Following Jesus
Commentary
Thomas Long told about the examination of ministerial candidates in a North Carolina presbytery. One elderly minister always kept quiet through the bulk of the ordeals, according to Long, and then invariably asked the same final set of questions just at the close of each examination.
“Look out that window,” he would order the candidates. “Tell me when you see someone walking out there.” So they did. When someone walked by he would say, “Now, describe that person to me theologically.”
Each person’s answer would be a bit different from the others, of course. Yet they consistently could be reduced to just two basic ideas. One group of ministers-to-be would say something like “Well, there goes a sinner who is on his way to hell unless he repents!”
The other group responded something like this: “There goes a person who is a child of God. God loves that person so very much, and the best thing that can happen to him is to find out how good it is to love God in return!”
Funny thing, said the old minister, both responses are probably right. Still, those who respond in the latter way always make better pastors.
Why? Because they have learned to live life on beyond perfection. For when the roll is called up yonder, the grades on the report cards that make it won’t be “A” for excellent, or “B” for good, or even “C” for nice try. The only grade that will make it will be “G.”
For Grace.
This is the way of Jesus.
Acts 2:42-47
The momentum of the stories told in the book of Acts is derived from a single critical incident that took place in Jerusalem during the Jewish religious festival known as Pentecost. Jesus’ instruction for his disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for a special gift (Acts 1:4) must have seemed vague at the time, but the arrival of the explosive power of the Holy Spirit during the Pentecost feast made sense. This celebration was both a harvest festival and a time for recalling the gift of the original covenant documents to Moses at Mount Sinai. These two themes intersect marvelously with what is taking place. First, there is the dawning of a new age of revelation and divine mission, paralleling the first covenant declaration in the book of Exodus. Second, during the Pentecost harvest festival the first sheaves of grain are presented at the Temple, anticipating that God would then bring in the full harvest. This expression of faith serves as a clear analogy to the greater missional harvest of the Church, which was begun through a miraculous “first fruits” in Jerusalem that day.
Peter capitalizes on these themes when he preaches a sermon explaining Joel’s prophecy of the “Day of the Lord.” Peter ties together God’s extensive mission, the history of Israel, the coming of Jesus, and the splitting of the Day of the Lord so that the blessings of the messianic age could begin before the final divine judgment fell. The pattern for entering the new community of faith was clearly outlined: repent and be baptized. The former indicated a transforming presence of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts, while the latter became the initiation rite by which the ranks of this missional society were identified (replacing the badge of circumcision in its unique application to the nation of Israel -- see Colossians 2:11-12).
Reaction to the rapidly developing Christian fellowship was swift and sharp. Within Jerusalem’s dominant religious community, there was consternation about the apostles’ identification of Jesus as the Jewish messiah (Acts 4), creating tensions and divisions. Inside the newly organizing Church itself, there were ethical issues that needed to be addressed (Acts 5-6). Soon the followers of Jesus needed to expand their leadership team (the deacons of Acts 6), and found themselves the targets of increasingly organized persecutions (Acts 8:1-3). Although this disrupted the close fellowship of the Jerusalem congregation, those who moved elsewhere to find safety brought the message of Jesus’ teachings, death, and resurrection with them (Acts 8:4).
1 Peter 2:19-25
About the time that Paul was engaged in his final communications with Timothy and Titus, Peter made his own last swing through the churches of northern and eastern Asia Minor. This was quite a trip for an older gentleman to take (exceeding the reach of all of Paul’s journeys recorded in Acts), since Peter was based in Rome at the time. He calls Rome “Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13), a code term already circulating throughout the Christian Church, hinting at the persecutions looming from the ruling center of the world in a way similar to the Babylonian pressures mounted against Judah centuries before. It may well have been that Peter was invited to officiate at a number of large baptism ceremonies in the congregations to which these letters are written, since Peter’s tone is that of instruction for new believers, and baptism is a central concern (1 Peter 3:13-22).
Peter reminds his readers that he was an eyewitness of Jesus’ life and sufferings (1 Peter 5:1; see also 2:23), and directly echoes a number of Jesus’ teachings in his words (compare 1 Peter 2:12 with Matthew 5:16; 1 Peter 2:21 with Matthew 10:38; 1 Peter 3:14 and 4:13-14 with Matthew 5:10-12). Some scholars believe this letter could not have been written by Peter since its use of the Greek language is too educated, too well-crafted. But the double pairs of brothers from the fishing trade in Capernaum that Jesus called to follow him (Peter and Andrew, James and John), probably came from middle-class families, where education was important. Moreover, just as Paul had amanuenses writing out his letters, so in 1 Peter 5:12 the letter-writing skills of Silvanus (a variant of Silas) are recognized. Peter may well have been accomplished in his use of the Greek language, and certainly Peter’s letter-writing scribe was.
Peter writes in powerful terms of the great salvation recently brought to humankind by Jesus. This new life is irreversibly guaranteed by way of both Jesus’ resurrection and ascension for those who believe (1 Peter 1:3-12). Peter next provides an extended exhortation to holy living, because these believers in Jesus are God’s special people (1 Peter 1:13--2:10), who follow in the footsteps of Jesus (1 Peter 2:11--3:12) and must face, with their master, the sufferings that will fall on all his disciples in challenging times (1 Peter 3:12--4:19). Peter gives a special word of encouragement to the elders who lead the various congregations (1 Peter 5:1-4), and then expands these same ideas for the broader community (1 Peter 5:5-11) before closing with brief personal greetings (1 Peter 5:12-14).
No matter the debates about authorship, this letter of Peter to the early church is a ringing testimony of faith, shrouded by a very real recognition of current and impending sufferings. It continues to speak clearly into our world, twisted as it is with pain and torture and insecurity.
John 10:1-10
Our Easter sunrise worship services in southern Alberta were held in a cemetery. It was difficult to gather in the dark since neither mountains nor forests hid the springtime sun, and the high desert plains lay open to almost ceaselessly unclouded skies. Still, we mumbled in hushed whispers as we acknowledged one another and saved our booming tones for the final rousing chorus of “Up from the grave he arose!”
“A grave is a sobering thing,” said Wordsworth. We try to mark each with snippets of meaning that will defuse the scandalous superficiality of life that Emily bemoaned in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. “If I was so quickly done for,” asks the wee voice etched on a child’s grave memorial, “what on earth was I begun for?”
Ancient Romans tossed away the scandal of our brief and meaningless lives. When archaeologists first sifted through graveyards of the early centuries of the great empire, they were caught up short by a plethora of burial plot stones inscribed with the same seven letters: N F F N S N C. These certainly spelled no known Latin word, and other connections escaped would-be interpreters. Until, that is, they uncovered older quadrants of cemeteries where many grave markers carried seven-word inscriptions beginning with these otherwise meaningless letters: Non Fui. Fui. Non Sum. Non Curo. Suddenly the intent was clear. So many Romans had found this phrase as the best representation of life and death that even poor people with small stones could abbreviate it down to just seven letters and all would understand: “I was not. I was. I am not. I don’t care.”
Tragic. Cynical. Hopeless.
I have officiated at hundreds of funerals over the past 35 years, and never met a family which would have dared place that testimony over the grave of a loved one. We cry. We weep. We wail. One young man even jumped on top of the casket as it was being lowered into the cold earth, pounding in horrible grief on the unforgiving final home of his brother’s body.
Even when death is “good,” and an elderly grandmother slips willingly from time into eternity, tears of loss trace our cheeks. We were born to live, not to die.
That is why those same archaeologists of ancient Roman artifacts were equally surprised by some of the memorials found next to the burial niches in the catacombs where Christians laid their dead. There were inscribed verses of scripture, to be sure, but also symbols and pictures. The one, however, that most mystified showed the upper body of a man holding a harp. It seemed to represent Jesus, but standard mythological representations usually tied this one to Orpheus.
Orpheus was the darling of Greek love and music and tragedy. Orpheus was the master musician of his time, and well could have had 39 out of the top 40 tunes on the charts at once. When Orpheus sang, the birds swooped in just to flit on his lilting melodies. When Orpheus sang, the clouds rolled back from the skies and the sun shone more brightly and the beasts crept out of the shadows to dance their fancy footwork. When Orpheus came to town, people floated out of homes and shops to jig in the streets and fall in love.
Of course, when Orpheus himself fell in love, passion intensified. It was Eurydice who caught his eye and heart, and before long they were fawning and fainting after one another. When Orpheus and Eurydice wed, the world shimmered with significance and couples everywhere twitterpated.
But a week later all meaning was lost. While Eurydice romped with her friends through a field, a snake slithered through the grass and struck her heel. Almost instantly Eurydice was gone, robbed of her nascent marriage and life itself.
Deep in grief, the song died in Orpheus’ heart. Now he only moaned and groaned, and the world hung heavy with pain. Willows drooped their branches in empathy, and the wild beasts slunk back into the shadows. Dark clouds covered the sun’s smile, and birds roosted, unable to take flight in the oppressive air.
Orpheus moped and wallowed. Consolation fled. Lament took the orchestra’s podium.
Reaching for nerves that rejected grief’s cancerous alloy, Orpheus set out on a mission to the undiscovered country. He found the door to the underworld and slid down, down, down, down, down, down into the Kingdom of Death. Confronting elusive Hades, Orpheus demanded back the woman he had loved too shortly. Hades, of course, would have none of it. His contracts were lethally binding.
So Orpheus did what only he could do. He sang a love song. Strumming his harp, Orpheus put his heart to music in a way that sent shivers through the shifting shades and shadows. As his voice reverberated against the wailing walls, one ghost began to thicken and color. A few more stanzas of amore and Eurydice stood solid before him once again. They kissed and hugged and held hands all the way to earth’s surface, gripped by smiles of incredulous ardor.
The legend of Orpheus grew over time, so that even the most skeptical linked his name to true love. But why would early Christians reconfigure Jesus in the guise of Orpheus? How could they profane the sacred so scandalously?
Obviously they did not believe in Orpheus. They were martyrs of Christ, and traded all trite tales of the marketplace to buy the Pearl of Great Price. But some metaphors command instant understanding, and when these groaning souls recalled the words and deeds of Jesus, it was precisely in the cemetery that conflating Orpheus and Christ made perfect sense.
Christians remembered the day when Jesus traveled to Bethany to mourn his friend Lazarus’ death. Jesus should have been there earlier to heal Lazarus of his illness and stay Death’s untimely call, and everybody knew it. Lazarus’ sister Martha came blazing out of the town when she heard that Jesus was approaching. She had sent word of Lazarus’ illness to Jesus while there was still time for the Great One to make a difference like he did with so many others throughout Palestine. But Jesus had dithered and dallied, and now Martha was angry.
“If you had been here my brother wouldn’t have had to die!” she shouted at Jesus. He knew she was right, and did not try to defend himself. In great grief they lumbered slowly to the family home. Professional wailers at the door assaulted their ears, accusing Jesus with fiery eyes. Stooping to enter, Jesus found the other sibling, Mary, covered with torn rags and ashes. “If you had been here my brother wouldn’t have had to die!” she simpered, cutting Jesus deeper than her sister’s diatribe.
Jesus cared without self-defense, and brought his entourage out to the cemetery. Only a week before he had inspired the Galilee crowds with his delightful homily about shepherds, getting knowing nods about the nasty hirelings who lead sheep astray and bring them into the fold of Death, the baddest shepherd of all. Leaning on the best of Israelite heritage, Jesus mounted the shoulders of Shepherd Boy/King David, and reclaimed the dignity of the office Ezekiel celebrated in chapter 34 of his prophecy. Jesus said his sheep knew his voice and would follow him anywhere. He also mentioned, cryptically, that he had other sheep, not of the flock in front of him, and that he had to go and call them.
The disciples must have thought about these things as they now stood with Jesus in the local cemetery. He challenged the keepers of the place, demanding that they roll back the stone covering the carved cavern where Lazarus’ body had been laid, allowing the maggots to do their work. The cemetery tenders shook their heads. “You don’t want to do that,” they replied. “He stinks!”
But Jesus repeated his request with demanding authority and the workers shrugged. When the grave yawned, it burped Death’s stench. Only Jesus did not cringe and retreat. Standing resolutely in the land of the living, he cried out with the voice of the Good Shepherd to his friend now taken captive in Death’s dark fold: “Lazarus!” And down, down, down, down, down, down, down in the depths of the netherworld, owned by that baddest of the bad shepherds, Death itself, Lazarus heard his Master’s voice, and came through the dark window of the grave to stand once again in the sun next to his Shepherd.
This is why the Christians in Rome conflated the myth of Orpheus with the reality of Jesus. They did not trust in human legends. But they did hang their hopes on the one who said to Martha and Mary “I am the resurrection and the life!” and then proved it that day in Bethany. In fact, the Roman Christians knew that Jesus had confirmed all of this a short while after the incidents of John 10-11 when he himself went down, down, down, down, down, down, down into the depth of Death, and came up again on Easter morning as the Lord of life.
And now, as wives bade farewell to husbands who had been torn apart by the beasts in the Coliseum, as children wrapped the bodies of parents in burial clothes, as friends mourned the deaths of their kindred spirits, the great metaphor of Jesus as the true Orpheus told the most magnificent promise of all. For even in these dark days of deathly haunts, followers of Jesus knew that one time soon the Good and Great Shepherd would shout the names of their loved ones down to Hades itself, and even though captured in shepherd Death’s lockdown fold, their family and friends would hear their Master’s voice, and they would rise to life and follow him into the eternal kingdom.
We all try to evade and fool Death, stymying him with tummy tucks and fleeing him through our exercise routines and vitamins. But come Death shall, with fateful inclusiveness, whispering our names at night or noon, and against our wheedling and pleading will march us into his awful gloom. Then the hope of our faith will endure its final test. For if the gospel is true, our Good and Great and Chief Shepherd will not forget us, but will march down, down, down, down, down, down, down to Sheol and sing us his song of love. And we, who know the voice of our Master, will rise into the dawn of eternity and follow the One who calls us by name.
Application
The great composer Felix Mendelssohn loved to tell the marvelous story of how his grandparents Moses and Frumte Mendelssohn met and married. Moses was very short and far from handsome. He walked with a limping gait, partly because he sported a very noticeable hunchback.
The day Moses met Frumte Cupid’s arrow struck deep. He determined to win the hand of this young beauty, the daughter of a local businessman. He knew it would be difficult because, like other young women of Hamburg, Frumte was repulsed by his misshapen body. Only after Moses made many requests to her father did she reluctantly agree to see him.
Frumte did not fall in love with Moses, however. At the same time, in spite of her constant resistance Moses’ hopes did not dim. He persisted in calling on her until one evening she told him firmly and clearly that he should not return. She did not want to see him again.
Moses threw caution to the wind. This would be the last time he could get a foot in the door, so he asked an intriguing question: “Do you believe that marriages are made in heaven?”
“Yes,” replied Frumte hesitantly, reluctant in the insecurity of not knowing where he was headed with this. “I suppose so.”
“So do I,” agreed Moses. “You see, in heaven, just before a boy is born God shows him the girl he will someday marry. When God pointed out my future bride to me, God explained that she would be born with a hideous hunchback. That is when I asked God if he would please prevent the tragedy of a beautiful girl with a hunchback. I asked God to let the hunchback fall on me instead.”
Frumte’s eyes filled with tears. Years later she wrote: “I looked into the distance and I felt some long-hidden memory stir in my heart. At that moment I realized the depth and quality of this deformed young man. I never regretted marrying him.”
Maybe Moses Mendelssohn overplayed his hand in conjuring scenes of pre?natal heaven. Still, there is something quite insightful about his analysis of who we are in ourselves and what lies inside the persons we meet day to day. As our texts this week remind us, there is something of divine beauty in every person knit together by God in each mother’s womb. We did not emerge into this existence by our own volition or at the design of our own hand. And if our lives are a divine gift, we ought to be careful about artificial criteria of worth we might use as plumb lines in measuring the bent of another soul. This is why “love” is the hallmark of Christian living.
Alternative Application
Acts 2:42-47. Johan Eriksson learned that lesson well. In 1939 trainloads of Jewish children were piling into Sweden. Because of the changing political climate under Hitler’s European campaign, parents were trying to get their young ones out of Germany. Boys and girls, sometimes only three or four years old, stumbled off boxcars and into culture shock carrying nothing but large tags around each neck, announcing their names, ages, and hometowns.
The Swedes had agreed to take in the children “for the duration of the war.” Unfortunately there were more children than suitable homes, so even Johan Eriksson was called. Johan was a widower, middle?aged and gruff, and not a likely candidate for foster parenting.
Without comprehending why, young Rolf walked away from the train station next to Johan. The boy was starving at the time, and frightened into silence. Every time he heard a noise at Johan’s door, little Rolf would run into a closet and pull coats over his head.
For years Rolf wouldn’t smile. He hardly ate. Johan created a spartan but stable home for Rolf, biding his time until Rolf would be gone and he could get back to his life. Yet Rolf never went back to Germany, because no one ever sent for him. His parents perished in the ovens.
So Johan did his best with a son he never anticipated. When Rolf was in his twenties, Johan managed to get him a job in Stockholm. For a while Rolf struggled along, but he couldn’t handle the pressures. “His mind just snapped one day,” his employer said, and the local authorities wanted to put him in a mental institution.
Johan set out immediately to rescue his boy. Johan was an old man now, yet he brought Rolf home again to the little city of Amal. For many years Johan nursed Rolf back to health.
Rolf finally got better. He married a wonderful woman. He established a fairly successful business, and even became quite wealthy. All along, though, he knew that his achievements were only possible because of Johan, the big Swede who took in a nobody, loved him back to life, gave him an identity, and hugged away his fears.
When doctors called Johan's children home for a final parting in his dying days, Rolf was the first to arrive. From an orphan’s tragedy, his life had become the story of a dearly loved son.
Johan was a Christian. He found the spiritual corrective eyewear that James prescribes. It gave him the ability to see little Rolf as God saw him, and Rolf began to live that day.
Said Mark Twain, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” True! But when you get that new pair of eyeglasses for your soul, everything begins to look different. This is what we see in that first Christian community of Acts 2.
“Look out that window,” he would order the candidates. “Tell me when you see someone walking out there.” So they did. When someone walked by he would say, “Now, describe that person to me theologically.”
Each person’s answer would be a bit different from the others, of course. Yet they consistently could be reduced to just two basic ideas. One group of ministers-to-be would say something like “Well, there goes a sinner who is on his way to hell unless he repents!”
The other group responded something like this: “There goes a person who is a child of God. God loves that person so very much, and the best thing that can happen to him is to find out how good it is to love God in return!”
Funny thing, said the old minister, both responses are probably right. Still, those who respond in the latter way always make better pastors.
Why? Because they have learned to live life on beyond perfection. For when the roll is called up yonder, the grades on the report cards that make it won’t be “A” for excellent, or “B” for good, or even “C” for nice try. The only grade that will make it will be “G.”
For Grace.
This is the way of Jesus.
Acts 2:42-47
The momentum of the stories told in the book of Acts is derived from a single critical incident that took place in Jerusalem during the Jewish religious festival known as Pentecost. Jesus’ instruction for his disciples to stay in Jerusalem and wait for a special gift (Acts 1:4) must have seemed vague at the time, but the arrival of the explosive power of the Holy Spirit during the Pentecost feast made sense. This celebration was both a harvest festival and a time for recalling the gift of the original covenant documents to Moses at Mount Sinai. These two themes intersect marvelously with what is taking place. First, there is the dawning of a new age of revelation and divine mission, paralleling the first covenant declaration in the book of Exodus. Second, during the Pentecost harvest festival the first sheaves of grain are presented at the Temple, anticipating that God would then bring in the full harvest. This expression of faith serves as a clear analogy to the greater missional harvest of the Church, which was begun through a miraculous “first fruits” in Jerusalem that day.
Peter capitalizes on these themes when he preaches a sermon explaining Joel’s prophecy of the “Day of the Lord.” Peter ties together God’s extensive mission, the history of Israel, the coming of Jesus, and the splitting of the Day of the Lord so that the blessings of the messianic age could begin before the final divine judgment fell. The pattern for entering the new community of faith was clearly outlined: repent and be baptized. The former indicated a transforming presence of the Holy Spirit in individual hearts, while the latter became the initiation rite by which the ranks of this missional society were identified (replacing the badge of circumcision in its unique application to the nation of Israel -- see Colossians 2:11-12).
Reaction to the rapidly developing Christian fellowship was swift and sharp. Within Jerusalem’s dominant religious community, there was consternation about the apostles’ identification of Jesus as the Jewish messiah (Acts 4), creating tensions and divisions. Inside the newly organizing Church itself, there were ethical issues that needed to be addressed (Acts 5-6). Soon the followers of Jesus needed to expand their leadership team (the deacons of Acts 6), and found themselves the targets of increasingly organized persecutions (Acts 8:1-3). Although this disrupted the close fellowship of the Jerusalem congregation, those who moved elsewhere to find safety brought the message of Jesus’ teachings, death, and resurrection with them (Acts 8:4).
1 Peter 2:19-25
About the time that Paul was engaged in his final communications with Timothy and Titus, Peter made his own last swing through the churches of northern and eastern Asia Minor. This was quite a trip for an older gentleman to take (exceeding the reach of all of Paul’s journeys recorded in Acts), since Peter was based in Rome at the time. He calls Rome “Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13), a code term already circulating throughout the Christian Church, hinting at the persecutions looming from the ruling center of the world in a way similar to the Babylonian pressures mounted against Judah centuries before. It may well have been that Peter was invited to officiate at a number of large baptism ceremonies in the congregations to which these letters are written, since Peter’s tone is that of instruction for new believers, and baptism is a central concern (1 Peter 3:13-22).
Peter reminds his readers that he was an eyewitness of Jesus’ life and sufferings (1 Peter 5:1; see also 2:23), and directly echoes a number of Jesus’ teachings in his words (compare 1 Peter 2:12 with Matthew 5:16; 1 Peter 2:21 with Matthew 10:38; 1 Peter 3:14 and 4:13-14 with Matthew 5:10-12). Some scholars believe this letter could not have been written by Peter since its use of the Greek language is too educated, too well-crafted. But the double pairs of brothers from the fishing trade in Capernaum that Jesus called to follow him (Peter and Andrew, James and John), probably came from middle-class families, where education was important. Moreover, just as Paul had amanuenses writing out his letters, so in 1 Peter 5:12 the letter-writing skills of Silvanus (a variant of Silas) are recognized. Peter may well have been accomplished in his use of the Greek language, and certainly Peter’s letter-writing scribe was.
Peter writes in powerful terms of the great salvation recently brought to humankind by Jesus. This new life is irreversibly guaranteed by way of both Jesus’ resurrection and ascension for those who believe (1 Peter 1:3-12). Peter next provides an extended exhortation to holy living, because these believers in Jesus are God’s special people (1 Peter 1:13--2:10), who follow in the footsteps of Jesus (1 Peter 2:11--3:12) and must face, with their master, the sufferings that will fall on all his disciples in challenging times (1 Peter 3:12--4:19). Peter gives a special word of encouragement to the elders who lead the various congregations (1 Peter 5:1-4), and then expands these same ideas for the broader community (1 Peter 5:5-11) before closing with brief personal greetings (1 Peter 5:12-14).
No matter the debates about authorship, this letter of Peter to the early church is a ringing testimony of faith, shrouded by a very real recognition of current and impending sufferings. It continues to speak clearly into our world, twisted as it is with pain and torture and insecurity.
John 10:1-10
Our Easter sunrise worship services in southern Alberta were held in a cemetery. It was difficult to gather in the dark since neither mountains nor forests hid the springtime sun, and the high desert plains lay open to almost ceaselessly unclouded skies. Still, we mumbled in hushed whispers as we acknowledged one another and saved our booming tones for the final rousing chorus of “Up from the grave he arose!”
“A grave is a sobering thing,” said Wordsworth. We try to mark each with snippets of meaning that will defuse the scandalous superficiality of life that Emily bemoaned in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. “If I was so quickly done for,” asks the wee voice etched on a child’s grave memorial, “what on earth was I begun for?”
Ancient Romans tossed away the scandal of our brief and meaningless lives. When archaeologists first sifted through graveyards of the early centuries of the great empire, they were caught up short by a plethora of burial plot stones inscribed with the same seven letters: N F F N S N C. These certainly spelled no known Latin word, and other connections escaped would-be interpreters. Until, that is, they uncovered older quadrants of cemeteries where many grave markers carried seven-word inscriptions beginning with these otherwise meaningless letters: Non Fui. Fui. Non Sum. Non Curo. Suddenly the intent was clear. So many Romans had found this phrase as the best representation of life and death that even poor people with small stones could abbreviate it down to just seven letters and all would understand: “I was not. I was. I am not. I don’t care.”
Tragic. Cynical. Hopeless.
I have officiated at hundreds of funerals over the past 35 years, and never met a family which would have dared place that testimony over the grave of a loved one. We cry. We weep. We wail. One young man even jumped on top of the casket as it was being lowered into the cold earth, pounding in horrible grief on the unforgiving final home of his brother’s body.
Even when death is “good,” and an elderly grandmother slips willingly from time into eternity, tears of loss trace our cheeks. We were born to live, not to die.
That is why those same archaeologists of ancient Roman artifacts were equally surprised by some of the memorials found next to the burial niches in the catacombs where Christians laid their dead. There were inscribed verses of scripture, to be sure, but also symbols and pictures. The one, however, that most mystified showed the upper body of a man holding a harp. It seemed to represent Jesus, but standard mythological representations usually tied this one to Orpheus.
Orpheus was the darling of Greek love and music and tragedy. Orpheus was the master musician of his time, and well could have had 39 out of the top 40 tunes on the charts at once. When Orpheus sang, the birds swooped in just to flit on his lilting melodies. When Orpheus sang, the clouds rolled back from the skies and the sun shone more brightly and the beasts crept out of the shadows to dance their fancy footwork. When Orpheus came to town, people floated out of homes and shops to jig in the streets and fall in love.
Of course, when Orpheus himself fell in love, passion intensified. It was Eurydice who caught his eye and heart, and before long they were fawning and fainting after one another. When Orpheus and Eurydice wed, the world shimmered with significance and couples everywhere twitterpated.
But a week later all meaning was lost. While Eurydice romped with her friends through a field, a snake slithered through the grass and struck her heel. Almost instantly Eurydice was gone, robbed of her nascent marriage and life itself.
Deep in grief, the song died in Orpheus’ heart. Now he only moaned and groaned, and the world hung heavy with pain. Willows drooped their branches in empathy, and the wild beasts slunk back into the shadows. Dark clouds covered the sun’s smile, and birds roosted, unable to take flight in the oppressive air.
Orpheus moped and wallowed. Consolation fled. Lament took the orchestra’s podium.
Reaching for nerves that rejected grief’s cancerous alloy, Orpheus set out on a mission to the undiscovered country. He found the door to the underworld and slid down, down, down, down, down, down into the Kingdom of Death. Confronting elusive Hades, Orpheus demanded back the woman he had loved too shortly. Hades, of course, would have none of it. His contracts were lethally binding.
So Orpheus did what only he could do. He sang a love song. Strumming his harp, Orpheus put his heart to music in a way that sent shivers through the shifting shades and shadows. As his voice reverberated against the wailing walls, one ghost began to thicken and color. A few more stanzas of amore and Eurydice stood solid before him once again. They kissed and hugged and held hands all the way to earth’s surface, gripped by smiles of incredulous ardor.
The legend of Orpheus grew over time, so that even the most skeptical linked his name to true love. But why would early Christians reconfigure Jesus in the guise of Orpheus? How could they profane the sacred so scandalously?
Obviously they did not believe in Orpheus. They were martyrs of Christ, and traded all trite tales of the marketplace to buy the Pearl of Great Price. But some metaphors command instant understanding, and when these groaning souls recalled the words and deeds of Jesus, it was precisely in the cemetery that conflating Orpheus and Christ made perfect sense.
Christians remembered the day when Jesus traveled to Bethany to mourn his friend Lazarus’ death. Jesus should have been there earlier to heal Lazarus of his illness and stay Death’s untimely call, and everybody knew it. Lazarus’ sister Martha came blazing out of the town when she heard that Jesus was approaching. She had sent word of Lazarus’ illness to Jesus while there was still time for the Great One to make a difference like he did with so many others throughout Palestine. But Jesus had dithered and dallied, and now Martha was angry.
“If you had been here my brother wouldn’t have had to die!” she shouted at Jesus. He knew she was right, and did not try to defend himself. In great grief they lumbered slowly to the family home. Professional wailers at the door assaulted their ears, accusing Jesus with fiery eyes. Stooping to enter, Jesus found the other sibling, Mary, covered with torn rags and ashes. “If you had been here my brother wouldn’t have had to die!” she simpered, cutting Jesus deeper than her sister’s diatribe.
Jesus cared without self-defense, and brought his entourage out to the cemetery. Only a week before he had inspired the Galilee crowds with his delightful homily about shepherds, getting knowing nods about the nasty hirelings who lead sheep astray and bring them into the fold of Death, the baddest shepherd of all. Leaning on the best of Israelite heritage, Jesus mounted the shoulders of Shepherd Boy/King David, and reclaimed the dignity of the office Ezekiel celebrated in chapter 34 of his prophecy. Jesus said his sheep knew his voice and would follow him anywhere. He also mentioned, cryptically, that he had other sheep, not of the flock in front of him, and that he had to go and call them.
The disciples must have thought about these things as they now stood with Jesus in the local cemetery. He challenged the keepers of the place, demanding that they roll back the stone covering the carved cavern where Lazarus’ body had been laid, allowing the maggots to do their work. The cemetery tenders shook their heads. “You don’t want to do that,” they replied. “He stinks!”
But Jesus repeated his request with demanding authority and the workers shrugged. When the grave yawned, it burped Death’s stench. Only Jesus did not cringe and retreat. Standing resolutely in the land of the living, he cried out with the voice of the Good Shepherd to his friend now taken captive in Death’s dark fold: “Lazarus!” And down, down, down, down, down, down, down in the depths of the netherworld, owned by that baddest of the bad shepherds, Death itself, Lazarus heard his Master’s voice, and came through the dark window of the grave to stand once again in the sun next to his Shepherd.
This is why the Christians in Rome conflated the myth of Orpheus with the reality of Jesus. They did not trust in human legends. But they did hang their hopes on the one who said to Martha and Mary “I am the resurrection and the life!” and then proved it that day in Bethany. In fact, the Roman Christians knew that Jesus had confirmed all of this a short while after the incidents of John 10-11 when he himself went down, down, down, down, down, down, down into the depth of Death, and came up again on Easter morning as the Lord of life.
And now, as wives bade farewell to husbands who had been torn apart by the beasts in the Coliseum, as children wrapped the bodies of parents in burial clothes, as friends mourned the deaths of their kindred spirits, the great metaphor of Jesus as the true Orpheus told the most magnificent promise of all. For even in these dark days of deathly haunts, followers of Jesus knew that one time soon the Good and Great Shepherd would shout the names of their loved ones down to Hades itself, and even though captured in shepherd Death’s lockdown fold, their family and friends would hear their Master’s voice, and they would rise to life and follow him into the eternal kingdom.
We all try to evade and fool Death, stymying him with tummy tucks and fleeing him through our exercise routines and vitamins. But come Death shall, with fateful inclusiveness, whispering our names at night or noon, and against our wheedling and pleading will march us into his awful gloom. Then the hope of our faith will endure its final test. For if the gospel is true, our Good and Great and Chief Shepherd will not forget us, but will march down, down, down, down, down, down, down to Sheol and sing us his song of love. And we, who know the voice of our Master, will rise into the dawn of eternity and follow the One who calls us by name.
Application
The great composer Felix Mendelssohn loved to tell the marvelous story of how his grandparents Moses and Frumte Mendelssohn met and married. Moses was very short and far from handsome. He walked with a limping gait, partly because he sported a very noticeable hunchback.
The day Moses met Frumte Cupid’s arrow struck deep. He determined to win the hand of this young beauty, the daughter of a local businessman. He knew it would be difficult because, like other young women of Hamburg, Frumte was repulsed by his misshapen body. Only after Moses made many requests to her father did she reluctantly agree to see him.
Frumte did not fall in love with Moses, however. At the same time, in spite of her constant resistance Moses’ hopes did not dim. He persisted in calling on her until one evening she told him firmly and clearly that he should not return. She did not want to see him again.
Moses threw caution to the wind. This would be the last time he could get a foot in the door, so he asked an intriguing question: “Do you believe that marriages are made in heaven?”
“Yes,” replied Frumte hesitantly, reluctant in the insecurity of not knowing where he was headed with this. “I suppose so.”
“So do I,” agreed Moses. “You see, in heaven, just before a boy is born God shows him the girl he will someday marry. When God pointed out my future bride to me, God explained that she would be born with a hideous hunchback. That is when I asked God if he would please prevent the tragedy of a beautiful girl with a hunchback. I asked God to let the hunchback fall on me instead.”
Frumte’s eyes filled with tears. Years later she wrote: “I looked into the distance and I felt some long-hidden memory stir in my heart. At that moment I realized the depth and quality of this deformed young man. I never regretted marrying him.”
Maybe Moses Mendelssohn overplayed his hand in conjuring scenes of pre?natal heaven. Still, there is something quite insightful about his analysis of who we are in ourselves and what lies inside the persons we meet day to day. As our texts this week remind us, there is something of divine beauty in every person knit together by God in each mother’s womb. We did not emerge into this existence by our own volition or at the design of our own hand. And if our lives are a divine gift, we ought to be careful about artificial criteria of worth we might use as plumb lines in measuring the bent of another soul. This is why “love” is the hallmark of Christian living.
Alternative Application
Acts 2:42-47. Johan Eriksson learned that lesson well. In 1939 trainloads of Jewish children were piling into Sweden. Because of the changing political climate under Hitler’s European campaign, parents were trying to get their young ones out of Germany. Boys and girls, sometimes only three or four years old, stumbled off boxcars and into culture shock carrying nothing but large tags around each neck, announcing their names, ages, and hometowns.
The Swedes had agreed to take in the children “for the duration of the war.” Unfortunately there were more children than suitable homes, so even Johan Eriksson was called. Johan was a widower, middle?aged and gruff, and not a likely candidate for foster parenting.
Without comprehending why, young Rolf walked away from the train station next to Johan. The boy was starving at the time, and frightened into silence. Every time he heard a noise at Johan’s door, little Rolf would run into a closet and pull coats over his head.
For years Rolf wouldn’t smile. He hardly ate. Johan created a spartan but stable home for Rolf, biding his time until Rolf would be gone and he could get back to his life. Yet Rolf never went back to Germany, because no one ever sent for him. His parents perished in the ovens.
So Johan did his best with a son he never anticipated. When Rolf was in his twenties, Johan managed to get him a job in Stockholm. For a while Rolf struggled along, but he couldn’t handle the pressures. “His mind just snapped one day,” his employer said, and the local authorities wanted to put him in a mental institution.
Johan set out immediately to rescue his boy. Johan was an old man now, yet he brought Rolf home again to the little city of Amal. For many years Johan nursed Rolf back to health.
Rolf finally got better. He married a wonderful woman. He established a fairly successful business, and even became quite wealthy. All along, though, he knew that his achievements were only possible because of Johan, the big Swede who took in a nobody, loved him back to life, gave him an identity, and hugged away his fears.
When doctors called Johan's children home for a final parting in his dying days, Rolf was the first to arrive. From an orphan’s tragedy, his life had become the story of a dearly loved son.
Johan was a Christian. He found the spiritual corrective eyewear that James prescribes. It gave him the ability to see little Rolf as God saw him, and Rolf began to live that day.
Said Mark Twain, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” True! But when you get that new pair of eyeglasses for your soul, everything begins to look different. This is what we see in that first Christian community of Acts 2.
