Tag: preaching

Betrayed


Who betrayed Jesus? People, institutions, and… God? Who has betrayed you? And how can the cross speak to your betrayal?

I was honored to be invited to preach at The 7 Last Words of Jesus Christ worship service at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Roxbury, MA, hosted by the Black Ministerial Alliance Ten Point Coalition.

I preached on: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Recording above (with an awesome congregation of saints), transcript below.

Jesus was betrayed

Who betrayed Jesus?

Judas comes to mind.

Judas would move from a loving disciple and a safe person, to a treacherous informant. Judas would not protect Jesus but would turn him over. Judas betrayed Jesus.

Who betrayed Jesus?

Peter betrayed him, too.

Peter was even part of an inner circle of Peter, James, and John. Peter had VIP access to miracles and teachings. If anyone should defend Jesus, if anyone should show up for him, it’s Peter.

Yet when Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection, Peter rebukes him! Even before Holy Week Peter starts to deny Jesus: “Far be it from you, Lord!,” he says. “This shall never happen to you” (Matt. 16:22). That’s a betrayal of Jesus and his mission.

Peter’s betrayal of Jesus would go even deeper, when he denied Jesus—publicly and loudly—three more times during Holy Week.

More: when Jesus gets to the Garden of Gethsamene, he pleads with his disciples, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch” (Mark 14:34). He just wanted his disciples to stay awake with him, to show some solidarity. 

He was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”—that’s the language of the traumatized, even before Jesus was arrested.

Jesus finds his crew sleeping. “Could you not keep watch for one hour?” (Matt. 26:40) he says. Betrayed by loved ones, yet again!

Surely Jesus’s family would stick with him.

Very early in Jesus’s adult ministry. Jesus appoints the 12, pulls them together, and then (Mark 3:21): “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’”

His family—whom he relied on for safety and support and nurture for 30+ years—tried to seize him. And they called him crazy!

I get we might say, “Well, family is crazy.” But his family’s “intervention” was also a betrayal. They want to sideline Jesus, clip his wings, undermine his God-given mission.

Jesus Christ was betrayed at just about every turn—by one of his 12, by one of his 3, even by family.

That’s just at the personal level.

There’s still more to Who betrayed Jesus?

Jesus also experienced “institutional betrayal.”

I only learned that phrase recently: institutional betrayal. But as soon as I heard it I thought—oh, I know what that is!

There were institutions that were supposed to provide for and protect Jesus but didn’t, in the end.

Like: the temple. Like: the religious leadership, the chief priests and the elders and the Bible scholars of his day that he amazed at age 12 when he taught them.

Jesus was as observant and as close to God as you could get, and yet time and time again, he found himself betrayed by the religious institutions that were supposed to treat him with dignity. Many religious leaders handed him over, and parts of his religious community shouted “Crucify!”

And then, Jesus found himself betrayed by the political institutions of his day. The Roman Empire had the power to actually do something. Jesus deserved a fair trial. He deserved an advocate in Pontius Pilate, and instead he got, I wash my hands of him.

Jesus betrayed again, by a person, Pilate, and with the full weight of the institution of the Roman empire behind him.

The researcher Jennifer Freyd says institutional betrayal is a “fail[ure of institutions] to intervene,” on behalf of people who depend on those institutions.

Institutional betrayal is when ones appointed to protect and to serve instead neglect and betray.

And it’s so much worse when all these people—Judas, Peter, Jesus’s family—and these institutions—the Temple, Rome… they all have provided Jesus with support… until they withdraw it. They all loved him and nurtured him and respected his rights… until they betrayed those rights. They were all so trusted and trustworthy… until they weren’t.

So when Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” behind those words is the weight and pain and trauma of a lifetime of betrayals.

And now, even you, O LORD, are forsaking me? Et tu, Yahweh?

The personal betrayal was bad enough.

The institutional betrayal put Jesus up on this cross.

And now, Jesus asks, with the whole world listening: is there divine betrayal, too?

What happened to “I and the Father are one?” What happened to, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased”???

Whatever we make of the theology of it, Jesus’s prayer is a powerful portrayal of how a deeply traumatized person feels:

Abandoned.

Disoriented.

Fragmented.

Fractured.

Alienated.

A stranger to the world. A stranger to yourself.

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

You have been betrayed

Maybe, on some level, you can relate to this Jesus who knew so much betrayal. Maybe you have held in your body the overwhelming pain that betrayal trauma causes.

Like Jesus, do you know what it feels like to be betrayed by a friend or a family member? Have you been working with colleagues for a common cause, and you thought you were together, only to have them undermine what you had all agreed to?

Like Jesus, do you know what it feels like to be betrayed and exploited by the institutions that were supposed to be there for you? Have you brought your deep pain to the institution we call Church, only to get hurt even more? Have you been betrayed by a religious leader or political leader, when you turned to them for safety, and instead they tried to devour you?

And like Jesus, after all this betrayal you’ve felt, have you prayed—or wanted to pray—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Have you wondered if God—whom you trusted—had betrayed you?

However we wrestle with the theology of Jesus’s prayer, we know this: Jesus said it. Jesus prayed that prayer for all to hear: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

So Jesus knows that prayer when he hears it from you. 

Jesus knows what you feel like, when you’ve been betrayed: by people, by institutions, when you wonder if you’ve been betrayed by God.

When you ask Jesus to get you out of this “Godforsaken mess,” Jesus remembers the cross.

Resurrection, already on Good Friday

After Jesus prays, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” he cries out again, he dies, and then…

“Behold! The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.” (Matt. 27:51-52). 

“Raised to life”!

Jesus just died. We are just seconds away from betrayal trauma and torture overwhelming his faculties to the point of death, and we hear:

“The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.”

Something with resurrection happened, not just Sunday at the tomb, but Friday at the cross. Something must have happened with that prayer—“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Because already Jesus’s death was bringing wholeness, power, and resurrection.

The temple curtain ripped. The temple—that institution that had betrayed Jesus. A dividing curtain is ripped in half.

The ground shook and rocks split in two—this is a new, powerful world that only Jesus can bring. “Even the rocks will cry out” with life.

Those tombs—that included saints of old who were betrayed unto death—those tombs opened up. The dead were raised to life.

Being betrayed and feeling Godforsaken… violates even your ability to make meaning of life. Yet Jesus’s betrayal, Jesus’s trauma at the cross, Jesus’s cry of Godforsakenness… gives new meaning to all pain and suffering.

The cross means you have new life, right now, even when you are betrayed and feel like you’re dying. Even on your Good Friday, the cross means resurrection.

Bodies are already raised to life, even while Jesus is still on the cross.

The cross means that even when people and institutions betray you, God will, in fact, not betray you, because the dead—even the dead are raised! God will not forsake you. God will not leave you for dead.

God has brought you back to life, and God will bring you back to life as many times as you need,

so you can breathe again,

so you can walk again,

so you can live again,

so you can trust again.

There is resurrection even on Good Friday. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

And the answer comes—even before Easter! The answer to Jesus’s fourth word on the cross comes on Friday:

Here I am, tearing the curtain in two!

Here I am, shaking the earth. Here I am, splitting the rocks!

Here I am breaking open the tombs. Here I am, raising the dead to life!

Here I am, raising your bodies, your bodies that have known so much hurt and have held so much injury and have borne so much pain.

Here I am, raising your bodies that have been betrayed again and again and again.

Here I am raising your body to new life, right now, even on Good Friday.

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The above is cross-posted at Healing Pastors.

“I’m not really a scholar”–the Late J. Alec Motyer

I realize that–without really meaning to–I’ve developed an affinity for Anglican priest-scholar types. To name just a few: R.T. France, Fleming Rutledge, N.T. Wright.

Add to that list the late J. Alec Motyer. I can hardly imagine studying Isaiah without Motyer’s work. And his commentary on Zephaniah is a model of scholarship that praises God.

I recently came across this great quote from him:

I’m not really a scholar. I’m just a man who loves the Word of God.

J. Alec Motyer

I’m not sure I’m in danger of being called a scholar. All the same, his words resonate deeply with me, as what I aspire to.

Praying “Thanks in Advance”

“Thanks in advance” is a funny phrase.

“Thanks in advance” is what you say when you thank someone for something they haven’t done yet.

You: “Hey, here’s 10 bucks.”
Me: “Thanks; I’ll pay you back.”
You: “Okay, thanks in advance.”

Or, I might say to my spouse, “Honey, I have had A DAY. Thanks in advance for doing the dishes and putting the kids to bed while I watch random YouTube videos.”

Psalm 100:5 says, “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

The Psalmist models a prayer that looks ahead with confidence, knowing that we will see God’s “steadfast love” and “faithfulness to all generations.”

For his love and faithfulness we can give thanks in advance, because their existence in the future is guaranteed.

Mark Twain is supposed to have said: “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” I guess a lot of it was in his head. We worry!

Another writer says that “Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance.”

If we spend time worrying about the future, why can’t we spend time giving God thanks for the future? If we let ourselves experience failure in advance, why not let ourselves experience something much more certain in advance, namely, God’s steadfast love and faithfulness?

Even Job can say with confidence, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God” (Job 19:25-26).

Our prayers, then, can include the envisioned experience of God’s future faithfulness. So we can say with confidence, “Lord, thanks in advance!”

Review: HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Public Speaking and Presenting

You probably already realize how much of in-person communication is non-verbal. But did you know that audiences perceive non-verbal signals as having more weight than the words you are actually saying?

Nick Morgan notes as much in his Harvard Business Review article, “How to Become an Authentic Speaker”:

If your spoken message and your body language are mismatched, audiences will respond to the nonverbal message every time.

Why?

You’re probably coming across as artificial. The reason: When we rehearse specific body language elements, we use them incorrectly during the actual speech—slightly after speaking the associated words. Listeners feel something’s wrong, because during natural conversation, body language emerges before the associated words.

Recently in a natural conversation I tried to notice which came first—my hand gestures or the words they accompanied. And Morgan is right!

So if you’re going to script non-verbals into your public speaking, well… maybe just don’t. Those need to be natural, or the listeners will know something is off.

Morgan’s article is in HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Public Speaking and Presenting, a compelling and informative read that has already helped me as a preacher.

Here is the list of articles included:

  • “How to Give a Killer Presentation,” by Chris Anderson
  • “How to Become an Authentic Speaker,” by Nick Morgan
  • “Storytelling That Moves People: A Conversation with Screenwriting Coach Robert McKee,” by Bronwyn Fryer
  • “Connect, Then Lead,” by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffinger
  • “The Necessary Art of Persuasion,” by Jay A. Conger
  • “The Science of Pep Talks,” by Daniel McGinn
  • “Get the Boss to Buy In,” by Susan J. Ashford and James R. Detert
  • “The Organizational Apology,” by Maurice E. Schweitzer, Alison Wood Brooks, and Adam D. Galinsky
  • “What’s Your Story?” by Herminia Ibarra and Kent Lineback
  • “Visualizations That Really Work,” by Scott Berinato
  • (“bonus” article) “Structure Your Presentation Like a Story,” by Nancy Duarte.

I don’t think there’s a dud in here. Chris Anderson’s lead article is an inside look into the world of TED Talks. As the curator of the conferences, he’s coached plenty of speakers, and here distills some of his advice.

I especially appreciated the focus in a few articles on good storytelling. Even if data is part of a presentation, tell a story about it, rather than presenting it in drab charts and graphs. (Or use charts and graphs, but make them visually compelling.) “What’s Your Story” is about how to frame and re-frame career transitions—especially relevant to the so-called “Great Resignation” happening across workplaces today.

Harvard Business Review and its books have always appealed to me, though as a church leader I often have to translate the wisdom into a somewhat unique context. This particular volume, however, is immediately relevant to anyone speaking or presenting to people.

Check it out here.

Delta: What Changes, What Doesn’t

My former love of mathematics came in handy the other day.

I was in a clergy meeting, and we were talking about the delta variant of the coronavirus. And I remembered using the “delta” sign in math equations. It’s a triangle: ∆. Whenever you’re taking the delta of something, you’re finding the difference, or the amount of change.

So the delta between 5 and 3 is 5 – 3, or two. ∆x (“delta x”) is the change of a variable, x.

Delta is change. It’s difference.

As I came out of this math flashback, I spoke up in this clergy meeting, talking about how the delta variant, this change in the trend of coronavirus cases, surely means a change—again—for how we do church, for how we are the church. It’s like “Delta Church” now.

This felt like a deep insight, until I said it out loud, when I saw a bunch of other pastors staring back at me on Zoom, as if to say, “Uh, yeah, Pastor Abram. We already knew that delta means change.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What we don’t know is what kind of changes this new wave of coronavirus cases may require from us. More patience, for sure. More trust, yes. More caution? You bet. A vaccine booster, even after you’ve had two shots? Yes, that, too. A vaccine as soon as it’s available, if you’re younger? Yes, please.

Delta is all about change. It’s about things being different. And here we finally thought things were done being different, with the cases dropping a few months ago and vaccinations on the rise. It seems we’re back into an unclear present. And it’s hard to keep perspective, when we don’t even know where we are anymore!

Changeless

Enter Joshua.

At end of the book of Joshua, Israel’s great leader sees the end of his life approaching.

He leads the people of Israel in a covenant renewal at Shechem in Joshua 24. Joshua seems to sense that, as faithful as this group of people wants to be, they are only a generation away from abandoning the LORD.

So before he leads them in a declaration of trust in God, in the uncertain present moment, he has them look back.

They reflect on God’s faithfulness in the past, to remind themselves that God is a faithful God, not just in the past, but also in the present, and that God will be faithful in the future. God provided for the people in the past. He’s going to do it again today, and he’ll do it again tomorrow!

Think about your own life—whatever kind of moment you’re in, however uncertain you feel, however scared this new delta variant has you, whatever the rest of your life feels like right now… think about your past, and how God has been present to you. Think about how God has healed you, how God has provided for you, how God has shown up to you.

Joshua walks through this important act of remembering with his people.

He recaps the history of this people in the presence of all the leaders and judges and officials and tribes. He begins with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, then goes on to Moses, Aaron, and how God parted the Red Sea and brought the Israelites out of slavery from Egypt. All praise be to our liberating God! Other nations fought Israel, but through God they prevailed. God says through Joshua in verse 13, “I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”

In other words: I, the LORD, gave you what you have.

Even so, Joshua presents the people with a choice, in verse 15: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.”

Will a faithful, loving, generous God in the past be enough for God’s people today, and well into tomorrow?

Yes, God gave us water from the rock, but… can he do it again? Yeah, God has literally defied the laws of physics to save us, but… what if he forgets how to do it again? Sure, God has done miracles in our past, made a way where there is now way, but what if God gets stuck this time?

It’s not going to happen. There is no delta with God. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” God is good… not some of the time, not off and on, but God is good… all the time!

That doesn’t mean God is unmoved by our challenges. He weeps with those who weep, and he knows what it’s like to be tempted, to suffer. God knows what it feels like to be swept up by a storm at sea, or surrounded by contagious sickness.

But there is no delta with God, no change. No such thing as a God who is here today but gone tomorrow. With God, it’s not just faithfulness and provision up to a certain point. God is who God is yesterday, today, and forever.

Joshua leads the way in recommitting to this changeless God: “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Mater the Tow Truck

In an uncertain moment, in a season of drought, or in-between-ness, it can be tempting to say, “Well, everything is kind of on hold right now, so there’s nothing we can do. Let’s wait till things resolve, and get back to it then.”

As a pastor—the pastor of a church living through almost two years of transition now, as the pastor of a church without a meeting space, without a church office, and at the mercy of the elements for if we can meet in person or not—I confess that this temptation is real for me, too. It’s the temptation to say, “Let’s just survive and get through this so we can go back to being the church, for real.”

But we are the body of Jesus Christ in the city of Boston right now. Do we need a building to be the body? In some ways, yeah, it really helps! Do we need to be able to attend large gatherings without masks and be back to where we were two years ago, before any of these changes came? That would be awesome! I would love that.

But that’s not our reality. Reality has changed.

Who we are in Christ Jesus has not changed.

We are still the congregation, the people, God has called us to be.

The same God who has led us “where (we’ve) been” is going ahead of us into a future we cannot see. This future is crystal clear to God. Muddy for us, totally in focus for God.

Consider Mater the Tow Truck, from Pixar’s Cars movie. Mater declares himself to be, among other things, “the world’s best backwards driver.”

He shows the race car Lightning McQueen his skills. He uses his rear-view mirrors to look behind him and quickly drive backwards through town and over various obstacles. To an amazed Lightning McQueen, Mater says, “Don’t need to know where I’m going, just need to know where I’ve been.”

“Don’t need to know where I’m going, just need to know where I’ve been.”

And that’s a good thing, because, ask me what I know about the present? Ask me what I know about next week or next month? Shrug of the shoulders.

But that doesn’t mean we’re on hold. God’s Spirit is living and active among us, and we get to be the body of Christ in the city right now in a world where everybody else is feeling anxious about all of the delta changes ahead. Do we know where we’re going? We’ll still make plans, but no, we don’t really know where we’re going. But do we know where we’ve been, how God has walked with us? You bet!

What if this tough, in-between time is vital work God is doing in is right now to shape us into the church he needs us to be for the future?

What if our building-less summer and fall means we’re an even more public witness to the city, as we worship in full view of the public at the park?

What if we were like Joshua, and led the way in helping our friends, families, and neighbors remember a good God who has always been faithful? What if we said to others, I believe that this loving and generous God is not going to give up now!

What if our faith and trust in God, even in this “delta” season, inspired others to trust God, too?

Friends, let’s say with Joshua, loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, “But as for (us) and (our) household, we will serve the LORD!”

I adapted the above from a sermon I recently preached.

Kevin J. Youngblood’s Excellent Jonah Commentary, Second Edition

 

I preached through Jonah in Advent 2014. It remains one of my favorite series to prepare and preach–unlikely liturgical pairing notwithstanding.

In those days, I read as many Jonah commentaries as I could get my hands on. Kevin J. Youngblood’s rose to the top. Then it was part of a series called Hearing the Message of Scripture. Now it has been released in its second edition, with the series name being changed to the less exciting Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament, to bring OT volumes in line with the NT volumes of the same overall series.

Zondervan was gracious to send me a review copy of the Second Edition.

The changes are minor, and they are really only three:

  1. The re-branded series name
  2. Transliterated Hebrew is replaced with actual Hebrew text (yay!)
  3. The author’s translation and visual layout of the text includes the original Hebrew text now, too

Here, for example, is how that text layout section has changed (the new edition is the one on the bottom):

 

 

Otherwise, the text is identical to the first edition. (Even the Bibliography has not been updated, from what I can see.) So if you own the first edition, there’s no need to also get the second. But if you don’t own this commentary, by all means, check it out from a library or purchase it. Even if you don’t know Hebrew, this is an excellent guide to a beautiful and challenging biblical book.

For my full review of the first edition (which all applies to the second edition), see here.