Heaven is for Real, Part 1: Heaven Before Heaven…

Can you help me out real quick?  Could you tell me how to get to Stockton, CA?  How many of you would advise taking I-80 E to I-5 S?  How many would encourage taking I-680 S to I-580 E?  How many think the best route is I-80 E to CA 12 E to I-5 S?  There are other ways, too, but you might say these are the quickest routes, right?  But you would be wrong.

The assumption is that I am asking directions from Napa, CA to Stockton.  But what if I am traveling from Monterey Bay?  Or Lake Tahoe?  Or Yosemite?  Even then, you would want to know exactly where the journey begins before you can even think of giving a helpful answer.

Where we begin makes all the difference.  Even (or especially) when it comes to our faith.

To think that we have just come up with an idea of heaven all by ourselves is about as arrogant and uninformed as possible.  The truth is that even if we claim to have a biblical foundation for our concept of heaven, that still doesn’t do much for us, because the understanding of afterlife shifted through the centuries, based on some direct revelation from God, great dialogue around the campfire, views from the surrounding cultures, and new discoveries.  So, even as we may claim to have a biblical view of the world, we need to be aware that different phases of the Bible’s history reveal differing views of the world!  In this series, I intend to uncover what various biblical writers thought about death and what comes next, and what influenced their belief.  But before I share some of the insights from my digging, I need you to dig a bit…

What do you think heaven is like?  Who is there?  Who isn’t there?  What is there? What isn’t there?

Why does death exist?  Why do people die?  Why do people die “before their time”?  Jewish thought on death was that as mortal beings, we humans die.  When we die, the animating breath of God returns to God, and that’s it.  The goal for living is to live as long and successfully as possible, to leave behind a legacy of children, and to die with dignity (which included a proper burial.  So, for most, death is normal and natural – it just is.  But what about people whose lives have been cut sort?  Or who leave no offspring (especially male) to carry forth the family line?  Or upon death, no proper burial?  How does a person reconcile that?  In antiquity, it was believed that such things were signs of God’s judgment.  For the most part, our ancient Jewish ancestors in faith didn’t think of literal physical death as much as they did a more metaphorical death.  Being estranged from God, or from the land God has given them, or from cultic practices constituted an experiential death while remaining physically alive.

Other cultures, however, believed differently.  Recall that Judaism set themselves in part by their monotheism –they believed there to be only one God – while nearly every other culture around them were polytheistic.  Other cultures believed that the gods were responsible for the death of human beings, sometimes with little or no regard for whether or not a person’s life should end based on any action (or inaction) on the part of the human.  Humans were unimportant pawns to be tolerated and toyed with – nothing like the view from Israel which believed human beings to be God’s crowing achievement in creation because we are made in God’s likeness.

Ancient Jews believed that when a person died, they went to Sheol – the place of the dead, underneath the ground.  This dark and dusty place is where all dead people reside, with no semblance of their former lives, and no communication with God.  The inhabitants are mere shadows or shades of their former selves, and stay that way.  It was not viewed as a place of torment or judgment.  It was, as we might think, the grave.  Furthermore, there were two stories of persons who avoided death – Enoch and Elijah – both due to their righteousness.  They ascended to heaven, escaping Sheol.  Three resurrection stories also appear in the Old Testament, but they are more about healing and the power of God over death than a statement about things to come. 

Other cultures had a different view, however.  Hades – the Greek counterpart to Sheol – was an expansive underworld space where the dead were not fully dead yet, and needed to be sustained by their family lest they die completely.  When the dead were buried or entombed, provisions were made to enable family members to deliver food and drink through a shaft to keep them going.  Sometimes Jewish folks picked up on the rituals and integrated them into their way of believing.  It was common enough that it received condemnation from a prophet or two, and rules were set in place to separate men and women during times of honoring the dead as drunkenness was common, which had a way of leading to some inappropriate and unfortunate behavior…

All of this is interesting – to me, at least.  But there may be more important questions about heaven than simply what did the ancients think.

Why do we want heaven to exist?  Have you ever asked yourself that question?
My guess is your answer be be along the following lines:

• We want to know that it’s not over when this life is over.
• We want to be rewarded for being faithful.
• We want other to receive their punishment: the Hitlers of the world, pedophiles, Dodger fans, etc.
• We want peace.
• We want to reunite with loved ones who have gone before us.
• We want to know God fully.
• We want to be able to express gratitude to God for everything.

Did I miss anything?

The reason I wonder why we want heaven is because our ancestors in the faith didn’t really formalize their thoughts on heaven until they had really been given a major kick in the gut.  Judaism was being Hellenized – giving the Greek treatment – which was anathema to the Jews.  They tried to revolt, and enjoyed a brief season of victory.  But then they were squashed once more.  They realized that they weren’t going to see God resurrect the nation of Israel in their lifetime, so they began hoping that God would save the faithful in the afterlife, and mete out justice toward the enemies of the Jews then and there as well.  The reality is that we don’t see much thought about heaven until approximately 150 years before Jesus was born.  Desperation gave way to heavenly hope.

So, I wonder, do we hope for heaven because of our sense of struggle, anguish and failure here and now? 
And, on the darker side of things, could our hopes – especially when it comes to our version of justice – give us motive to nurture hatred now toward perceived enemies of God?

Here’s what I mean.  If we are just sure that gay people and the people who stand up for gay rights in our nation are enemies of God, and we are waiting for them to get theirs when death comes, could it be that we might then justify ungraceful behavior toward them in the meantime?  Pick your own group here.  Maybe for you its drug dealers, or adulterers, or greedy corporate CEO’s, or politicians, or Muslims, or Dodger fans.  Some day, they’ll get theirs.  Until then, we’ll keep the fires burning.  We will justify our hatred with heaven itself, and draw strength from our future hope as well.  Coming to grips with our motive for wanting heaven is critical for our life experience now, and our hope to come.  Like knowing where you are starting from en route to Stockton is important, so is knowing your motive for wanting heaven after death.

Me and adulterers.  Time for telling an ugly story on myself.  I used to think that adulterous men should be castrated.  I know – pretty graceful.  But then I read a book on marriage that opened my eyes.  There are some men (and women) who are predators, looking to hook up to address whatever pain is going on beneath their surface.  For the most part, though, people cheat not because they are villains, but because they are hurting.  Once I realized this, my eyes changed.  Adultery is still awful stuff, causing pain that is long lasting and often devastating to a marriage.  But how do I condemn someone who is acting out of their pain?  I wonder, if we could see the pain of people that caused their weirdness, would it change everything? Would we be immediately more understanding and graceful?  I think so.


The reality, however, is that we will have as much to be forgiven as those we love to hate.  We just can’t see it.  We will all be shocked about how wrong we are, and how immense God really is.  So, until we find ourselves face to face with God, I say we are better off living justly, loving mercy, and waling humbly with God (Micah 6:8).  Looks a lot like Jesus to me, which is who I want to be.

Resurrection. Really.

What does the resurrection of Jesus mean to you?

The resurrection of Christ doesn’t have just one thing to teach us – it is rich with many layers of meaning.  It served to validate for the earliest Jesus followers that the God who had been so clearly at work in Jesus’ life did not abandon him at the crucifixion and entombment.  This turned the ragtag Jesus followers from momentary cowardice to courage literally overnight.  And, of course, seeing a guy who was dead-now-resurrected can certainly give someone hope in the life to come, which it certainly did and still does.  There is a movie that just came out this week called Heaven is for Real – a story about a little boy who had a profound experience of life after death and lived to tell about it.  The kind of hopeful conversation it has generated tells us that people long to have confidence that there is life after life.  The resurrection certainly provides that.  Aside: I will be teaching a series beginning April 27 called Heaven is for Real?  We’ll cover all sorts of stuff, including how the concept of heaven developed, hell, metaphors of heaven, what others say, etc.

I have no doubt that the earliest followers of Jesus experienced his resurrection.  While there is mystery about exactly what happened, what did take place made such a difference that we are still talking about Jesus even though countless other “messiah” type communities from the first century died out quickly.  The biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection is robust.  Take a look for yourself at these encounters people had with Jesus after he was no longer in the tomb:

• Jesus appears on numerous occasions to a range of people. (Mark 16:9-20)
• Jesus’ mother, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and another woman, Salome encounter the risen Jesus. (Matthew 28:8-10; John 20:1-18)
• Two disciples meet Jesus on their way to the village of Emmaus. (Luke 24:13-35)
• Jesus appears to the disciples, where he ate with them. (Luke 24:36-49; John 20:19-23)
• The disciple, Thomas, doubts the resurrection until he touches Jesus for himself (John 20:24-29)
• The disciples see Jesus on a mountaintop in Galilee and were commissioned by him to spread the Good News. (Matthew 28-16-20)
• The disciples, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21:1-25)
• 500+ people see Jesus weeks after Easter (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)
• Jesus appears to the disciples for forty days, and then ascends into heaven. (Acts 1:1-11)
• Jesus appears to Saul (who changed his name to Paul) as a blinding light (Acts 9:19)
• Jesus appears to John while exiled on the island of Patmos (Revelation 1:1-20)

Having confidence that resurrection happened for Jesus is very important, even if you still have questions about what exactly it looked like (that will never be fully resolved on this side of life).  You’ve heard the expression “mind over matter”, well, it turns out that our mindset really does matter, even when it comes to milkshakes (watch Milkshake Experiment).  If our mindset impacts our body chemistry when it comes to something as trivial as a milkshake, how much more might our mindset impact our physiology on much more important things, like hearing, seeing, sensing God?

Paul’s life wasn’t radically changed because he had an intellectual appreciation for the historical reality of the resurrection of Christ.  His life was completely transformed because he experienced the resurrected Christ along with all of his education on theological stuff. 

In the book of acts, he regularly speaks about God leading him to do this or that.  A dynamic relationship of God is what made life fundamentally better and richer.  His obsession was to help people discover the same thing he had.  He couldn’t help himself.  This new way of being was a learned process that helped him be content with whatever I have.  I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything.  I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it id with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.  For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength (Philippians 4:11-13, NLT).  Paul speaks here of an active experience – THROUGH Christ who GIVES him strength.  Resurrected Christ realized in his everyday experience.

Broaden this out a step, and what we’re really talking about is an active relationship with God.  What Christ does for us is put a face on it, a voice to it, teachings that help us get it, an example to follow. 

The way to experience the reality of the resurrection of Christ is to learn to be present to God at all times, in all circumstances.  This way of being is very natural, but doesn’t come naturally because we have been conditioned by the world we live in to adopt a different way which competes all the time for our allegiance.  This is a human condition issue that deafens our ears, blinds our eyes, hardens our hearts, clouds our minds, and incapacitates our hands and feet to be fully open to the abundant, overwhelming presence of God that we miss most of the time.

Getting back to the very natural-yet-feels-unnatural way of being that Jesus taught and embodied is not a quick process.  There are new behaviors to learn.  Old habits to break.  New muscles to train and develop.  Noise that takes time to silence.  And, while it is not easy, the beautiful truth is that we can invest our lifetime growing in it, loving it, and still have room for more discovery and depth.

For now, I have just a few simply concepts that I want to invite you to embrace.  I offer no money back guarantee, but I do believe these will help you realize the resurrection of Christ in your life instead of just holding it as an interesting intellectual pursuit.

I choose to walk with God today.  Jesus’ brother, James, told his audience, “Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world” (James 4:8, NLT).  Centuries ago, James knew that life is lived in a tension between being conformed to this world’s pattern or that of God.  Start your day by simply saying “I choose to walk with God today.”  Write it out and put it on your bathroom mirror, your car’s dashboard, your cell phone case, your popcorn popper.  The point is to keep this at the forefront of your attention, because if you don’t, you won’t.  You will begin to experience Christ resurrected more and more if you first choose to live in the reality of God’s active presence around you all the time.

Pray for your “Dozen”.  At any given time, you likely interact with somewhere between 8-15 people on a very regular basis.  For a season, those “dozen” share your breathing space.  Some are family members, some are coworkers, some are store clerks you’ve gotten to know, some are friends, some are fellow parents you know through your kids’ activities.  I am asking you to literally write down their names and pray for them every day, asking God to bless them with God’s love, and for the awareness to see an opportunity to love or serve them somehow.  That’s it.  No agenda to come to church or sign on the dotted line for Jesus for their afterlife insurance.  Just pray for them to be blessed by God, and to give you the awareness to love or serve them should the opportunity arise.  James said, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16, NLT).  When you pray for them, it is impossible to know how the Spirit of God responds to it – but it is undoubtedly good.  And what it will do to you is incredible.  As the legendary pastor Oswald Chambers wrote, “It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.”  Prayer will have an impact on your dozen, but the biggest impact will show up in you – openness to love and serve, empathy toward those around you, and an increasing capacity to hear God speak to you.  You will have an increased experience of Christ alive as you feel led to conversations, to serve, to help, to love, to forgive, to be thankful, to sow joy – the list is endless and endlessly beautiful.

Don’t be stupid.  In a recent book by Stanley Bing, the pen name of an executive with CBS on learning the essentials of an MBA without the classroom experience or tuition, he noted the importance of not being stupid.  Or at least not appearing to be stupid.  “Stupid people may in fact become successful, but people who appear stupid generally do not.”  He was then asked if he had ever done something really stupid.  He then recounted a time early in his career when his boss would occasionally have a cocktail party with his staff.  Bing learned that there was such a thing as “free scotch” at such events, and helped himself a little too much on one occasion.  Pretty well impaired, he went up to the boss, gave him a hug, and said, “This is a f#$%ing great party!”  At which his gracious boos simply said, it’s time for you to go home….  Bing spent an entire chapter just talking about not being stupid, which means we must have a tendency toward being somewhat stupid without being checked!  If you do not spend any time learning more about the way of Jesus, there is a good chance you are going to do something stupid while thinking you may be perfectly Christian about it.  There is no shortage of people who identify themselves as Christians who spend little or no time learning what that means who do lots of stupid things that don’t match up with Jesus at all.  Their language is totally unclassy.  Some are so greedy that they manage to consume almost all of their personal resources, leaving barely a scrap for the most desperate people in the world.  The danger of not continuing to learn about the depth of God – which is found in the Way of Jesus – is that we will simply become only slightly improved versions of ourselves instead of the transformed version God has in mind, where we become more and more our True Selves as Paul did, who put away childish things and opted instead for love.

All of this is related to realizing the resurrected Christ in a daily way.  Think of it like building a house with your life.  In one version, where you don’t really allow much room for God to inform you, you end up with a shack, more or less.  But in the other, you end up with a masterpiece.  Paul says is this way to the Corinthian church:  Anyone who builds on that foundation [of Christ] may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw.  But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.  If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward.  But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames (1 Corinthians 3:12-15, NLT).  Go for the gold, silver and jewels!  Why wouldn’t you?

Killing Jesus: Which Jesus? How Much of Jesus?

Rembrandt painted himself into his “The Raising of the Cross”.  Because Jesus’ crucifixion is so often seen as exclusively an act of substitutionary atonement, many people see themselves as responsible for killing Jesus because they are sinners, and Jesus died for them.  I wonder if there is another way to think about our role in killing Jesus, however, that might be less atonement-based and much more practical?

What does my wife’s favorite Disneyland ride, Splash Mountain, and Academy Award-winning movie Fletch Lives have in common?  They both feature a song written and performed in ignorant innocence in the late 1940’s from a Disney film that actually did win an Academy Award for best song – Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.  But you cannot find Song of the South for sale at any Disney store or resort.  They pulled it out of the market because of it’s racist overtones.

Most likely, when people were creating the film, they had no intention of such a thing.  In their time, in their culture, they just told the story in a creative, entertaining way.  While we can applaud Disney for pulling the film from the market, it’s easy-ish to excuse an innocent foul of a previous generation.  How would we feel about Disney, however, if they were fully aware of the racist language and deliberately and strategically created the film the way they did to actually knowing they were making such racist statements?  We’d likely be less tolerant.

Disney didn’t do that with Song of the South.  But the Gospel writers may have done that with Jesus’ story.  What if their fingerprints impacted much more than their world?  What if it has significantly impacted ours?

The stories of Jesus’ life and teachings certainly were in circulation during and after his life – up until today!  But the written collection we most often use – the Bible – didn’t get compiled until at least 30 years after Jesus’ death.  There is debate regarding when, exactly, the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were finally in print.  Probably the earliest date for Mark – the first biblical Gospel to come together – is the early 60’s CE.  Some place the date toward the end of the first century, with Matthew and Luke coming after it, and John some years later.  What we generally don’t appreciate from our vantage point is what was happening in Israel in the 60’s.  In short, the Jewish people had reached their boiling point.  As they had done in the past, they repeated – they rose up and let their voice be heard, eventually taking Jerusalem back into their control.  Rome responded.  They showed up with plenty of troops, surrounded the city, and waited.  The people inside the walls began to starve.  Some were released, only to be publicly slain while the Jews behind the city watched in terror as their loved ones were left to rot outside the walls.  Then, in 70 CE, the Roman Empire retook Jerusalem.  This time, however, they made sure the Jewish people wouldn’t recapture it – they completely destroyed the city and the people in it.  There was no Jerusalem to retake.

By the time the Gospels were written, the early church was increasingly non-Jewish.  By the end of the first century, there were hardly any Jewish Christians among their number.  Paul’s influence in beginning new faith communities was powerful among the Gentiles, while most Jewish followers were sticking with Judaism.  James, the brother of Jesus, resided in Jerusalem until he himself was killed.  He was highly respected by the Jewish authorities, as he was committed to honoring Jewish practices.  He was likely the most powerful figure in the early church until he died.  But once he was killed, and as Roman intolerance of Judaism grew, the church very naturally distanced itself from the mother ship.  Jewish authorities had thrown the Christians under the bus in myriad ways since Jesus walked the earth.  As tensions grew between Rome and Jewish people, the Christians – with little allegiance to Jerusalem – returned the favor.  As the story of Jesus’ life was put together in what we call the Gospels, a clear bias against Jews emerged.  The Christians did not want to be associated with Judaism because they were offended by the persecution they received, and because Rome identified them as an enemy to eliminate.  Want to stay alive?  Distance yourself from the enemy!

The Bible has a mystique about it.  Many Christians have become comfortable with the idea that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.  The idea is this: God may not have put pen to paper, literally, but the Spirit’s work was so strong that when the sacred text is read, it should be received as God’s direct word.  In short, then, even though we may say that human beings were the ones holding the pen on the parchment, practically speaking, God wrote the Bible.  This, however, is not how Jesus would have thought about the Hebrew scriptures.  Our insistence on a soft dictation from God is a new idea that would not be affirmed by the very founders of our faith.  The authors of the 66 books making up our Bible were more interested in theology than history.  It’s not that they cared nothing for historical accuracy – it’s just that they believed that theological clarity was primary.  They were comfortable shaping the story’s details to suit their theological goals – which was normal for that time in history, and in some instances still is today.  This is extremely difficult for modern readers to understand, appreciate, and embrace.  Yet, shockingly, this is not new information.  Even scholars from conservative traditions know that the Bible reflects the bias of the author – their worldview – and shapes the details of the story they tell accordingly.  This does not mean that the Bible is now to be rendered unreliable since the historical accuracy needs to be questioned.  Actually, the Bible gains strength, credibility, and authority when we allow it to speak from it’s own time instead of treating it with kid gloves because we might offend God. 

Note: what follows may flip you out, especially if you grew up in a church that essentially teaches the dictation idea (expressed in various ways).  As you experience cognitive dissonance, I ask you: is it because of your bias to read the Bible as God’s Word or because those who study these things way more than we do(who love and follow God via the teachings of Jesus) are wrong?

The stories about Jesus’ last day when he went through the process that led him to crucifixion is an excellent case study on this theology-trumps-history phenomenon.  Remember that Pilate – who was in charge of the region we know as Israel – was infamous for not caring about the indigenous people of the land he governed.  He crucified those he deemed guilty of insurrection without much thought at all, let alone a trial.  From a purely historical perspective, it would be extremely unlikely that Pilate gave a hoot about Jesus, or that he gave any time or consideration to Jesus at all.  It is also questionable whether or not the Jewish leadership would have been so lax in their own process – which they treated with great respect – let alone some of the words that came out of their mouths during the trial.  Read the texts for yourselves, of course, but ask yourself if some of the details are reasonable.  What is incredibly likely is that an anti-Judaism bias is appearing in the text, on purpose, because the early Christians were distancing themselves from their Jewish roots because of a lack of association with Judaism among non-Jewish Christians, Roman opposition to Jews, and no practical reason to remain connected to Judaism.

So what?  If the early authors wanted to distance themselves from the Jewish mother ship, why did it matter, and why does it matter now?  Or, if what we read is historical fact, why does it matter now?

What may have begun as common sense for a new faith movement turned into something much worse over time as people read and reread the Gospels.  Especially if they were not wondering about the historical context that shaped the authors’ perspective.  What began as anti-Judaism easily and quickly turned to anti-Semitism (a relatively new term that singles out the race from the religion).  Centuries later, Jewish people would be beaten during services that remembered Jesus’ torture and death.  In 1096, as part of what became the First Crusade, Jewish people by the thousands were killed in the Rhineland Massacre.  When the Black Plague hit the world, one popular theory held that Jewish people poisoned the wells.  In the colony called New Amsterdam, Governor Peter Stuyvesant wrote to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company in 1654 that he hoped that "the deceitful race, — such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, — be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.“  He referred to Jews as a "repugnant race" and "usurers", and was concerned that "Jewish settlers should not be granted the same liberties enjoyed by Jews in Holland, lest members of other persecuted minority groups, such as Roman Catholics, be attracted to the colony.“  He was Christian, from the Dutch Reformed tradition.  And, of course, you’ve probably heard about the holocaust.  Today, roughly 15% of “more educated” people in the United States hold Anti-Semitic views, while approximately 30% hold such views among those less educated.  Ignorance kills, and would have killed Jesus…

Sometimes what seems like a minor academic issue can lead even to genocide.

Could there be aspects of our faith that actually lead you to destructive biases?  Could we be holding onto some stuff – out of ignorance – that is not at all what Jesus would affirm?  The only way you can know is to pursue understanding with the help of others – academics as well as peers.

Wondering about the story of Jesus and all that was happening beneath the surface is more than intellectual fun.  This venture really is about coming to grips with what we believe at our core and why.  Only through asking and answering the questions posed here (and many more) can we get to a place where we can shape our faith more or less free from the biases of our past.  A faith that is truly reasonable, holds up to common sense and academic scrutiny, and yet still has plenty of room for the mystery of God.  It is a faith that affirms what James believed about his brother Jesus, as well as the out-of-the-box insights from Paul, who didn’t know Jesus – only the resurrected Christ.  It is a faith that follows the ethic of Jesus that seeks to save the whole world, respecting the theological heritage which informed him (Judaism!), yet having plenty of room for the mystery of the Spirit of God to work wonders in our midst.  This matters to the world we are trying to restore.  It matters to your very individual life.

James Brown put “funk” on the musical map.  Recently, my kids’ high school jazz band were competing in a Jazz Festival in Reno, NV.  One of the songs they played was in the “funk” genre.  When one of the professional musicians debriefed their performance with them, he asked them who they were listening to.  He pushed them to listen to artists who helped shape the genre of the music they play.  In their case, they needed to listen to James Brown in order to play funk well.  He went on to say that if we don’t understand the root, we’ll come off as fake, imposters, posers playing the notes but lacking soul.


When we simply try to put on Jesus without really giving our faith serious thought, we come off like posers.  People listening and watching hear the notes, but something is missing.  If we want to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus, we have to know Jesus, which requires time like any other relationship.  And if we should dare follow him as redemptive agents in the world, we must get out “funk” on, less we be written off as uninformed posers.  Amen.

Killing Jesus: Whodunnit? Whoduzzit?

Every American who was old enough to be aware of the world around them can tell you where they were when the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon, and the White House (almost) were attacked on September 11, 2001.  The same can be said of when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  When Pearl Harbor was attacked.  When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  These are huge stories that have shaped our national history and and are stuck in our collective memory.  Each of these stories have generated a ton of historical commentary.  Books and movies have been born out of our desire to understand what took place.  Conspiracy theories abound for each.

But no event has created more dialogue around the world than the death of Jesus of Nazareth.  Why did he die?  Who was responsible for his death?  Who cares?

This first part of a two part series will give us the basic, plain reading of the text to help us identify and consider who was responsible for Jesus’ death.  As you read, keep in mind where we’re headed – if this story is simply an historical account, maybe we’ve missed something.  So, let’s get started…

Pilate Killed Jesus?  If you hailed from Jesus’ home region – Judea – and had lived very long at all, you would have had a keen awareness of how the Roman authorities treat self-proclaimed messiahs.  in short, as soon as a person made such a claim, his days were numbered.  Pilate couldn’t have cared less about the people of Judea – a backwater within a backwater part of the world he loathed.  He didn’t want to rule there, and he let his genuine anti-Semitism be heard loud and clear.  When we who have grown up with the Bible generally think about the scene where Jesus died on the cross on the hill called Golgotha, we picture a hill that maybe had a rock formation that sort of looked like a skull, and the paintings give us three crosses upon it, because that’s apparently how the Gospels depict it.  When I visited Israel years ago, one of the popular tourist stops is a spot that has a tomb like the one Jesus used, and a hill that sure seems like Golgotha.  But the thing the tourists forget quickly is that the company who created the space in now way suggests that this was the actual setting.  The tomb is like the tomb of Jesus.  The hill may have been like Golgotha.  But they say out loud and in print that this was not the spot.  But tourists forget such things.  The reality?  Pilate was infamous for his use of crucifixion – he was eventually recalled from Jerusalem to answer for his brutality.  While we think of three crosses on that hill, those may have simply been the three that day - or even hour – that were put propped up.  Three crosses among hundreds that were also there, holding up people barely alive to almost completely decomposed.  The place was called Golgotha not because the rock formations resembled a skull, but because there were likely hundreds and hundreds of actual skulls laying around from the hundreds and hundreds of people died there.  All of this done at the hand of Pilate to send a clear message to a zealous people with apocalyptic fever: try to rise up against Rome, and this will be your fate.  For the vast majority of people who heard the news of Jesus’ death, their immediate guess would be that Pilate made the call without giving it a second thought.  Jesus was simply the latest zealot to come along to cause trouble.  Pilate is responsible.

The Jews Killed Jesus?  If you were Jewish and grew up anywhere in Israel (except Jerusalem) between 150 BCE and 40 CE, you would have likely had a strong opinion of the people at the top of the Jewish food chain.  And it would not be a favorable one.  The Jewish leaders who ran the work of the Temple were aristocratic Jews.  They were given power and prestige from the Roman authorities.  So long as they kept the Jewish people from getting out of control, Rome was happy.  They had audience with Roman officials, and they had the power of Rome on their side if needed to keep peace.  As often happens to this day, they got used to creature comforts, which only led to an increased appetite for luxury.  A residence for one of these priests was recently unearthed within Jerusalem’s city walls.  It was roughly 2,000 square feet – a nice sized home by contemporary measure, and a palace in the time of Jesus.  They were known for wearing Gucci robes and for driving Italian sports-coup camels.  They lived large.  How did they afford such a lavish lifestyle?  By demanding higher and higher Temple taxes from the Jews who depended on them to help them stay in the good graces of God.  The people figured out what was going on, and were hardly pleased.  It was bad enough that Rome came down hard on them.  But then to have the people abuse you who are supposed to represent you before God – as well as your oppressor – well, that was too much.  So, when people heard about some of Jesus’ antics – his blatant disregard for the Jewish authorities, disrupting the money changer tables outside the Temple, and making a mockery of them in public – it would have been reasonable for them to assume that while Pilate signed the edict condemning Jesus to death, the High Priest gave him the pen.  The Jews are responsible.

Judas Killed Jesus?  But, of course, how could the Roman or Jewish authorities find the slippery Jesus – under cover of night, no less! – without help from the inside?  Judas Iscariot – a zealot who longed to see Rome get their due along with the High Priest – disappointed in the lack of zeal (by his definition) in Jesus, decided to at least profit before he put his hope in the next messiah to emerge.  So, he met with the Temple folks and, for a handsome sum, decided to sell Jesus out.  So, even though Pilate signed the edict with the pen given him by the High Priest, if it were not for Judas, there would be no Jesus to indict.  Judas, even if indirectly, killed Jesus.

Jesus Killed Jesus?  On the other hand, it sure seemed like Jesus knew things were going to end up the way they did.  He had in mind the timing of the whole thing, it appears, and even moved in ways to insure that he did not land in court before it was time.  He knew the very real risk of publicly challenging Rome with the titles he chose, and his anger toward the Jewish leaders was as obvious as could be.  Nobody would call it suicidal, but he certainly knew what he was headed toward – the disciples tried to warn him, even.  Jesus is responsible for his own death.

God Killed Jesus?  Jesus, however, was called by others the Son of God.  Even secular historians note that Jesus was a well known miracle worker in his day – acts that displayed God’s work in and through him.  Jesus himself spoke of doing his Father’s will, even pleading for a change of heart the very night he was arrested.  The first century Christians began viewing the whole thing as God’s will from the very beginning – Jesus Christ came to die for sinners, for redemption, to do forevermore what the Temple only attempted to do – a final substitutionary sacrifice for all time.  Sure, Pilate, the High Priest, Judas, and obviously Jesus were key players, but this was all orchestrated by God from the beginning of time.  If God is in control of anything, then you can be sure God controlled this.  God sent Jesus to die.  God killed Jesus.

Is this still relevant today?  You bet it is.  The conversation still continues because the life and death of Jesus tells a story that is still unfolding.  This is a relevant story because it gives us a picture of ourselves, about human nature.  If you are human, there is good news and bad news here…

Bad News.  Jesus got killed because he challenged everyone and everything, even if gracefully.  He challenged the political system, the religious system, and the personal opinions about each to an individual.  And he still does.  Jesus was not a Republican or a Democratic or a Libertarian or Green Party or a Socialist or a Communist or whatever other system suits your fancy.  But be sure – if you listened to him long enough then, or pay attention to him long enough now, you will be offended by him.  Jesus’ message inherently challenges our way of thinking about everything.  Including, of course your political preferences.  And, of course, your theology and corresponding praxis.  As Donald Miller noted in one of his books, there’s about a million-to-one chance we’ve got things figured out right about God.  I think we have a better shot at a perfect March Madness bracket than figuring God out – maybe Buffett could create some sort of lottery for that?  All I’m saying is that holding on too tightly to our current biblical interpretation and holy cows of various kinds will likely find us frustrated by Jesus.  It’s not that we shouldn’t have political or theological ideas.  It’s just that we must be aware of our Judas tendencies.  If we hold to the traditional rendering of Judas, we discover the very bad news that we have the capacity to kill Jesus out of our lack of following him.  We do it with our lips, just like Judas.  Any Facebook posts you’d like to retract, for instance?  We do it with our wallets, just like Judas – enjoying more than we should for ourselves to the chagrin of those who need help around us.  We do it with our hands and feet, just like Judas.  His life choices led others to crucify Jesus rather than embrace him with love.  Why is it that so many people caricaturize Christians as jerks?  Could it be that we’ve collectively earned the reputation, and not because of religious persecution?  More bad news: Jesus had a tendency to go places his disciples did not want to go.  They were uncomfortable following Jesus.  Comfort didn’t seem to be a pressing need for Jesus, and that has not changed.  And, of course, the bigger bad news may be about God: God is up to something epic in the world today which is inherently very good, but will be experienced as very bad so long as we have chosen some lesser God to follow – money, comfort, popularity, prestige – the list is endless.  So long as THE God is not your God, this is all bad news.

Good News.  If, however, you choose God progressively throughout your life, there is very good news to be had.  God is bigger than our politics, and offers so much more hope than campaign promises or commentator critique.  If you are sick and tired of politics, here’s good news: so is God.  In following God you rise above party lines to a higher calling that has no need for character assassination and still values people and fairness.  If you choose God fully, you realize that God is bigger than one doctrine and cannot ever be fully figured out by humanity.  God’s ways are higher and better.  There is no room for us to judge others into religious submission because God’s love is big enough to woo people to wholeness.  If you seek God progressively you who see Judas in the mirror even have good news, for God is big enough to forgive even those who blatantly choose to bring God down.  Peter and Judas both struggled with tremendous guilt that night.  One chose to keep walking away from a God who loved him, while the other trusted in the grace he had heard and seen and was restored.  There’s good news for you who choose to follow Jesus, too.  His ways may be tough, taking you into regions you might otherwise avoid, but the result is oh so good.  Following Jesus will lead you to seeing people’s lives changed from worse to better.  You will get a front row seat to view redemption before your eyes.  Wounds healed.  Freedom from the old chains now loosened.  Eyes that see again.  Ears that are hearing the beautiful sounds of life that once were deaf.  The list is endless.  And there is good news, of course, placing our trust – progressively – in God.  The One who is the very source of our being and breath does work in mysterious ways, but they are working toward something extraordinarily wonderful and beautiful.  We can trust it.

So, who killed Jesus?  Well, maybe that’s not the most important question.  Maybe the better question is, how are we letting Jesus live today?


Next week: What do we do with serious academic challenges to the historical accuracy of the last days of Jesus’ life?  Jesus still gets crucified, but what’s happening beneath the surface that might help us see the Jesus movement with greater clarity and may even challenge us to think differently about our heritage?