April 7th 2012

Jesus was supposed to be the Messiah, the one to put everything right, but now he’s dead. What do we have left to hope for?

Read Luke 23:55-56 and journal your thoughts

We can’t imagine the devastation the followers of Jesus must have felt. This was the one who was supposed to be God’s chosen, the Messiah. He was the one who was going to change everything, to bring the Kingdom of God here to earth, but now it’s all over. What hope do we have left?

Not only is Jesus dead, but this is the first Sabbath after the Passover. Traditionally Ezekiel 37:5 was read in the Temple. If the Passover was about God doing a great thing to rescue His people from Egypt, then this verse in Ezekiel was read as they looked forward to their Messiah. It’s interesting how God uses the traditions of their time to point to what He is going to do. God is giving them hope and comfort in their most desperate hour, when all seems hopeless.

Today meditate on how God gives us hope in our darkest hours, if not in the ways we expect

April 6th 2012

It is finished!

Read Matthew 27:45-56 and journal your thoughts

In our culture there seems to be some debate about when Jesus says “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”, what is Jesus saying here? I’ve heard dramatic preachers who talk about how in this verse Jesus looks up in to heaven and sees the Father turn his head aside because God is refusing even look at Jesus.

To help us understand what Jesus is saying let’s read Psalm 22:1. Now in their culture, when a Rabbi would quote Scripture, they weren’t just randomly dropping a verse. Instead they would quote a single verse to make reference to the whole thing. In this moment, Jesus refers to a Psalm to make the whole situation make sense.

Today read Psalm 22 and mediate on how what Jesus is doing relates

April 5th 2012

So far we have done a lot of talking about the Passover meal and what many of the individual things represent. With tonight being the traditional night of the Passover meal, we are going to take a step back from the deals to look at what the whole thing represents

Read Exodus 12:42 and journal some of your thoughts

If we are not careful it is easy for us to take things that happen and turn them into traditions without really honoring what those events really meant. On that first Passover, God did this great act by rescuing his people from slavery in Egypt. Obviously, one of the ways the people remembered this was through the celebration of the Passover meal, but they also guarded themselves from allowing this to simply become a tradition.

Ancient Rabbis use to interpret Exodus 12:42 to mean that we should always be looking to see what big things God is going to do next. In order to teach this idea to their children, after the Passover dinner the children would open the front door to see if Elijah was standing there (Malachi 4:5).

This raises the question for us; what big thing are we expecting God to do next? Are we expecting God to do great things around us in our world, are we expecting him to just work on the details of our lives? As you look out your metaphorical front door, where do you see God moving? Where do you see God wanting to work?

As we begin to wrap up this Easter season meditate on this idea: Where do I expect to see God moving today?

April 4th 2012

Why did the crowds go from “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday to “Crucify him” on Friday?

Read Luke 23:27 and journal your thoughts

Did you get it? Were you able to put the pieces together? The crowd who yelled “Hosanna” was not the same as the crowd yelling “Crucify him”. So many times there has been sermon after sermon around Easter time about how this crowd turns on Jesus, but that simply isn’t the case. Let’s go through our timeline and explain why the two crowds couldn’t have been the same.

We know from Matthew 26:3-5 that the religious leaders want to arrest Jesus in secret so because the people loved Jesus so much that they feared a riot. What better time to do something in secret than during all the business of the Passover?

So it begins with Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane which is located outside of town, in the middle of the night, while everyone is in bed exhausted from the night’s feast. If the events of the Sanhedrin happened in the middle of the night after such an exhausting evening, then who would be there; only those who planned on being there.

The same can be said for the crowd before Pilate, after such a late night what Jew is going to get up early to stand before the governor? Once again, it’s only those who either planned on being there or Romans who had to be there.

Yesterday we mentioned that Jesus was crucified at 9 am (Mark 15:25), why is this important? It is crucial to the plan, because that is when the first temple services were for the day. In order for the plan to work, the religious leaders knew that they had to finish their plan before everyone got up and around and into town for worship.

Looking at the timeline, we can see that the religious leaders didn’t just get fed up with Jesus and decided to get him one day, but they planned and schemed to come up with a way to get rid of Jesus in secret without anyone knowing. This is why the crowd changed; this is why in Luke 23:27 they were weeping. The religious leaders were more interested in keeping their own power rather than doing God’s will.

**NOTE: All the journals this week were inspired and heavily influenced by Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. I cannot recommend this book enough!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AKPFT4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=engedrescen-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002AKPFT4

April 3rd 2012

Today is going to be a bit different; we are going to play “CSI: Bible” focus on the timeline of Jesus’ arrest which is going to help us put some things in perspective. There will also be hints for tomorrow’s journal which addresses the question why did the people go from say “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday to “Crucify Him” on Friday?

In yesterday’s journal we mentioned that the Passover meal would have ended sometime around midnight. This means that the events of Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss would have happened about 1 am. (Matthew 26:47-56).

We also know that Peter denied Jesus when the rooster crowed (Matthew 26:69-75) which would have been about 5 am. This means the events of Jesus before the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:57-68) would have taken place sometime between 1-5 am. Remember this the night of the Passover, a very major Jewish ceremony.

According to Mark 15:1 Jesus is presented before Pilate at sunrise roughly 6am, once again this is the morning after a very late night since most Passover feasts don’t end until midnight. Mark 15:25 says that Jesus was crucified at the third hour, which for them would have been 9am. This means the events in between Jesus first going before Pilate and Jesus being crucified happened in about a 3 hour span.

All of this leads up to the crucifixion of Jesus, how does this timeline change any of your views of the final hours of Jesus life?

Take some time to mediate on the question for tomorrow: Why did the crowds go from “Hosanna” to “crucify him”?

**NOTE: All the journals this week were inspired and heavily influenced by Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. I cannot recommend this book enough!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AKPFT4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=engedrescen-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002AKPFT4

April 2nd 2012

Have you ever wondering why the disciples couldn’t stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Read Matthew 26:36-46 and journal your thoughts

This part of the story has always seemed strange to me; I mean why couldn’t these guys just stay awake? I mean if their Rabbi is stressed out enough to the point where his sweat “was like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44 NASB) you would think something major was going on. You would think they would be at least a bit on edge. So why couldn’t they stay awake?

To help us answer this question, let’s look at it from another point of view. Think about Thanksgiving morning, getting up early preparing everything for this sacred (in the sense that everything has to be perfect) meal. You run around a hot kitchen going from one piece of the meal to another, trying to get everything just right. Finally everything is ready, and you can sit down for a few minutes and enjoy this meal you’ve worked so hard on. But this is short lived, because as soon as the meal is over there is the tedious and overwhelming task of doing the dishes. Finally there comes that moment when everything is done and you can finally sit down. Before long, you are out. It is easy to blame it on the tryptophan but in reality you’ve been so busy your body has just had enough.

Now, put yourself in a first century Jewish setting, think about working not with the modern conveniences we have today, but with ancient cooking tools. Think about cooking a whole lamb (bigger than a turkey) and making matzah bread from scratch. Think about all the other parts of the Passover meal.

Now imagine it’s late, the traditional Passover wouldn’t end until about midnight. It’s dark, late, and you are full from the feast (not to mention 4 large cups of wine). You’ve been on your feet working all day on this massive meal and you finally have a chance to sit down (Side note: they had also been traveling the days just before the last supper). Of course you would fall asleep! Your body is done, and there is nothing on earth that is going to keep you awake!

**NOTE: All the journals this week were inspired and heavily influenced by Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. I cannot recommend this book enough!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AKPFT4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=engedrescen-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002AKPFT4

April 1st 2012

Is there anything else we are missing from this scene?

Read Matthew 26:26 and journal your thoughts

In the Passover tradition there is a special piece of bread called “afikomen” which translates into “that which comes after” or the word “dessert.” This piece of bread was taken from the best part of the matzah which we all know is the middle of the bread. This is then set aside (or in some cases hidden and the children look for it later) and is the very last thing eaten. When it is time, it is broken and given to everyone at the table.

Now if pretty much everything in Judaism symbolizes something then what does the afikomen represent? Like we said, the word “afikomen” literally means “that which comes after” another way of translating this is “the coming one”. This was a phrase identified with the coming of the Messiah. Here the whole matzah bread represents the people of Israel, while the afikomen represents the Messiah. The image here is that this Messiah will be the best of the matzah, and he will be broken from his people (and in some cases hidden from his people for a time; see death and resurrection).

When Jesus took the bread, broke it, and said “this is my body” he was referring to the bread, but he was also referring to the specific piece of bread. Jesus was identifying himself as Messiah. Everyone at the table would have understood exactly what he was saying.

Take some time to meditate on this idea and how this changes your image of the Last Supper.

**NOTE: All the journals this week were inspired by Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. I cannot recommend this book enough!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AKPFT4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=engedrescen-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002AKPFT4