The Sabbath Day, Pretty Girls, Wilson Park, and an Old Friend

It’s midnight where I’m writing you from. The windows in my room are open as wide as they will go, and the wind is blowing in, hitting my chest like the waves I tried to kick in the Atlantic when I was five. They tried to drown me that day, but my five year-old fight was too much to handle—I kicked hard and gave ‘em hell. The weathermen tell us it’s supposed to storm tomorrow, and I’d say they’re correct for once by the way the air dances around inside my room. It’s midnight, and I’m here, writing. God help us. If you’re awake, too, it’s safe to say you’re just as restless as I am at the moment. Maybe you’re wide awake, too, running something down, trying to make sense of the cobwebs scattered across your soul, chasing down all the thoughts stumbling around drunk inside your brain. Or maybe you just have stuff you need to get done, things to do. Me? Well, let’s just say I’m awake at midnight because I’m saying hello to an Old Friend and we like to stay up late and share plenty of good stories when we get together. In fact, when I stop to catch my breath, He’ll talk my ear right off.

I few days ago we went on a run together at Wilson Park. Actually, a more accurate picture of that would be me getting punched in the lungs for three miles at Wilson Park. My friend, of course, seems to always stay right in stride. If you aren’t from my neighborhood, you’re really missing out on this place. Like the rest of you, spring is turning here in Fayetteville, which means Wilson Park is blowing up with fresh smells, hungry picnicers, young couples laying on each other’s chests, old couples holding each other’s hands, little boys pushing down little girls by the swing sets, softball teams trying to taste what October must to the big leaguers, dandelions breaking out of hibernation, trees growing new clothes for the new season, and all the pretty girls letting down their legs on the running path. And I’ll tell you, the girls sure are pretty. Looking just gets old though, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s rather boyish; I’d like to fall in love instead. I mean, why settle for make outs when you could be married, right? So this is where we were Saturday afternoon: sweating next to the pretty girls and the long-loving couples; watching springtime patiently pause, then explode violently into color; feeling Saturday already starting to roll like the stone into Easter Sunday; and anticipating the wonder of what it will be like to wake up from being dead…

I finished getting the crap kicked out of me for three miles and stopped rehearsing in my head what I would say to the first pretty girl who looked at me with enough compassion, and I grabbed my pen and paper and headed for a bench. And so my Old Friend and I sat there on the early evening of the Saturday sandwiched between a good Friday and an even better Sunday watching the world before our eyes go green again, him whispering stories into my ear, and my pen trying to keep up with them.

That Saturday about two-thousand years ago must have been a strange day. Whether you believe in The Gospel story or not, we all have to admit that things must have been just a little awkward that day. Think about it. A man who had been healing cripples, casting out demons, raising dead guys from their graves, eating dinner with hookers, calling twelve social rejects (one who would betray Him for some silver and another who would deny Him while He was getting slaughtered) his best friends, being followed by thousands everywhere we goes, and proclaiming the power to forgive sins has just been mercilessly beaten and crucified on cross because He claimed to be the Son of God. He takes his final breath in the early evening, the world goes dark, the temple in the curtain tears in two, the Roman soldiers who just broke essentially every bone in His body are ripping of their clothes for fear of what they’ve done, and the mangled body of this “so-called” Messiah gets buried in some tomb no man knows about. And that day of unmatched historical magnitude ends. Is just-- over. And then Saturday dawns, the Sabbath day, a day that Jewish law forbids work and only allows rest and quality time in the temple. And I suppose that the tension in the air that day hung as heavy as Jesus on the cross the day before; that something didn’t feel right; that things seemed to be out of rhythm and that the temple didn’t quite have the same murmur about it as it did when Jesus was riding in on a donkey a week earlier. I wonder what that day was like, what was going through everyone’s mind, what they were talking about in the temple. Meanwhile, there is Jesus, wrapped up in the blanket of his sackcloth, sleeping in His tomb, obediently observing the Sabbath.

Resting.

Waiting for the sunrise on Sunday.

Waiting to blow up human history.

Waiting to blow up the hearts of the disciples.

Waiting to blow up the hearts of those who believe.

Waiting to wake up from the dead.

And, like I said, maybe you believe that Jesus was who He said He was or maybe you don’t, but we both have to agree on the historical fact that this day actually happened in the human story; and that is a very weird thing to think about. The most controversial man in human history—the very man on which ALL of human history hinges—was dead for a day.

I mean, history tells us there really was a guy named Jesus, who may or may not have been born of a teenage virgin named Mary, and who grew up swinging a hammer with his dad, Joseph. Then, at about the age of thirty, this Jesus guy got baptized by some wild man in a loin cloth who lived in the woods, and all the sudden political officials started getting real uneasy about the things Jesus started saying and doing. Something had happened to this carpenter from the trailer-park town of Nazareth, and it seemed to be picking up steam. He started telling prostitutes that their sins were forgiven, started staying the night at the homes of tax collectors and poor people, and started talking about the “Kingdom of God” being at hand. And whole crowds began buying into what this guy was saying, believing that His touch or His word could heal lifelong disease or cast out lifelong demons. All the while, the pharisees and politicians started plotting ways to kill him because they were worried about losing power to some carpenter’s kid from the slumtown, and whose friends were a bunch of screw-up, uneducated fishermen and rundown widows. Eventually, Jesus claims to be the one that the world was waiting for—God in the flesh even-- and they find their loophole. And so they bribe Judas, one of Jesus’s twelve, with a chump bag of silver. And Judas takes a few Roman soldiers up to the mountain where God is pounding the ground begging God to create some other way for the absolution of sin other than the crucifixion, but God won’t waiver. His word stands. So Jesus goes to his disciples, who are supposed to be praying too, but are taking naps instead, kicks them in their sides, and says, “Gentlemen, get up. It’s time.” Judas Iscariot—the same Judas Iscariot who has watched Jesus walk on water, seen all the miracles, sat with Him around campfires, broken the bread, drank the wine-- walks up with the Roman soldiers behind him, and he kisses the King on the cheek. So the guards go to arrest Jesus, but Peter steps in their way drawing his sword, and slices one of the guard’s ears off. Jesus picks up the guy’s ear, glues it back on the guy’s head, and says to Peter, “Put your sword away, stupid. This isn’t how it happens. They aren’t taking my life; I’m giving it to them.” Then they take Him to trial, six trials actually, three of which were illegal due to the fact that Jewish law forbid the Jews to hold trail after sundown. Then they beat Him. At every trial they beat him. Severely beat Him. Some scholars say that at the trials of those that were about to get crucified these beatings were so bad that the person getting crucified was already dead before they reached their cross. That is the kind of beating Jesus receives. Six times. But they didn’t kill Him. He kept breathing. He kept breathing and they kept beating Him. The Scriptures say that the Roman soldiers pulled the beard from His face, which the bearded know hurts worse than it might sound to the beardless. And they spit on him and mocked him and mutilated his physical appearance. They blindfolded Him and then slapped Him, and then would ask Him, “Prophesy! Who slapped you? Who was it that slapped you?” They pushed a crown of thorns on his head, deeply digging it into the skin of his skull, gave Him a staff, clothed Him in a purple robe, and presented Him before the mob mockingly as the “King of the Jews.” Then took the staff from His hand and beat Him with it. And Pilate, who wanted no part of this, thinks He can beat Jesus and shame Jesus so severely that the Jews will have to have compassion on Him and will let Him go. And so He beats this carpenter’s kid, the proclaimed God in the flesh, until Jesus is just some mangled, bloody, gruesome, busted-up body of broken bones who he throws down in front of the crowd and says, “Now what? Now what do I do? How about we let Him go?” And the same mob that cried “Hosanna, Hosanna you are the King!” a week earlier while Jesus rode into town on a donkey for Passover, now cries, “Crucify Him!”

Crucify Him.

That’s what they scream.

Crucify Him.

The thing about nailing people to a cross was that it was an artform to the Roman government. And what I mean by artform is that it was something that the Roman government practiced and perfected over time. It wasn’t just something they threw together for Jesus. It was a way of execution that developed with their reign; that got better, like wine, with time; that evolved with each new execution. At the time Jesus was tried, the Romans ruled the known world, which would have required a lot of fear. I mean, if you are going to rule the entire known world without any kind substantial threat, uprising, or major rebellion, then you strike as much fear as you possibly can into the hearts of your citizens. You scare the absolute s out of them. I mean, if I was going to rule the world (which is coming soon enough), that is how I would do it. I would scare the s out of you. So, in order to do this, the Romans came up with the art of crucifixion, and their thoughts with it are, “if we can butcher men and women in a way that is so horrifying, so disguisting and so appalling that no one will ever rebel for fear of having this happen, this would be perfect.” And so over a period of years where they guinea pig this plan, they eventually come up the crucifixion, which in some cases, would take days for a man to die. Days. Days of hanging in your own piss, excrement, vomit, sweat, and blood. And basically what would happen to you on the cross was that you would be beaten and hung in such a way that over time your lungs filled with blood ultimately causing you to drown in it. And as if this way of death wasn’t enough for someone, the Romans added an element of shame and utter humiliation. So they would strip the person naked and crucify him in a highly public place where the lowest scum and the highest politicians of the community could come and ridicule him, could come to mock and spit on and curse him; where the homeless, and the drunks, and the perverts were allowed, by law remember, to come and make a sporting event out of this, turn an execution into a public spectacle, into a game of basketball. And you didn’t even have to buy a ticket. Imagine this happening in the mall or off the highway. Or if you live around my parts, imagine this happening on Dickson Street. Imagine a man hanging naked and nailed to a cross on Dickson Street in the middle of a Monday afternoon on the first day of school. That’s what the Romans invented. That’s what you get when you get crucified.

So this is what happens to Jesus. He’s taken out to Golgotha, the place of the skull, a high hill overlooking the whole city of Jerusalem, a hill that was so high that you could look out your window and watch this crucifixion from the comfort of your own couch, and He’s taken here and crucified. He becomes the latest bloody addition to the vast catalog of brutal artwork the Roman government has been collecting over the last few years. He becomes their finest masterpiece, their Sistine Chapel. And this is where Jesus dies. And this is how Jesus dies. This is how the God of the Universe decides to die for man’s belittlement of His holy name. This is how Aslan chooses to lay down His life for our sin and our disbelief. This is how Jesus chooses to prove His unconditional love for a bunch of screw-ups like you and me. Yes, this is how Jesus dies.

And here’s the deal with this: you don’t get to deny it. No one can say that this didn’t happen historically. No one can say that Jesus didn’t get betrayed, tried, beaten, mocked, and crucified like this. No one. Why? Answer: because the Bible isn’t the only book that mentions this, that lays out the crucifixion of Jesus for us. All of our history books do, too. So this means that you are allowed to believe whatever you want about the Bible—that it’s either the Spirit-inspired word of God or just a load of crap filled with children’s stories written by patriarchal men—but that you aren’t allowed to believe what you want about the crucifixion. The crucifixion of Jesus happened. It’s a fact. A cold hard fact. How are you going to deny history? You’re like one of those idiots that deny the Holocaust if you deny history. Denying the reality of Jesus’s death would be like denying the reality of World War II, or the reality of Ancient Egypt. The only thing we’re allowed to deny about Jesus is his deity, is that He was the Son of God. You get to deny that if you want. History doesn’t force you to believe in His godship. It can’t. You can reject his virgin birth, shake that off as Mary being a lying whore if you want; you can reject his miracles, shake that off as superstition if you want; you can reject his healings, shake that off as propaganda if you want; you can reject his bold, often brash claims, shake that off as insanity if you want; you can reject his resurrection, shake that off as a scam if you want; but you don’t get to reject the way He died. There’s only one way we get to look at the death of Jesus: as truth, absolute truth. Everything else about Jesus can be refuted-- and refuted well-- but not His death, because when a man is beaten and crucified like Jesus, you are absolutely positive that He is going to die. And when you drive a spear up through His ribs and stab it through His heart after He’s been hanging on the cross for eight hours, you are absolutely positive that He is dead. And when you take His body and wrap it up in cloth and carry it to a tomb on the outskirts of town, roll a boulder that bulldozers would have trouble with, and place two of Rome’s best soldiers in front of that tomb, you are absolutely positive that He is going to stay dead. You can reject the rest of the story, but you can’t reject the climax. You can’t reject His death. I mean, I guess you could reject it if you really wanted to, but, then I suppose you’d be even crazier than those of us who believe He really is God in the flesh.

And, if His death is true, then doesn’t that require our consideration? Shouldn’t we look at this guy a little closer, maybe investigate for just a moment the possibility that this Jesus guy wasn’t just some carpenter’s kid, wasn’t just some crazy person trying to get famous? I mean, don’t we have to seriously wrestle within our souls with the idea that maybe, just maybe, Jesus actually was who He said He was, actually was the Messiah? Wouldn’t it be absolutely stupid of us to skip over a story this shocking, this soul-staggering, like it was just some stranger on the sidewalk? To just brush by this like a busboy in a restaurant? Don’t we have to confront this? Don’t we have to come to some kind of conclusion in our own souls when we witness something like this? And I would suggest this for anyone who claims the things Jesus claims and dies the way Jesus dies. If there was some guy named Steve who says that he is the Son of God, said he was born of a virgin, was capable of forgiving sins, performs all these wild miracles, has this epic crowd following his every move, and then eventually gets beaten, mocked, and murdered the same way Jesus does because of all these things, then we would have to decide some things about Steve, wouldn’t we? This is the rational thing to do, right? Wouldn’t a man like that require some kind of response from us?

And, look, I know there are some of you saying to yourself right now, “No I don’t. I don’t have to think about Jesus. Jesus was just crazy. Jesus just had a political agenda. Jesus just wanted to be remembered after He was dead. Jesus was just a nice guy with good morals. I don’t have to think about that.” And you’re right, but wouldn’t you have to be absolutely convinced that he was crazy, or had a political agenda, or just wants to be remembered, or was just a nice guy? Aren’t the consequences—nay, the stakes for your soul—way too high for you to just decide these things on some hunch, or because you read it in some book when you were in college, or because you got burned by some crappy church once? Wouldn’t you have to have a better argument—a flawless argument, in fact—than those that believe He is the Son of God?

If Jesus was just a crazy man, then he was a certifiably crazy man who needed to be in a straight-jacket locked away in some mental institute with sedatives ready every time He went around trying to heal other people or calling himself the Son of Man. And if Jesus was just simply crazy, if He just had some screws loose upstairs, then why would he go through all the ridicule, the abuse, the condemnation, and the death that He does? I mean, come on, crazy people don’t get a following the size that Jesus does. Those guys that tell twenty people in the basement of their house that they are the “chosen ones,” get them to throw on some white suits, and then pass a wine glass with cool-aid don’t get the kind of international coverage Jesus got. Jesus had an entire civilization at His heels everywhere He went. The Scriptures say that crowds pressed so hard into him that the only moment He could get alone was when He snuck off to the woods by Himself at three in the morning. You don’t get that kind of pub if you’re just some random dude trying to convert people with séances and vanilla candles in your mom’s basement. You get that kind of pub if you’re actually healing people and feeding thousands of people with some kid’s sack lunch. You only get that kind of following if you really are God.

And a political agenda? Don’t get me wrong, Jesus may have started a political movement because of the things He said and did and the way that He died, but His mission on Earth clearly wasn’t because of a political aim. I mean, you don’t have to get very far in the New Testament to see that Jesus wanted nothing to do with the political system in the Middle East. In fact, these crowds that kept pressing into Jesus wanted to crown Him king, but Jesus would constantly push it away. He kept telling them to find another one, that he was there to forgive sins and win the rights of their souls, not cause a coup or establish an earthly kingdom. He kept warning them that they’d be disappointed in his kingship because eventually He was going to have to die. Plus, not to mention, if Jesus said what he said just for some political agenda and he turns out not to be the Son of God, and is, in fact, just some mere man, how incredibly stupid is it for Jesus to die the way He does, thus never getting to see the effects of his cause? I mean, Thomas Jefferson doesn’t write the Declaration of Independence and then put a bullet in his brain, does he? No. The answer is no. He stays alive long enough to see a democracy born. Jesus, however, if he was a man on a mission for politics, never gets to see his mission carried out, and just turns out to be a really bad politician.

Or Jesus was just some guy that wanted to be famous, right? Leave some kind of crazy legacy around for us to talk about two thousand years later? And He was able to convince eleven idiots (Judas kills himself eventually) to get on board with this epic fabrication, carry it on long after Jesus is dead, and convince many of them to die brutal deaths as martyrs in His name? Right. I don’t think so. You saying Jesus just wanted to get famous by getting crucified would be like if some redneck from southwest Arkansas came out and said he was the Messiah, and then tries to prove it by turning a jug of water into a Pabst Blue Ribbon, then convinces twelve of his best friends that he is God and that they all need to spread this “good news” to the ends of the Earth after he’s dead and gone. That guy just wants his fifteen minutes of fame, right? He just wants CNN to come camp outside his mobile home for a few weeks. And, if Jesus wanted to get famous, isn’t this, once again, a pretty terrible tactic to get famous? He doesn’t get to reap any of the benefits of being famous. Instead, He just gets killed. Honestly, if He just wants to get famous, He does a pretty crappy job of it. Why does he have to get crucified to remain famous? Isn’t doing magic tricks and walking on water enough? I mean, if you can walk on water, is there anything else you can do that will make you any more famous? If someone walked on water tomorrow—like across the ocean walked on water—then I propose to you that that man would hands-down be the most famous man in the world by the time the five o’clock news aired. But Jesus, by the end of His life, has been marginalized as a mere man by His society and written off as crazy by members of His own family. After all, he spends his last day on Earth hanging naked from a cross, drowning in his own blood, and getting spit on by drunks. So, like his politics, it seems like Jesus sucked at getting famous, too. Really, really sucked.

And a nice guy with good morals? What? You’re telling me that a guy that goes around telling everyone that He is God in the flesh and can save them from eternal damnation if they believe in him, but turns out to be just some ordinary carpenter from Nazareth, is a nice guy with good morals? People are putting all of their hope in this guy. People are selling away everything they have just to walk with Him. Some people are giving up their jobs and their families because of the things He’s telling them. And you’re telling me He’s a nice guy with good morals? No way. He is a liar and the evilest, most murderous, most twisted psychopath that will ever walk the planet. Think about it. Billions of people since Jesus have died believing that believing in Him was going to get them to Heaven, but if He was just some ordinary bloke, and not God, then all these people died believing in vain, in a liar, in a murderer and are in Hell right now. And Jesus is to blame for this. He’s behind their fairytale hope. He’s behind their eternal damnation. This means that when Jesus holds in his hands the crying cheeks of the whore who the Pharisees want him to stone (with rocks) but instead Jesus tells her “I love you. I forgive. Go and sin no more,” that this was just a front for his evil master plan. This means that Jesus is responsible for the death and damnation of more innocent lives than Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Hussein combined. If Jesus was just a man, then the last thing he was some nice guy with good morals. If he was just some nice guy with good morals, why did He get crucified? Why did he endure those horrific beatings, that humiliating shame, and that overwhelming death? Why would he suffer like this if he was just a man? Was it because he was a nice guy? Because of his good morals? Or was it because He actually was The Christ? I mean, if he really is God in the flesh, if he really can forgive all our sins and heal all the holes in our hearts, and getting crucified is the only sufficient way to do that, doesn’t he take it? Doesn’t he finish this? If he’s crazy, he confesses that he’s crazy. If he’s a liar, he confesses that he’s been lying this whole time. Liars don’t get crucified for their lies. They tell the truth before it ever gets to that point. If he’s just a man and not God, he confesses that before the beatings break out. He doesn’t endure this. He doesn’t stay up there. He panics. He kicks and screams. He comes clean. He cries out that all this was just a sham, just an attempt to get famous, to be political, because he is insane. He cries out to the crowd to save him. He cries out at the top of his lungs, while blood is dripping out of his mouth, “Stop this! I’m not God! I’m a liar! I’m not who I say I am!”

But he doesn’t. He keeps his mouth shut. He endures this. He suffers for you and for me. He takes the beating. He wears the crown. He takes the mockery. He takes the spit. He takes the shame, all the utter humiliation. He takes the cross like a champ, like he really is the God of the Universe, like He is exactly who He said He was. He does this. He finishes it. He makes history. He makes truth. He gets crucified.

And I know some of you don’t agree with me on this, don’t believe any of this at all, and I think that’s absolutely fine. I’m sure you have good reasons. I’m just asking you to have good reasons, really, really good reasons before you shove Jesus off as just another guy in our history books, because I think you and I can both agree that there’s something different about Him; that He’s just not another guy in our history books. And if that’s the case, then that begs the question: who is He? That’s all I’m asking. That’s all I thought about in the park on Saturday while My Friend was telling me these things. I told you He could talk my ear off. I’m just asking you to give this Jesus guy some thought. I’m not asking you to believe like I do. I’m not asking you to admit that my way is right and other ways are wrong. I’m just asking you to consider Jesus, to maybe see if His way is right and the rest of us are wrong—dead wrong. I’m just asking you to wrestle a little. That’s all. And, if you’re wrestling and get to a point where you still don’t buy this thing, that’s fine. Really, it is. We can still be friends I hope. We can still sit down over beers in some smoky bar and discuss those pretty girls in the park. We can still talk story with each other. And I’d still invite you to my birthday party.

I hope I can still come to yours.

**Disclaimer: If you made it this far, that means you read this whole thing. Thank you for that. It means a lot to me.