Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-26-26

Skeptics abound in our society, around the world, and of course are manifest throughout the entire human race. Doubting is part of humanity’s DNA. Humankind is getting “smarter”; we can walk on the moon and we might cure cancer, but there still are flat-earthers, and believers in evolution, among us.

Skepticism is a prime component of agnosticism and atheism. Of course. Is there a God, really? Can He show Himself to us? Why not? Why did His Son come to earth as a baby, not a king? Did a man really perform miracles like healing the afflicted, walking on water, raising the dead? Why would He allow Himself to be tortured and killed? His Resurrection easily could have been faked; how could Romans, Jews, and other witnesses of the time not recognize the likelihood of fraud and deception?

Well, as you might anticipate, I will offer answers to these questions. Of course God exists; He has left His imprint on me, and all of us as individuals. If He did not create the universe, who did? – which in logic is not sufficient evidence, but I patiently will await a better answer. (If there was a Big Bang, who triggered the Bang; and what existed before it? And when we get to the edges of the universe… what is beyond them? Dear God: my head hurts, please help me…) Jesus came as a baby in humility, to identify with us. These and other questions fulfilled myriad prophesies.

Helpless skeptics and arrogant haters flail about, when they allege fraud and deception by Jesus and His Disciples. Yet scoffers scoff. They love the darkness and embrace rebellion.

Sixty years ago a British Jew called Hugh Schonfield wrote a book, The Passover Plot, that carefully laid out a story that a Jesus conspired with others to fake his death and resurrection in order to claim the realized predictions of a rebel who would challenge Roman rule over Palestine. It was a popular book and movie that, if little else, encouraged increased skepticism among the scoffers and doubters.

It has been that way through the centuries. Nothing new. Do you think you would more easily, or deeply, believe in Jesus if you could only see Him? Well, many of His day saw Him, and witnessed miracles… and yet doubted. Even some Disciples, those who walked and lived with Jesus, scattered like dry leaves on a windy day, “when push came to shove.” Would you react differently than they did? Really?

Here is a test – or Exhibits A through M or so, if this were a trial. Let us review the lives of the 12 Disciples after Jesus ascended to Heaven.

Judas drove himself to suicide, filled with remorse, after betraying the Savior.

James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa.

Peter was crucified – upside-down because he wanted to avoid comparison with Jesus.

Andrew: Crucified on an X-shaped cross in present-day Russia, on a missionary trip.

Philip was executed, probably in north Africa.

Thomas, the Disciple who once doubted, was killed with a spear as a missionary in India.

Matthew was martyred in Ethiopia while establishing some of the first Christian churches.

James, son of Alphaeus, was thrown from the Temple and then stoned to death.

Jude was a missionary to Persia, where he was martyred.

Simon “the Zealot” likewise was murdered in Persia.

Matthias, chosen to replace Judas, was burned at the stake in Syria.

Bartholomew was whipped to death and beheaded in southern Arabia.

John was the last to die – and the only Disciple to die of natural causes, although exiled to the remote Isle of Patmos. It was there he transcribed the Book of Revelation.

Paul, the persecutor of Christians who converted and became a missionary and author of half of the New Testament, was martyred in Rome. My pied-a-terre in that city is near the Basilica of “St-Paul-Outside-the-Walls,” a wonderful site for contemplation.

This list of names is more historical than canonical. The Bible traces only two martyrs in the group; the rest are of tradition and local accounts, but surely reliable. Historians of the day, chiefly the Jew Josephus, and Eusebius, and Origen recorded the activities and deaths of the early church leaders.

How many of these martyrs and men who sacrificed themselves were skeptical of Jesus’s divinity when they gave up their lives? Obviously, none.

If they had participated in hoaxes and frauds, would they have carried to their graves the schemes to torture, crucifixion, impaling, burning at the stake, beheading? Would you?

I would not die for a scam artist; and it would take a rock-solid embrace of Jesus as the Son of God, Who remains the lover of my soul and clearly is the Savior of humankind, for me to choose any of these deaths over confessing a Passover Plot.

Would you choose their lives – and deaths – if it came to that?

But it might come to that for all of us: the Bible foretells a tribulation and persecution of the believers in End Times.

Would you die for a lie?

Would you die for the Truth?

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Click: When I Am Laid in Earth

12-18-23

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but there are some things about Christmas that manage to rankle us. It is not the fault of the little baby Jesus but let’s be honest, a lot of us register annoyance about a lot of things a lot of times around Christmas. I’m making a list and checking it twice.

“Christmas is just getting too commercial.” “Why do the stores start putting Christmas stuff out earlier and earlier?” “We have to fight the crowds again?” “Oh, gosh, half the lights are out!” “Where did we pack the decorations?” “Wasn’t it our turn last year?” “Oh! I forgot to get her a present!” “Those dumb songs on the radio again!”

… and so on. Notice that none of these familiar complaints is about God becoming incarnate to live among humankind, to offer us a means of salvation, eventually to die for our sins. No recorded complaints from Mary and Joseph, who found no place to stay, no clean or comfortable place to give birth. We know that story.

I have a version of that story, not in the Bible but plausible – that there was “no room in the inn,” or any inns in Bethlehem, not because the town was crowded during tax-season. Perhaps the innkeepers did not want a girl who was pregnant before she was married staying in their establishments. If that is the case, we can add that such indignity to Mary, the virgin miraculously bearing the Son of God Almighty, brought forth no complaints from her.

A manger is something unknown to most contemporary folk. It was not a place where animals lay, as this Baby would, which would be humble enough. It was where animals ate; so in the straw where Jesus was placed there was spittle, chunks of old food, and bugs.

Yet that familiar scene is abstract to people today; or at least it is sanitized. Our mangers are neat folding cribs in displays. The stable is an organized crèche in paintings. The animals are now depicted as Disney-like four-legged witnesses; but at the time they were smelly creatures that left their droppings on the nearby ground.

So it all seems abstract, despite the best efforts of Hallmark cards and inflated-plastic front-yard arrangements. The abstractions are seductive: 2000 years ago; a faraway land; donkeys as transportation. Not to mention the history and theology: how would most of us react if a poor couple showed up at our doors, the young unmarried girl about to give birth; perhaps even claiming to bear the Savior of humankind?

I invite you to think of this familiar-but-abstract story in another way.

Women can imagine, but scarcely identify, with Mary. We know from her prayer called the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”) that she could hardly comprehend the miracle. Some men might be able to identify with the surprising news that confronted Joseph, that his girlfriend was already pregnant. However, he and Mary both knew what the angel shared; and they knew Scripture (as recorded later in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mary and Joseph had separate bloodlines, of course, but each fulfilled ancient prophesies about the ancestry of the coming Messiah).

But I suggest that the easiest member of that young family with whom we can identify is not Mary, not Joseph, but… Jesus Himself.

The birth of Jesus was foretold. God planned for that Son to be born.

God knew each of us, too – before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs.

Jesus was the Son of God.

We, as Christians, are the Children of God.

Jesus came to earth with a Holy Mission to fulfill.

Each one of us has a calling, too; God has a will for our lives.

Despite coming from Glory, Jesus was a Man of Sorrows, destined to suffer and die.

As followers of Christ, our lot is to endure persecution for His Name’s sake.

Jesus’s Kingdom is not of this world; He prepares a place for you in Glory.

“This world is not our home”; we trust in life eternal, in Paradise with the Savior.

We might not have been born in mangers, yet during this Christmas season let us more closely identify with “our elder brother Jesus.” He came to earth, after all, to identify with us… to know temptation and pain and suffering and sorrow. Being without sin Himself, that Holy Child would eventually reach out and take our sins upon Himself.

Marys can’t do that. Josephs can’t do that. Even angels can’t do that. Jesus did. Jesus does.

Imagine the Savior of your soul in the virtual manger next to you. The only difference? He is the Son of God. But imagine at the same time something not so abstract: We have the opportunity to have Jesus live within our hearts. The Messiah came to earth, born a humble Babe, in order to reconcile you in that matter too.

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Click: Jesus At the Mall