The topography of grief is vast and varied.   Your grief may bear a resemblance to the grief of others, but it is only a resemblance.  Each grief is uniquely its owners.  It is intense and personal, never what you think it will be.   It takes turns you did not expect.  When it seems gone, it reemerges without warning.   Sights, sounds, and smells open its locked doors.  And like Frodo Baggins’ ancient wound, grief is inflamed by days of remembrance.  As Gandalf sagely observed, “Alas [Frodo]! there are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured.”  

We reach for the phone.  Or we enter a room forgetting that he is “not here.”    We see a beautiful vista or recall a shared moment and ache to share it.   But she is “not here.”   The one who has always been there is “not here.”   Death is surreal.  We think we know how we will respond, but it is nothing like the caricatured response of our stories.  

I remember well the wee hours of March 8, 1984.   The phone rang.  It was the hospital.  Without explanation, we were told to come.   We drove in silence.  What was happening?  At 18, I was not sure what was happening.   I had seen her just the day before.  She had had a good day.  She was alert and we talked.  She told me how much she loved me and how proud she was of me.  She seemed so much — better.   Why had they called so early to come?  

We entered silently into her silent room.  Everything was silent.  Nurses were gathered, but no one spoke.  Gone were the IVs, the oxygen.  There was no humming of medical machinery.   There was a radiant peace on her face.   She looked so peaceful.  Gone were the grimaces of pain.  Gone was the struggle to breathe.  I knew, but I did not know, what was happening.  My mind raced.  Was she better?  Had something remarkable happened?  Yet, she was “not here.”  The hole that had just opened in the fabric of my life seemed so vast as if it would swallow me.   She was gone.  She was not here.

Our reaction to grief is never what we anticipate.   Imagine for a moment those women who went to the tomb so early on the First Day of the Week.   They had stayed at the foot of the cross until the bitterest of bitter ends.   Their beloved teacher, master and friend, their Lord, was “not here.”   In one last act of love and devotion, they go in the wee hours, in the darkness before dawn to the tomb to care for the body of the one who had cared for them.   

Their minds turned to questions.  How would they roll away the stone?  What would they find? As they drew near, they were met with an unexpected scene.   Imagine how their minds raced.  Luke writes that they were “perplexed.”  Mark, that they were “alarmed.”  The stone was not just rolled away but cast aside.  The tomb was empty.  He was gone – not just in the way of grief – but really gone!   Who would do such a thing?  Who would intrude on their grief like this? An angel who appears with a shocking explanation and mild rebuke.  

“Do not be alarmed.  You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has risen; he is not here.  See the place where they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter than he is going before you to Galilee.  There you will see him, just as he told you.”

He is not here?  What does this mean?  How can this be?  The women named had seem him die.  They had seen Joseph of Arimathea place his body in the tomb.  His death had changed everything in their lives, but now He is “not here.”  From our vantage point, we may be surprised at the conflicted responses of the women to the resurrection of Jesus.  He is alive!  They will see him!  They must hurry to tell his disciples.  And Peter.  Yet, they flee from the tomb with fear, seized with trembling and astonishment.  Their response is not at all what we expect. As one commenter wryly noted, “they were not poised on the brink of belief… they were utterly skeptical.” We might be tempted to say, “how foolish [they were] and slow to believe.”

But what about you?  What is your response to the Resurrection?  For the men and women who encountered an empty tomb and a Risen Christ, the Resurrection changed everything.   Has it changed everything for you?  Has it changed anything?  Has it given hope in grief?  Joy in sorrow?  Faith in fear?  Have you met the Risen Christ, the Living One, who has defeated the last enemy, Death, and holds the keys to death and the grave?  

Is your life defined by the “not here” of death, or the “not here” of the Resurrection?  For believers the question is not, ‘is there evidence for you to believe the Resurrection,’ but ‘is there evidence of your belief in the Resurrection?’  Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Mark 16:1-8 and consider our response to the Resurrection of Jesus. 

We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

“How important is it for you to be there at that moment?”  It is a question I often ask when caregivers are worn with sleeplessness and grief, keeping vigil at the bedside of their beloved as he slips into eternity.  Being present at a death is never quite what we expect. And never as it is depicted in our stories.  Surreal, incomprehensible.  Nowhere is it clearer that death is an intruder and not just “part of the cycle of life” than at the deathbed.

The nurse or doctor comes and auscultates for the apical pulse for at least two minutes and then they pronounce our beloved’s death.  “I’m so sorry, He’s gone,” they say.  We have been preparing ourselves for months, weeks, days, hours.  We have seen him stop breathing and then gasp back to life.  “Gone?”  Surely there is something more we can do?  How do we know he is really gone?  Is there not some other definition of ‘dead’ that gives us hope?  Let’s wait a few minutes longer to say, “he’s gone.”

The pronouncement of a loved one’s death, declaring that they have succumbed to the “last enemy,” creates a vortex of physical, emotional, and spiritual revulsion and disbelief.  We really don’t know how to process it.  We think we do.  We think we will.  But when the intruder comes, it is shockingly disorienting.  When death is pronounced, however, much more is declared than merely the end of a person’s earthy life.  All our lives are also declared irrevocably changed.

Jesus’ death is pronounced repeatedly in the Gospel accounts.  The centurion at the foot of the cross, overseeing the execution squad, sees something he has never seen.  And declares the divine nature of Christ, “Surely this man is the Son of God.”  Pilate declares that Jesus is dead and so delivers the “corpse” to Joseph of Arimathea.  The soldiers declare him dead and so do not break his legs.  John declares him dead when he sees the blood and water at the thrust of the soldier’s spear. 

Jesus’ heavenly Father declares him dead as the darkness of judgment fades, the earth quakes, and the curtain in the Temple is torn from top to bottom.   And Jesus, does what none of us may do.  He pronounces his own death as we read. 

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. – John 19:28-29

He lays down his life. And he will take it up again. Jesus’ dying, death and burial pronounce much more than the absence of an apical pulse or breathing sounds. Jesus’ dying, death and burial declare hope to us that our lives may be irrevocably changed. That we may be delivered from death and find eternal life instead.

The pronouncement of Jesus’ death is a shocking declaration of life for us.  As John Owen wrote, it was “the death of death in the death of Christ.”   And the author of Hebrews taught.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. – Hebrews 2:14-17

The pronouncements of Jesus’ death means life for you if you will accept it.  Join us this week as we examine Mark 15:33-47 and consider how the death of Christ offers life to dying men and women, boys and girls. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Weddings, like funerals, have changed over the two decades I have been a pastor.  More often now they are untethered from any concept of worship or a Christian and biblical worldview of marriage and death.  Both have become more a recognition of the individual and less cognizant of Christ.  In both, novelty and personal expression have become central. 

At funerals this shows up in eulogy, music selection, and the disposition of a loved one’s remains.  In weddings, it is reflected in the addition of elaborate unity ceremonies and the elimination of anything like a sermon.  And most prominently in the personalization of vows. Vows that focus on what I have to offer my spouse and what I will try to be, rather than what I am obligated, scripturally, to be and do.   In a song about marriage commitment, Alan Jackson, famously sang.

I’ll try, to love only you
And I’ll try, my best to be true
Oh darling, I’ll try.

But I have never asked a bride or groom, “Do you, Mr. Groom/Ms. Bride promise to try…?”  No, the question is always “will you” or “do you.”   Vows used to be pretty standard.  In former days the bride’s vow included, “I, take the to be my wedded Husband have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part.” 

But this idea of obedience as part of marital love seems too oppressive to our modern sensibilities.  So, we have eradicated it from our most intimate earthly commitment.  Yet there is no greater fruit of love than loving obedience.  Obedience to God in what he requires us to be and do as husbands and wives, sons and daughters, followers of Christ is a grateful, loving response to God’s lavish grace.

Next to self-sacrifice, obedience is actually one of the strongest ways we express our love for others.  It demands that we prefer the will of another to our own.  To love another, their concerns, their needs more than we love and value our own.  And nowhere do we see this relationship between love and obedience demonstrated more powerfully than when Jesus exhibited his love for his elect people and his heavenly Father by obeying the will of the Father that Jesus become sin for us on the cross.

Theologians often speak of the obedience of Christ in terms of His active obedience and His passive obedience.  One difficulty in theology, however, is the creation of categories which are too neat and tightly defined.   We must guard against relegating any particular aspect or action in the life of Christ  to one category or the other since His active and passive obedience are often exhibited simultaneously.  The trial and crucifixion of Jesus offer prime examples of this.

Jesus is a sacrificial victim, but not a hapless victim.  He is not victimized in His trial and crucifixion.  He lays His life down of his own accord and takes it up again.  No man takes it from Him.  At every moment during the trial and crucifixion Jesus actively obeys the will of the Father.  With every twist and turn of the action, Satan finds an opportune time to say to Jesus, “if you are the Son of God then….” 

With unbelievable resolve, Jesus exerts His active obedience in the midst of the most intense temptation imaginable.   He, who spoke with authority and whose razor sharp wit had untied all of the Gordian knots thrown at Him on the Tuesday of this passion week, had the power to undo the schemes of Pilate and the Sanhedrin with the powerful and effective Word of God.  He had the power to come off the cross and destroy his taunters. 

He had the power over every creaturely element that held Him there on the cross.  Yet, in the midst of passive obedience as a sacrificial victim, He obeyed actively at every nano-second to triumph over powers and principalities and disarm the powers of hell and death.  What an incredible Savior!

How prophetic were the taunts of his enemies – “He saved others, Himself He cannot save.” Join us as we examine Mark 15:1-32 and meditate upon this great truth that in refusing to save Himself, our Lord saved us. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

“Someone must have moved it! I put it right here, where I would remember where to find it.  It must be here somewhere.”   Have you noticed that the time it takes to find something is often directly proportional to the time we have spent on this earth?  Our memory seems so clear, but the object of our quest never seems exactly where we clearly remember it being.  We are tempted to chalk it up to frailty or confusion, but the reality is that while the item never moved, our memory of it did.

The memories we retrieve are never exactly the same as the memories we stored.  They are never exactly where we put them.  No doubt you have gone to a memorable restaurant only to say, “it just wasn’t how I remembered it.”   It may have been as it was, yet still not how you remembered it.  The hard facts of our memories are stored away with lots of personal context: the physical development or changes to our brains, our maturity, present knowledge of the world, smells, sounds, sensations.  When we retrieve them years later, we are different people.  And so are our memories.

The editors of Science News Today expressed it well.

Every time you remember, you are reactivating patterns of electrical and chemical activity that have been shaped, modified, and stored inside an unimaginably complex network of neurons. The process is not like retrieving a file from a computer. It’s more like conducting a symphony, where different instruments (brain regions) join in at precisely the right moments, weaving together the sensory, emotional, and factual threads that make a memory come alive… But retrieval is not perfect. Each time you recall a memory, you are reconstructing it, not replaying it like a video. Details can change subtly, influenced by your current mood, beliefs, and new experiences. In this way, memory is both reliable and fragile—a living, evolving record rather than a static archive.

Both reliable and fragile!  While this makes for great storytelling, consider how challenging this is for a criminal justice system that depends on eye-witness testimony to reconstruct a crime with factual absolutism, not perspectival recollection.   Trial lawyers have their work cut out for them.  And add to the “fragile” memory of witnesses, the mix of witness motivations and anxieties further threaten the reliability of their testimony for a system whose burden of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

A “kangaroo court,” however, has little angst over the challenges of reliable testimony.  It delights in the crystal clarity of false testimony to disregard the rights of the accused and secure a predetermined conviction.  Kangaroo courts depend upon liars to speak loudly and emphatically while men of conviction remain silent.  A dynamic we see clearly in the kangaroo court in the palace of Caiphas before the Sanhedrin on the night Jesus was betrayed.

Wicked prosecutors preside.  They, more than anyone, have seen and understand the faithful testimony of Jesus’ life and witness as the “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed.”  Yet he is not the type of Christ they want.  They want political deliverance.  Not deliverance from sin.  The only god they love and worship is the god of self.  They have no trouble gathering liars to give false testimony.  Though perhaps they should have looked for better liars.  And the one man who should have been willing to speak up for Jesus, cowered in denial in the courtyard below, remaining silent while evil men spoke loudly.

Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin, recorded in Mark 14:53-72, violated every rule of due process.  A capital offense, tried in only one hearing, held at night, with an illegal change of venue, and during the feast, prosecuted by corrupt judges and packed with false witnesses while Jesus’ disciples’ testimony is either absent or silent.  Only one faithful witness is present.  And Jesus’ truthful testimony is the only thing this crooked court can use to convict him. 

History knows no greater travesty of justice than the trials of Jesus.  And yet through the injustice of men, divine justice is fully satisfied.  As Paul writes, in Jesus Christ, God shows that he is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”  The trial of Jesus is filled with everything but the truth, with unbelieving witnesses, untruthful witnesses, and an unwilling witness. 

What about you?  You have heard about Jesus, who he is and what he has done.  Is he not the type of Jesus you want?  Would you rather believe a lie about yourself than the truth about him?  Or are you simply unwilling to risk following him?   The trial of Jesus confronts us with the question Pilate would later ask, “What shall I do with your King?”  What is your response to Jesus?  What will you do with this King?

Join us as we examine Mark 14:53-72 and consider our response to the truth about Jesus. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.