You remember the passage in Genesis 18 where Abraham petitions God over and over? God has come to “see whether [Sodom and Gomorrah] have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me,” and He hangs behind as the two angels go down towards Sodom.  This is where Abraham approaches Him to inquire:

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I’m not sure if you have noticed this or not, but it seems like people make up a lot of excuses these days.  No one is ever at fault.  They always have an excuse.  Winnona Ryder, after being arrested at Saks Fifth Avenue with $4700 worth of clothing stuffed in her bag, said “I was told I should shoplift.  My director said I should try it out.”  Even in the midst of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives said they were unprepared for a spill of this magnitude because of faulty data they had received from the U.S Government.  Apparently, 2004 projections said that any oil spilled in the gulf would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather.  In other words, they said, “How were we supposed to know the oil would come ashore – you said it wouldn’t!”

The cross is more about life than death. Jesus teaches us how to live life in his last moments. He teaches us what it means to be godly—to love those who hate you, even in the most painful circumstances. Here are the five things Jesus taught me on the cross:

1. Forgiveness is about us, not them. Forgiveness is not dependent upon other people’s actions. Luke’s gospel records Jesus looking down on the men who beat him and crucified him, and saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Jesus doesn’t ask God to forgive the men who crucified him, and the crowd who mocked and beat him, because they deserve mercy, but because they are ignorant. They are anything but deserving. Jesus forgiving those who killed him shows us more about him than it does them. He was right with God, even when people had done wrong by him. We should forgive others because God forgave us when we didn’t deserve it.

Christ is risen! On Easter, we raise our voices in praise and thanksgiving, celebrating the victory won for us by Our Lord, our new life made possible in His new life.  

And rightly we do celebrate – but before we do, wait a moment. Paul writes in Romans that “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom 6:5 ESV). How easy it is to jump ahead, in our eagerness to be united with Our Lord in a resurrection like His own mighty resurrection. Stop for a moment. Stop and think on Paul’s words: “if we have been united with him in a death like his.” A death like Jesus’ death. What does that mean?

We cannot come to new life without death. We cannot find the Risen Lord without the Cross; we cannot reach Easter any way except through the agony of Good Friday and the emptiness of Holy Saturday.

Is it possible to talk too much about the cross?

I ask this question only because some preachers and writers and teachers seem to talk about the cross a lot.  Some do so almost continually.  We can understand why they might carry on in this way because we know the primacy and weight of Calvary.  But there are still times this thought crosses many of our minds:  “Great, so I understand the cross is important.  But can’t we move on to the next topic?”

We say this sort of thing when we feel our faith is about more than Jesus.  And in one sense, we can say this is true.  Our faith is about God’s glory, and our joy, and loving others, and meeting the needs of the oppressed, and being made holy, and sojourning through life, and laying up treasures in heaven, and all sorts of other things.

It seems like everyone I know has been to, or is going to, hear u2 live in October.  They're out on the west coast, doing a tour and so Christians between 20 and 40 are making the pilgrimage.  Before I continue, I'll offer the caveat that I love u2.  I just returned from running stairs and Bono was my companion because, after the 10th set of sprints it's true:  I still haven't found what I'm looking for.  Their music, lyrics, and leverging of fame for social good are all inspiring and exemplery.  Still.... 

My concern resides in our age old tendency to reshape the gospel so that it matches our own personal ideals and passions.  Right now social justice is fashionable.  There's good reason for this, and it's a welcome swing of the pendulum from the old days, when missionaries would (at least according to missiological legend) hand out tape recorders, the Bible on tape, and tracts, before handing out food, "just in case someone perishes without knowing Christ."  We've come a long way from that, but just as that was fashionable then, wells in Africa are fashionable now.