Offramps to Gehenna

Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. But horror is not really a literary genre—it is a response to something horrific, an emotion that reflects the terror being encountered, whether in depiction or in experience.

Nevertheless, they speak of it. Imagine this happening to someone you know, someone you care deeply about who is in your life right now—a friend, a brother, a son, a father, a husband. Imagine him being arrested on a false charge, cruelly beaten by soldiers and they nailed up on a cross of wood to die in the public square. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. There is no authority to stop the horror.

The authorities are the authors of it all. Jesus allows himself to be taken to this end. In his willingness to die, the power of evil ramps up to a fever pitch and has its way with him. If what we believe about Jesus is true—that he is the Word made flesh, that the fullness of God dwells in him—then that rabid force of evil has its way with God on that bleak Friday afternoon. It came about in a way that was familiar to the people. The Romans were good at this sort of thing, and they plied their trade on Jesus with a well-rehearsed skill. It had happened before and it would happen again.

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But it was still an experience of horror for everyone. It is an odd thing that our story of salvation could be classified as a horror story. Our story is not one divorced from the terrors of human history, but one that is grounded in a specific time and place, yet for all people in all times and places. And that one place, like all places, is a place where horror dwells. Horror loves the dark. Crucfixion , death , evil , God , Good Friday , holy week , horror , Jesus , Romans , suffering , torture.

As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. It was an ad for pillows and comforters for a bed. They looked very nice. But the department store people seemed to be convinced that I was a deserving person. They must be very kind. His prayer is about giving—giving the love of God the Father to the people around him, giving himself to God and to others, giving the oneness that he shares with God to those who will receive it.

He prays not only for those in the room with him, but also for us. But is that a comfort we deserve? No, it is a comfort that results from the generous love of God. We can only think of serving, and doing so in the way of Jesus. Augustine , believe , Calvin , deserve , God , holy week , Jesus , king , lent , love , Teresa , Wesley. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you.

If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. But it can also be a terror, obliterating all sense of orientation and direction, projecting fears of specters and skulkers into its inky blackness. Even the smallest light—a wooden match, a birthday candle—can shatter darkness and reveal the true nature of our fears.

Ghosts and goblins were only footstools and tables. But formerly dark corners assumed to be empty could be illuminated sufficiently to reveal hypodermic scorpions and invasive vipers. The light unmasks our fearful illusions but it also exposes dangers that disguise themselves as things benign. John uses light imagery quite often. In this account, Jesus speaks of his own presence among his people as light in the midst of darkness. But there is more going on here than simply a mental shift.

It hints at what would later be seen as the ultimate intention of God for the world: Transitioning from darkness to light is more than a change of the mind; it is also a change of a life. Once Jesus speaks these words—words that were somewhat cryptic to his hearers—he left them and hid for a while. When he was with them they were amazed, challenged, offended, horrified, and energized. Now they could experience his absence for a while, imagining what it would be like for him to be gone from them, leaving them in darkness. Soon enough, they would find out.

And so can we. Posted by Mike McNichols at 7: Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. The Greeks are here!

Now find me some Ethiopians and some Brazilians! He just turns to his disciples and speaks of his impending death. He ignores the Greeks altogether. Maybe the Greeks thought Jesus was a local magician and wanted him to pull some rabbits out of a hat. Or, they might have been sincere God-fearers and wanted to talk with Jesus about life and faith. That would have made great copy for John. The two were not mutually exclusive, but his focus was, for the most part exclusively on the people of Israel.

At the same time, the world would be impacted. Being exclusive for the sake of all. We often think of exclusivism as something negative, a party that sends out limited invitations. But Jesus knew that his mission involved the death and resurrection of the people of God, and he would enact that in his own life, suffering, and death.

He would represent the nation of Israel in his death and rebirth, and ultimately it would be seen that this representation included the whole world. This helps we who follow Jesus today to understand that there is an exclusivism to being the people of God, in that we are first of all a worshipping community. Others might worship other gods, but we do not. At the same time, our exclusive worship and devotion is not for our own sake, but for the sake of the world.

It is so that our lives would bear witness to Jesus Christ and provide evidence that the kingdom of God is, indeed, at hand. And that is truly the party that sends out unlimited invitations. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Yesterday I visited a friend who is very ill.

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His condition is very serious and he is now under hospice care. I came straight from church and brought my copy of the order of service with me. I read some words to the songs we had sung that morning and also the texts of scripture. As I prepared to read this one, a thought occurred to me. My friend was about to take a journey that all humans must make, and they only make it once. And Jesus, I told my friend, is riding with him. Death had not occurred for Jesus yet, and it would only happen once. He, too, would ride into a place he had never been before.

But his death was unique and he would journey as no one had before. Yes, others had suffered and died before him, even on harsh Roman crosses. But never before had someone in whom the fullness of God dwelt gone to his death. Never before had God embraced human death in the way he was about to do it in Jesus.

The writer to the Hebrews, in describing Jesus as the ultimate of all Jewish high priests, says it best: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Then Jesus cried aloud: And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.

I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.

I suggested that perhaps Darth Vader had slipped into his room and ran off with it. Jesus called upon people to believe in him. When we think of believing in him, we think of believing that he existed at a point in history, that he was who he claimed to be, and that he accomplished theologically exactly what we have been trained to understand. But his original audience was called to believe in a different way. Did they need to believe that he performed miraculous signs?

All they had to do was hang around awhile for that one. That he was the Son of God? Yes, that one might have taken some work on their part. The belief is directed toward God the Father. But these were first-century Jews, and they had no trouble believing in God. But there was something about God that Jesus wanted them to believe, something new and revelatory about God that would be new for them.

And in Jesus, they could see that new and revelatory thing. But Jesus showed them the redeeming, saving, healing face of God, the face that their ancestors experienced long ago when being rescued from slavery in Egypt. And many did believe. The face of God that Jesus showed them impacted them in such a way that they could rise up and proclaim with one voice: Posted by Mike McNichols at For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.

But let us go to him. It seems odd to us, at first, that Jesus waited to go to Bethany where the family lived, but perhaps he knew that it was too late, since it would take two days to get there. Nevertheless, he encounters deep pain when he arrives. Jesus was not a magician who performed medical parlor tricks for the crowds. In every act of ministry he revealed the true face of God, the God who was Emmanuel —God is with us.

Jesus was profoundly with the people in their pain and suffering. And so he wept. Martha was only partially right in what she said to Jesus. Yes, he could have prevented Lazarus from dying at that time. But at some point death would claim him just as it would claim others. And just as it would claim Jesus. Was Jesus weeping because his friends grieved? Or did he weep because he knew that death remained an inevitability for all? Yes, in his coming death and resurrection, death would be defeated in that it would be revealed that death did not have the last word for human beings.

Still, it would come to all. When Jesus died he represented all of Israel, and also the entire world. Jesus would absorb the power of sin and death and take into himself the inevitable end of all human beings. And in his death, in a very important way, God would endure suffering and death.

I wonder if Jesus still weeps? Yes, he has come through death and into resurrection, just as we hope for ourselves. But does he still weep as death cuts it swath over the fields of humans that suffer under its effect? In his place of exaltation with God the Father, is his joy constantly lubricated with his tears? If he is truly Emmanuel , if he is truly with us, then he is with us in all aspects of our lives. And perhaps he still weeps. O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore. Psalm I now have an app on my smartphone that feeds news stories to me from several sources. Now I can get the news from a variety of perspectives. And I can learn about some of the dramas and dangers that make me feel anxious, angry, and afraid. We end up feeling as though we need the information to feel like we matter, like we have a voice, like we are joining in with things that are not only disturbing, but that also feel too great and too marvelous for us.

The psalmist speaks of a heart not lifted up and eyes that are not raised too high. Is it a posture of defeat, or is it the recognition of helplessness in the scheme of things? Either way, we are given the image of the calmed and quieted soul being like a weaned child with its mother. But perhaps it is the picture of one who is no longer dependent on the drama of the nation. For the ancient Hebrews, their identity was tightly bound in the identity of the nation.

There was no identity for them outside of Israel. The psalmist might have been speaking of being weaned from that national dependency. We are so bombarded with information about world events that it is often overwhelming. Much of the information pertains to things over which we have no control, which creates even greater distress. Sometimes we need to be quieted. A lot of the time we need to be weaned from the drama.

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It would be an incredible experience to remain aware of—and even, at times, to participate in—what is going on in the world while resting in our dependency upon God. I wonder what that would do to our anxiety and frustration levels? O world, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities. Psalm I know people who have never been forgiven by those they have wronged. Even after great sorrow and repentance on the part of the offender, the one who suffered the offense withholds forgiveness.

The people might be married to each other, co-congregants at church, or in some other relationship of proximity.

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And forgiveness never comes. For some who have been sinned against, the pain might be too deep to forgive, at least in the short run; it could take time for that to happen. For others it becomes a form of power, keeping the sinner at bay and inside an eternal prison of unforgiveness. For the sinner, the shame of the offense is compounded by the ongoing imprisonment of unabsolved guilt. After all, if he did, then it would be impossible for Israel to stand under the weight of its transgressions. It is a comfort to apply such generosity to ourselves as persons.

The people against whom we have sinned may not forgive us—we have no control over that. I doubt that God actually forgets, either. But in the end, he kept no record. When God forgives, the pardon is real, as real as the guilt that was the prerequisite for forgiveness. Once pardoned, always free.

Once those sins are recognized and identified as something real and true, forgiveness becomes a possibility. How tragic it is when a person decides that everything is just okay and nothing requires pardon. Posted by Mike McNichols at 6: You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

Tell me, so that I may believe in him. After Jesus heals him, the Pharisees are enraged and want an accounting. So he lectures them. And they hate it. He was afflicted because of some past generational shenanigan and God decided that someone—how about a newborn baby? The man has been, for his entire life, living at the margins of society.

Now that he can see for the first time, he has to adjust to a sighted life and find a way to integrate in his context. Except now, the Pharisees have driven him out. How troubling this would be for the man. He could only believe that God had a hand in his healing, a healing that came through that wandering street preacher named Jesus.

Having been restored to full humanity by the God he thought had forgotten him, he is now banished by the local religious elite. But after the expulsion, Jesus took him in. The Pharisees showed the man the face of the God they preferred—a God to which they felt they had aspired, one that kept his circle of acceptance tight and bounded. Jesus, however, showed the man the real face of God—it was a generous face of love, of healing, of initiated trust.

The man may have been born blind, but he seemed to recognize the real thing when he saw it. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. Then I washed, and now I see. Imagine being blind from birth, never seeing a thing, then suddenly your eyes are opened. Everything would be new to you—color, movement, faces, landscape.

It would take quite a while to get accustomed to a sighted life. It would be like landing on a distant planet where all things are alien to you. The man born blind in this story would have been in the midst of joy and celebration when the Pharisees showed up to interrogate him. I wonder if he stared at them for a while before answering, marveling at their phylacteries and robes. They were putting a damper on the moment, not seeming to care that the man could see for the first time in his life.

They were more concerned with how Jesus had done it. Had Jesus just waved his hand like a Jedi knight, it might have been considered an acceptable act of healing. But Jesus made mud to do the job, and on the Sabbath such an act was interpreted as work. Jesus, of course, saw the Sabbath differently.

He claimed that the Sabbath was for people, not the other way around. For him, the works of God could not be separated from the word of God. He also claimed to do only what he saw his heavenly Father do. That was blasphemy enough for the Pharisees. When the abolitionists rose up in the 19th century to fight against slavery in the UK and US, they were accused of going against the word of God. Scripture, so the defense went, did not condemn slavery, but rather commanded that it be done with kindness.

But the anti-slave people persisted, seeing something deeper in Scripture that did not allow for the oppression and enslavement of anyone. No one today would likely disagree with their convictions. Are there other issues facing us today where we have gripped our texts of Scripture—our interpretations of those texts, actually—in such a way that our convictions of correctness end up bringing harm to others?

Is being right our highest calling? We have a number of biblical and historical precedents showing how the desire to be right can violate what God is doing in the world think of Jesus and the Pharisees; of Paul and the Judaizers; of abolitionists and slaveholders; of women and men in the church. God help us to recognize his works before we make a false claim on his word.

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. Yet one of you is a devil. At the beginning of the text, Jesus feeds 5, hungry people. As a result, more people begin to follow him.

After that, everyone deserts him except the original twelve. And, as Jesus points out, one of them is a bad apple. The disciples reveal themselves to be cowardly, power hungry, doubtful, confused, and violent. The other so-called disciples cut and run as soon as Jesus says something that disturbs them, confirming the popular definition of heresy: Judas merely acts out what lies within the heart of all the others.

Yes, he betrayed Jesus. When the larger group of followers abandoned Jesus, that too was a form of betrayal. They voted Jesus down in their departure. When Jesus asked the twelve including Judas if they planned to leave as well, he exposed the possibility that betrayal could happen at any time. Even after Peter speaks his touching words of loyalty and trust, he and the others would fall away, at least for a while. It is tragically humbling to recognize the seeds of sin and betrayal that lie within me. Yes, there is love, but love is a prerequisite for betrayal.

There is no betrayal if love does not first exist. Yes, I can say that I love Jesus. But I have to realize that betrayal can grow out of my love like a toxic weed. Thankfully, my love is not first. Even when his words and deeds scandalize me. For he satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things. Some sat in darkness and in gloom, prisoners in misery and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High.

Their hearts were bowed down with hard labor; they fell down, with no one to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. If God is for us, who is against us? But we ought to sing songs like that all year round so that we never, never, forget that God is truly with us.

The Bible speaks of God as the One who allows his people to suffer the consequences of their actions and choices, but who also meets them in their desperation, hears their cry, and rescues them. A visit to a friend in prison goes awry. McSweeney's is a literary journal based in San Francisco.

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Sarah thought she had it all figured out. She was going to be a career woman and climb her way to the top with the new corporate job she nabbed. It took one unexpected encounter to throw her whole life into question. The On-The-Go Short Stories series is for busy people who prefer stories they can finish in one sitting. Be entertained while in the car, taking care of errands, or anytime you need a mental break.

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