nope.

God’s initial response to Elijah’s doubt, while he is still in the wilderness, is sustaining care!

“Arise and Eat”

God’s initial response to Elijah’s doubt is recognition of its rootedness in our humanity!

“for the journey is too great for you”

In other words, God’s initial response to our doubt, the response that happens while we are still in the middle of the wilderness — that response, it is all about grace! It is a response that says, “Yes, you have found yourself steeped in the dark night of the soul but you are my chosen people, my chosen prophet, and I have called you out for a purpose. Let me sustain you for forty days, or forty years, or the rest of your life, but through this time of hardship.”

Here’s the sticky wicket. We may have our mountain top experiences.  We may experience the immanent God with us at Mount Carmel, and we may experience the transcendent God above us at Mount Sinai, but much of life is lived in the wilderness between. In our doubt, God may be calling us to Mount Sinai, but that doesn’t stop him from suffering through it with us in the wilderness

right now,

where we are at.

Our churches would do well to consider Elijah as they interact with those who are brave enough to give voice to their own dark nights of the soul. Not the Elijah on Carmel or Sinai, but the Elijah that was once alone in the Negev wilderness.

I pray that, as you experience your own period of doubt, that you would be relieved in the knowledge that God knows the “journey is too great for you.” May you daily, “arise and eat,” sustained for the journey to Sinai set before you.

His book takes a new look at the character of Samson from the book of Judges. Using all of the archaeological, cultural and linguistic data available to him, Gray, shows how the writers of Judges meant for us to know a Samson very different than the powerful character we known from Sunday school and popular culture.

Apologies for the delayed and overlapping audio. I am not trying to talk over Brad. I am, however, still learning how to do all of this well. The fault is mine, not Brad’s.

Brad is a fantastic teaching pastor at Central Wesleyan Church in Holland Michigan. He holds an M.Div. from Western Theological Seminary and studied with me at Jerusalem University College. Make Your Mark aligns so well with the mission of Biblical Remains. Not only does it focus on what the ancient context of the story can tell us about Samson, It also points us towards how we can live better today because of that knowledge.

Brad was kind enough to discuss the following five questions:

1. How does the Samson the biblical writers intended us to know differ from the Samson we know from Sunday school and popular culture?
2. Why is the Samson narrative so important for us today?
3. What is your favorite lesson from the life of Samson?
4. What insight did you gain that was only possible with the use of linguistic, cultural or archaeological data?
5. For someone who is not used to studying the text in this way what tools would you suggest they use to get started?

You can get your very own copy of Make Your Mark; Getting Right What Samson Got Wrong here

If your would like to find out more about Brad Gray and his ministry you can find him at Walking the Text.com

Update: Brad is now offering a FREE downloadable study guide for the book along with steep discounts for volume orders for study groups. To learn more and download the free study guide, click here.

Disclosure of Material Connection. I received an Advanced Copy of the book mentioned above for comment and review. Some of the links above are affiliate links. That being said I only promote things which I thoroughly believe my readers will benefit from and that I use myself. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, part 255: “guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Indeed, the two most important commodities of the ancient biblical world were land and family. What has changed is how we conceive of the ideal family. I would contend that the ideal biblical family looked less like my immediate family (my wife and children) and more like the family from our reunion photo.

The ideal biblical family

There are two important elements to family life in the biblical period that have significant implications, not only for how we understand families today, but also for how we understand our relationship with God.

1. For much of the biblical period the ideal family was composed of the extended or joint-family household.

This meant that multiple generations of family lived in the same house or compound. Referred to most often as the bet av, “house of the father,” the ideal Israelite household was made up of four generations (Lev 18:6-18): a Father and his wife, his father and his wife, his sons and their wives, his grandchildren, and any other dependents such as servants and bondsmen.

Families organized themselves in this way in order to ensure economic and physical viability. In the words of Mathews and Benjamin, “A household was made up of as many sets of childbearing adults and their dependents as was necessary for the entire group to feed and protect itself” (Social World of Ancient Israel).

In so doing, they could achieve the ideal Israelite life: living and dying under one’s own vine and fig tree. That image is repeated again and again as a vision of prosperity and abundance in times of peace (See, 1 Kings 4:25, 2 Kings 18:31, Isaiah 36:16, Micah 4:4, Zech. 3:10). You live under your own vine and fig tree because you are free of outside threats, able to sustain yourself and your family, but you are keenly aware that your produce is dependent upon God

2. Kinship terminology was legal, political and filial.

Biblical Hebrew is, as Lois Tverberg has described, “word-poor” (Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus). Many concepts are grouped together, sometimes in ways we would not, under the same reference word. Where English tends to be precise, looking for slight differences of meaning between individual words, words in biblical Hebrew are less precise, building constructs off of multiple denoted concepts.

Kinship terms, such as “father,” “son,” “daughter,” “brother,” “uncle,” etc., are good examples. These terms carried multiple layers of meaning. “Father” could simply refer to a blood relationship, but it could also refer to the greater party in a contractual relationship, or the lord of a given political entity. “Brothers” could be blood relatives or they could be business partners or persons holding the same political rank.

In fact most of near eastern society was organized according to terms of kinship. The “Father” was the head of the smallest social unit, the family, just as the “Father” was the head of the largest social unit, the state. In this way, kinship terminology denoted social and legal responsibilities rather than simple blood ties. The state itself was referred to as a house: “House of David,” “House of Omri,” etc. (By the way, this is one reason we need not emphasize “God the Father” as a reference to God’s “maleness”, rather than a reference, in covenant language, to his Lordship and sovereignty)

More often than not, these layers of meaning converged. Physical relationships were confirmed through covenants that required the father to act as the “father,” the son to act as the “son,” and brothers to act as “brothers.” In other words, kinship was a relationship entered into and chosen rather than inherited because of blood ties.

Making the ideal biblical family our family today

This has a number of important implications for how we can and should conceive of family today.

Families are made up of covenant connections, not just blood connections. In the ancient world sonship didn’t begin with birth but when the father chose to adopt the newly born child as his own. That’s why I was so excited for my family reunion this month. It was an opportunity for all of us to declare that we are a family. It was an opportunity for us to adopt one another, to recommit ourselves to fulfilling the legal and social responsibilities of our assumed blood ties. We were a family, and are a family, because we chose to be a family then and there.

In a society, of blended families, and adopted families, families of friends, church families and, broken families, perhaps we need to affirm the covenant family more than the “leave it to beaver family.” Perhaps we will produce more “biblical” families if we affirm the family that has chosen to be a family more than the family that painfully lives together out of some notion of physical relationship.

More importantly, thinking about families in this way, frees us to find ourselves in the midst of the great arc of God’s redemptive history. Because of the work of Christ in the new covenant, we have been “grafted in,” adopted as sons and daughters of the old covenant. Indeed, properly understanding the biblical image of the family, as an extended, joint-family, held together through covenant shows us that the concept of “sonship” and election has not been done away with. It has been expanded to include an exploding joint-family all striving to live in the same bet av under the same vine and fig tree.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your household; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

Psalm 128:3

• We ask God for him to heal a broken home without ever considering how we might physically serve the individuals residing in it.
• We complain about “that church” without being willing to be a member, or serve on the elder board
• We pray for the sick, without being willing to visit the hospital.
• We pray for the poor, homeless and struggling, without taking actionable steps to come alongside them.
• And sometimes we pray for our labors to be fruitful without putting in the hard work necessary to make that blessing a reality.

But, God has no interest in blessing free-riders. God is looking for kingdom builders and business partners. Fortunately, this is a lesson written in to the very landscape of redemptive history

The “promised land” was not a place where God’s blessing comes easily

At the very end of the long, arduous, exodus and wilderness wandering, when Israel encamped on the eastern side of the Jordan River, Moses took a moment to describe the land that the fledgling nation was called to conquer and inhabit. He told them:

The Land that you are entering is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of Vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

Deuteronomy 11:10-12

Moses was warning the Israelites in two ways.

1. He was warning them that the “promised land” would require greater dependence on God for blessing.

Egypt was one of the breadbaskets of the world. The Nile and its annual flood made large scale cultivation possible via irrigation. By the time of the exodus, a parcel the size of Maryland was able to be cultivated. By the height of the Roman Empire, Egypt could provide enough food for the entire city of Rome for four months out of the year.

Unlike Egypt, farming in Israel depended on the rains of heaven (dry-farming). Unfortunately, the “Promised Land” stood on the margins of where such farming was even possible given the amount of rain they received. The types of grains that predominantly took root were less desirable and any year of drought could have a devastating impact for generations. In other words, the land depended on God for its fruitfulness in ways that the land of Egypt did not.

2. Moses was also warning the Israelites that the “promised land” would require them to work harder for God’s blessing to take root.

More than dependence, the geophysical realities of the land meant that a lot more work was necessary for God’s blessing to take root. In Egypt cultivation occurred at the toe-tip. The relative flatness of the Nile delta meant that a field could be watered by simply pushing over a small berm with your foot. Water from nearby irrigation canals would flood the field and your harvest was all but assured.

In the Promised Land, the Israelites would have to give God something to bless. Yes, fields depended on rains from the heavens but that water easily ran-off the hills into valleys controlled by Canaanites. This was especially true in the central hill country where steep valleys required terracing in order for fields and orchards to become sustainably fruitful.

More than that, massive and complex water collection and food storage systems were necessary to support the Israelites and their livestock during times of drought. In other words, in the Promised Land, the Israelites would have to partner with God for the vision of a “land flowing with milk and honey” to come to fruition.

Give God something to bless

God chose the land of Israel for a reason. While I don’t presume to know the answer, the geophysical reality suggests that you can’t learn to depend on God in a land like Egypt where everything you need to live is at the tip of your fingers.

God found more glory in requiring the Israelites to live in a place of greater labor. There is something that makes our fruitfulness rot when it comes easy. There is something about resting on the laurels of an ever present Nile that is detrimental to our dependence on God.

• How many pastoral downfalls begin once a Pastor believes they have “made-it?”
• How many fields do you water with your foot? Did you choose your church, or your job or your friends based upon what was easy?
• How many relationships do you cultivate through terracing so that when God’s rains do come, they are put to good use?

Next time, before you ask for God’s blessing, do the work necessary for that blessing to be best displayed. More than that, be the mechanism by which God can bless others. Next time, work hard with honest dependence and give God something to bless

While others debate whether or not the last supper represents a Passover meal this Easter, I would like to discuss the one component of the last supper of Jesus about which we are fairly confident. It is a cultural insight that has huge ramifications for how we understand Jesus’ relationship to Judas and to ourselves.

Dining in a U-shaped lounge

Our images of the last supper have largely been shaped by renaissance masters who portrayed Jesus sitting at the center of a long table with six disciples on either side, but Raphael and DaVinci got it wrong.  Indeed, all four records of the meal mention the reclined posture of the diners (Matthew 26:20, Mark 14:18, Luke 22:14, John 13:23).

This reclined posture seems to indicate that the last supper of Jesus was eaten in the fashion of a Greco-Roman triclinium. By the time of the first century A.D, textual and archaeological remains indicate that a number of Jews had adopted this Hellenized style of feasting, particularly for special meals.

The triclinium meal had eight distinct elements which affect how we understand the social dynamics of the last supper.

1. Rather than one long table, diners at a triclinium meal were arranged in a u-shape
2. Diners reclined on either pillows or low couches with their heads towards the center of the table settings and their feet towards the outside of the room.
3. Communal settings were usually placed for a person and his immediate neighbors
4. Diners lay on their left hip and elbow, freeing their right hand to consume food from the settings on the floor or on slightly raised tables.
5. This posture meant that one diner could lean back to place his head on the chest of the person to his left or, if someone was to your right, lean forward into your neighbors back.
6. The Host of a triclinium meal reclined second furthest to the left
7. The host’s “best man” reclined immediately to the right of the Host, allowing him to lean back on the host’s chest
8. The Guest of Honor reclined immediately to the left of the Host allowing the host to lean back onto the Guest of Honor’s chest.

What does all of this mean for the last supper?

First it gives us a good idea of the seating arrangement for at least four people during the meal.

• As the host, Jesus would have reclined at the second position on the left end of the U-shaped table.
• At one point during the meal, John tells us that he leaned back into Jesus’ chest to ask him a question. This would place John in the “best man” position immediately to the right of Jesus.
• John leans back, at the motioning of Peter, which means that Peter had to be reclining on the opposite side of the U-shaped configuration for John to see him. That puts Peter in the farthest right position (The position furthest from the host and normally reserved for servants)
• Mark, Luke and John tell us that Judas shared a place setting with Jesus (“dipped his hand” in the “same dish”) Since, the spot immediately to the right of Jesus was taken up by John , that only left the spot Immediately to Jesus’ left, the spot reserved for the Guest of Honor.

Judas was Jesus’ guest of honor at the last supper.

Judas and Jesus

Judas has gotten a bad rap over the centuries. He’s the betrayer, the super-villain of all super-villains. It’s easier for us if we make Judas out to be an enigma of extreme evil. We don’t have to compare ourselves to Judas if he is over-the-top, we’ve never felt that-way-before, evil. But Judas’ betrayal of Jesus may have been far more banal than we would like to imagine.

Jesus was supposed to have been the Messiah, the one person that could initiate a new exodus and once and for all time sweep the Jews out from under the yoke of Roman oppression.  Jesus was supposed to be the second son of David, the one that would establish an everlasting political and territorial kingdom for Israel.

It may have been that, for Judas, this non-violent servant-king that Jesus had become was anti-climactic to say the least. In the words of Paul Wright “it is likely that he [Judas] was simply disillusioned, feeling that it was not he but Jesus, so full of promise, who had betrayed the cause” (Greatness, Grace and Glory).

During the last supper, Jesus knew that Judas had, hours before, arranged to betray him. Jesus knew that, hours later, Judas’ kiss would set in motion the terrible pain and suffering of a trial and crucifixion.

And yet, Jesus gave Judas the position of greatest honor at the table. It’s as if Jesus was making one last effort to bring Judas closer to himself. Indeed, Judas reclined where Jesus could lean back against Judas’ chest and weigh the beats of his heart.

The disillusioned guest of honor

Paul Wright’s words have been so hard for me to read at times. If disillusionment is all we have to feel to be in the company of Judas, how close are we to betrayal?

How many of us have been disillusioned with the church or disillusioned with who we thought the church should be or disillusioned with who we thought some leader in the church should have been?

How many of us have become disillusioned with God when we get cancer,

or our spouse dies,

or we lose our Job, lose our house,  get squeezed out of the market, passed up for promotion,

or when one of our children finds themselves stuck in a wheelchair?

How many of us know someone who is disillusioned about God? Someone who is feeling angry and betrayed by a distant creator? How many of us know someone who was left with a bad taste in their mouth by “that Christian” down the block that didn’t seem so Christ-like.

How many people do you know that would say “I want nothing to do with Jesus!”

When we are disillusioned, how far away from Judas are we?

When we are disillusioned, How far away from Jesus are we?

When Judas was disillusioned he was right there, next to Jesus and so are we –the guest of Honor. Jesus is leaning back against our hearts waiting for us to lean into him.

Whether you sit, stand or recline, at the communion table this Easter remember you are Jesus’ guest of honor. No matter how betrayed or disillusioned either of you feel, he is always right next to you, willing to share a common place setting at the triclinium table.