Who is My Mother, Brother, Sisters? The Shame of the Cross in Perspective.

This is the grown up version of Lesson #42 of my next book designed for families – Context for Kids: Honor and Shame in the Bible, due out next month. Ever wonder why even children in non-Western cultures won’t deny Messiah – even when threatened with death?

Never have I labored over a teaching to the point of becoming physically ill, nor have I ever before been burdened with such overwhelming grief over the responsibility of teaching something in such a way as to be absolutely honest and to bring honor to my Savior. I couldn’t comprehend how to do it – how do I teach adults, much less adolescents and teens, about the shame of the cross. After soliciting prayer from a good friend and mentor yesterday afternoon, it finally dawned on me and I saw diverse elements in the Scriptures come together in an unexpected way.

I admit it, I never saw these Scriptures as being applicable beyond the confines of a fictive kinship group.

Matt 12:48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark 3 and Luke 8 also record this account, which I always simply took at face value. A fictive kinship group describes the phenomenon where people claim family status with non-blood kin based upon some other agreed upon criteria (the best example might be the kinship between men who were part of the same platoon for the duration of a war). In this case, Yeshua (Jesus) claims that all who do the will of God are part of Yeshua’s kinship group. So what then is the will of the Father in Heaven? Sometimes we come up with easy, pat answers. I was laboring in prayer yesterday afternoon, deeply distressed, about the crucifixion of Yeshua – even to the point of being physically ill. I was wondering how to present the horrifying shame of the cross to younger people – because even Mel Gibson’s The Passion portrayed a dignified Messiah on the cross, in terrible pain and yet allowed to retain His dignity. We in the West like to focus on His suffering as though physical pain is the worst possible, and yet a teenager who cuts himself in order to avoid the pain within testifies to the fact that physical pain is not the worst manifestation of agony. Crucifixion wasn’t about physical pain, it was about stripping a man of his most precious commodity, his honor – subjecting him to utter and complete ruination, agony within and without, stripping Him of every shred of dignity and then allowing him to endure that shame as he died very slowly to the delight of the gathered crowds. There are things about crucifixion that no movie would ever dare portray. Our Savior was humiliated beyond our ability to comprehend, but we don’t like looking at a shamed Messiah. We like to see Him up there, wronged but still a picture of dignity. He had to bear our shame, and our humiliation – and our shame and humiliation, well-deserved, could not be dressed up in dignity. We don’t want to really see what our shame looked like. Really, it doesn’t look nearly as bad when the only pain being inflicted is portrayed as physical. People from honor/shame cultures understand this intrinsically, and are unwilling to dishonor Yeshua once they have tasted His salvation; they die before denying Him whereas in the West, we often don’t even want to face our family’s wrath if we choose to celebrate Passover and Sukkot instead of Easter and Christmas.

But back to the story, as I was praying about how to do this, heartbroken and sick – these verses came to me and I finally got it.

John 19:25 but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Why the mention of this? I always wondered. Mary had several other sons – she had men to take care of her. Why give her to John? Yeshua, as first born, could only hand His mother over to a family member, and why was John always referred to as the “disciple Jesus loved?”

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

And I understood, there at the foot of the cross we learned the will of the Father – look upon the full shame of the cross and never, ever look away again. Never forget what our shame looked like. Never forget the sight of the Man who bore it for us. We can’t turn our heads away from the shame that He endured, our shame, the full measure of it. In crucifixion there was no dignity afforded the victim. He was not given the dignity of being clothed even in a loincloth, the flies and birds probably didn’t leave Him alone, flogging and crucifixion were designed to wear a man out so quickly that he wouldn’t even retain control over his own bowels and bladder. We want a dignified Savior because it hurts too badly to look at the true measure and seriousness of our shameful sins. Over and over again throughout the Scriptures, front to back, we are told of that shame, and the penalty of that shame. That shame had to be taken away by someone, and we can at least look at it, and once we do we had better never think we can turn away or deny it. We were freed yes, and we should rejoice, but we don’t dare forget it.

“Take up your cross and follow me.”

To be crucified was the greatest shame imaginable, and we are commanded to own that shame as having been our own, and to live in such a way as to never purposefully shame Him again.

Heb 6:4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt

We cannot accept His suffering for our shame and then reduce Him to shame again by denying Him. If we deny Yeshua, we are saying that He rightly died as a criminal for the crime of claiming to be the Son of God. We are guilty of convicting the one who was shamed for our sake – we cannot hold Him up to that shame and contempt again after that. Peter denied Yeshua before He went through that shame, but never afterwards. Not one of them denied Him or ran away afterwards.

Hebrews 9:27 tells us plainly that man is destined to die once – we cannot crucify our Master again.

People in honor/shame cultures understand this. They are willing to face death, even at the hands of their own families.

Six times in I Corinthians, Paul talked about the foolishness of the cross, and of the foolishness of the wisdom of God – as perceived by the world. To follow a shamed criminal in the first century world was a stumbling block for the Judeans (many of the Jerusalem elites) and foolishness to the Gentiles.

In the end, as He was about to die, Yeshua hung there in full sight of the mockers and scoffers who watched crucifixions for the entertaining public spectacle that they were – and He hung there in front of His mother, brother and sisters – naked, His genitalia swollen for the crowd to gawk at, His body distorted out of shape, covered in His own blood and feces.

His mother Mary
John
Mary, wife of Cleopas
Mary Magdalene

They did not despise the shame of the cross, they looked at that shame with both eyes opened – they did the will of the Father in Heaven and never turned away. It is loyalty, and not genetics, that set them apart as His family – and in the end, that meant that Yeshua only had one brother to whom He could entrust His mother.

Do you see the love with which He has loved us? Do you see the absolute loyalty demanded of us?

Glory be to our Great King that Yeshua is no longer on that cross, no longer shamed but instead honored, exalted and glorified – but we can’t afford to forget what He endured so that our shame could be removed. We must live such lives that we never bring Him to shame on purpose ever again. I don’t cherish that old rugged cross, but I cherish the One who died upon it – may my life be well-spent in His service.

I am picking up my cross, I am owning my shame that was taken from me, and I am following Him.

Building His Kingdom or Simply Kingdom-Building?

So yesterday, I went on my facebook newsfeed – which I rarely do. It was uplifting as well as disheartening. If you know me on social media, I am sure you’ve noticed that I am incredibly grumpy this week – I have never been good at hiding my emotions.

There are people I see out there rising up as leaders by putting aside this or that difference, doing away with the labeling, and the finger pointing. There are people who are starting to shine like stars in the firmament because they want to come together as a Body for the good of the Kingdom of Heaven, not sweating the small stuff but proclaiming His majesty, His honor and His character. I see people beginning to put aside the building of their own kingdoms – ceasing the worldy push to crush other ministries, to destroy all other opinions through shame and by force if necessary, in an attempt to be the one on the top of the pile determining what everyone else has to believe. I see people leaving race and country at the door. To the people who are doing that, you are like light in this dark world. It’s refreshing to see people who do not mistake their own views as some sort of doctrinal litmus test of personal worth.

But the other half is growing darker. People who seek out supremacy not through true virtue or excellence or by doing simply what they were called to do, but instead through crushing those who disagree under their feet. People who make hateful disciples who go here and there stirring up dissension and division. People who are so busy building up their own kingdoms that they tear down God’s people and don’t even look back to see if they are mortally wounded. People for whom doctrine is more important than the person they are shouting it at. I see people in love with their own race. I see people of the covenant hating each other based on genetics, and using race in order to sort out who should be on top – who should and should not be teaching, listened to, and even loved.

I don’t degrade other people’s ministries by name, but there are two types.

The first type is working for the Kingdom – they recognize that the Bride is not their Bride but the King’s. All they want to do is prepare the Body to be that perfect Bride, because they love the King. They treat her as a Bride should be treated, with respect. They love the Body, caring for it as their own Body – recognizing that a Body can’t remain broken into pieces or it will die. Realizing that parts must work together as a whole with one head, who is Messiah – everyone else is just “parts.” These are people who rebuke sparingly but love boldly, who aren’t in it for their own honor but for the honor of their King.

The second type is building their own Kingdom. These types of believers have decided what their ideal bride looks like and are trying to make her into that image. She cares about what they want her to care about, and she talks the way they think she should talk, believes the things they think she should believe, does things exactly the way they think she should do things, and bows down at the altar of their pet doctrines. She loves who they love and hates who they hate. If she does not, then they guilt her and shame her and then label her as rejected. They use her (and her wallet) to do their bidding, to spread their message, and build their own kingdoms – and they won’t rest until she is fit to satisfy their needs. They make sure that she is loyal to their ministry, and zealously and jealousy do all in their power to keep her from even looking elsewhere. They have her fooled into believing that she really can serve two masters.

Are we tired yet of this? And it isn’t even just ministries – it’s also rogue people on social media doing all they can to get followers. Are we tired of events devoted to tearing other people down? Lists comparing different denominations and beliefs to one another so that they can be boiled down to stereotypes and generalizations whose only purpose is to divide and promote contempt? Are we sick and tired yet of people who put up barriers and ignore what others are doing right in the pursuit of proclaiming what they are doing wrong?

I’m not willing to follow or promote any ministry who can’t play nice with others, who create needless separations between the citizens of the Kingdom based on anything. Yeshua brought the sword, but He never handed it over to me. In these days we are called to come together as one Body, but there are many who want to make sure that never happens, or if it does, only in the way that THEY think it should happen. We have one King, one Head, one Master – anyone you can physically see on this earth right now does not qualify. Let us all pursue the Unseen One.

I mean – I can’t be the only one who has noticed how many ministries out there are trying to make us into their own ideal girlfriends when we are supposed to be in preparation to be the Bride. We need elders in this Body, yes, but they have to stop being the “yes men” – and instead become the “yes, Lords.” We need leaders, but they have to be leading us in the right direction, and not simply towards themselves.

So yes, I’ve been grumpy. Seeing too much of this lately – but everyone has to choose which Kingdom they are going to serve for themselves. The thing is, they have to have the freedom to make that choice – and not everyone trusts them to make that choice without a nice unhealthy dose of manipulation. And manipulation – it produces girlfriends and monsters, not a Bride.

The World is NOT Ending Tomorrow

Hey! I deal with new people all the time and the thing I hear most often is –

“HELP! I don’t know anything and I see all this scary stuff on people’s newsfeeds and I am worried that I don’t have enough time to learn what I need to know. I had no idea I was on the wrong path and now I feel like I have been blindsided! I feel like I have too far to travel – like there’s no hope and there’s no use even trying.”

I have news for you – you WERE blindsided. The Father called you when He called you, for a reason, and it wasn’t so that you would only have a few weeks to prepare. Don’t get discouraged, start small – don’t listen to the fear mongering, and do NOT listen to the voices telling you that you have to have everything figured out tomorrow. It’s impossible. No one would expect it of you, well no one reasonable anyway.

Find some reasonable people who are willing to travel with you in patience and kindness. Watch out for the unloving, grumpy, divisive, impatient, cruel, prideful, harsh, volatile and who lack the ability to control their tongues – that isn’t zeal, it’s just bad, immature fruit. Get with those people and you will feel hopeless in a big hurry. You’ll fall into fear, and then anger and then pride – then you will be derailed. Then you will camp out around some pointless agenda and stop growing. This walk is about growing, every single day, not about growing all in one day because it doesn’t work like that. When you do find yourself focusing on one thing like it’s the holy grail, snap out of it and get back on the path and don’t waste your time looking back and kicking yourself.

You’re a little child again, so treat yourself like you’d treat a toddler – with kindness and compassion. This is the Kingdom of Heaven, not New York City. There are unmerciful people out there who simply want to get everyone in a panic – why? Because they are in a panic and they feel better if you join them in it. Don’t go there, there is no profit in it.

Maybe you came late to the game but you are in the game – learn the rules, learn good sportsmanship, learn to play like a member of a team, listen to your coaches and ignore the hecklers. And REALLY ignore the people who criticize the way you play when you’ve never even seen them on the court…. (social media does not count as the court, by the way – we can all be total fakers there)

Find one decent person and then you will generally find that their friends are pretty decent as well. Ally yourself with the anger management people and you will generally find out that their friends are jerks and doormats.

Listen, there’s time to make sure that you are with the right kind of people, to find the right kind of teachers, and to explore the path you are on. It’s okay – the only people who are going to scream about your childlike progress are also the kind of folks who resent being stuck behind a wheelchair in a crowded store. Don’t worry about pleasing people who thrive on being offended and aren’t going to rest until you are offended too – they don’t define your future success.

So I guess I am saying – just chill out. There are people out there who won’t take into account how long you’ve been walking this out, they don’t care – they just want to control the way you think and feel about the things they think are important.

Context For Kids – A New Homeschooling Supplementary Curriculum for Bible/History

Hey all, just wanted to give everyone a heads up about my newest project. I am working on an Ancient Near Eastern/First Century Scriptural context history/Bible curriculum. Over the next year, I plan to release a series of mini-textbooks that will cover a wide range of subjects.

Why try to teach scriptural context to kids? Well, frankly because they are more open to it and they are at that inquisitive age where they aren’t afraid to look into history and dig into the dirt to find out more about the Bible world. I am tired of kids graduating from high school and going off to college only to abandon the Bible and the faith because they get told that the Bible is a book of fairy tales with no historical validity at all. Frankly, they need support, and they need to be well-armed with real archaeology and a real knowledge of why the Bible isn’t just a religious manual but an actual historical document.

People who know me, know my two ministry passions are character and context. As much as possible, I want to instill these things into new believers and now I feel I have the opportunity to instill them into the next generation of Bible scholars, ministers, and believers. I believe that the kids in school right now are the pivotal generation – you’ve probably noticed that they are special, they are different than we were. But they also face more challenges.

Knowing how to study and apply scripture protects our kids from the hinky charlatans out there who talk a good game but are frankly preaching vain imaginations. When people know context, they know when someone is making things up. When people know context, they can defend our Messiah and stand firm behind Him.

I want to teach kids the difference between the way we live, think, and talk in the 21st century and they way they lived, thought and talked in the time of Abraham through the time of Messiah. I want to make Bible context a family effort – which is why so many of my homework assignments take place around the dinner table.

My motto is “Become a Bible Detective.” I want kids to enjoy opening their Bibles, looking for familiar elements in the situations they will start seeing not as stories, but as real life accounts.

In the coming weeks, I will be posting sample lessons and giving updates. I hope to have the first 6 weeks of curriculum published by early October. Are you excited? I sure am!

PS – I have it on good account that there will also be some context video series on the way from some of my co-teachers at WIT-Talmidim. I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, but a certain lady is talking about doing a full Temple series for kids and a certain gentleman is talking about doing some context videos as well. So regardless of whether you like to read or watch or both, there are some exciting developments coming your way.

Charity vs Community: Extending Dignity vs Our Misguided Attitudes about Serving the “Least of These”

Andrew and myself in 2002

A collection of my ramblings over the past 24 hours based on my experiences as a special needs mom and being a special needs person:

A dear friend inspired the words today for something that has been on my heart for weeks now.

You know what? People who are sick, disabled, wrongly imprisoned, poor, widowed, orphaned – they aren’t our charity cases. Yeshua called them the “least of these” because they were those who had the least honor/dignity attributed to them in society, not because we should consider them least, or so we could pat ourselves on the back for deigning to do things for them. Yeshua said that as we treat them, we are treating Him. Is it then charity to feed the poor, visit the sick, include the disabled, get justice for the prisoner, care for the widows and orphans? No, it isn’t charity but righting a wrong. No one truly in need wants to be a charity case and we certainly wouldn’t be considering anything we do for Yeshua to be charity. We do for them because we would want it to be done for us – because they are people, and their social status doesn’t change their needs for equity in the Kingdom, nor their basic humanity and need for dignity.

And that’s the problem – dignity. We are a society that is geared towards the Most of these, not the least of these. The healthy, the able-bodied, the free, those who can pay their bills, and the nuclear family. And then we congratulate ourselves for including those “special” cases – when we really don’t want to slow down at all, when we want to focus on how fast we want to go and what we want to get done and how to do it with the least amount of hassle.

That’s what being a special needs mom has taught me, and being a special needs person on top of that. Giving dignity to those who don’t have it in the eyes of the world through no fault of their own – just like Yeshua.

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I am not some kind of sainted person for adopting a special needs child – what I am is a barren woman who needed a child, and adopted a child who needed a mother. That isn’t charity, that is community – it shouldn’t be considered strange, or even noble – because there was nothing noble about it. On the adoption rolls, Andrew would have been considered to be one of the least of these, a potential adoptee without as much honor/dignity/worth in the eyes of the prospective parents and in the eyes of the rest of the world who want, by and large, healthy and (let’s face it) white babies (even though the waiting list for biracial babies like my kids is also very, very deep, supply pales in comparison with demand).

What I didn’t realize. almost 15 years ago, was that God was teaching me about the importance of community over individual. Andrew, beyond being disabled (and stubborn as heck), is a member of the community of Israel – and as such is entitled to both honor and dignity. Not fake honor and fake dignity, not sometimes inclusion on special occasions – but the real honor and dignity afforded to each member of the community in good standing not out of charity and pity, but rooted in the basic recognition of their worth and needs.

As I wrote last night, everyone has a need to be and feel like a functioning member of the community and being disabled doesn’t change that need or that calling. If anything, it intensifies it, because the sense of shame can be suffocating and so the need for restoration of dignity is far more acute.

Did you know that I went full panic mode at Revive in Dallas because someone waved a giant worship flag over my head and my sensory processing disorder kicked into high gear? I had spent much of the events in the big auditorium wearing earplugs or with my hands over my ears in order to put off the overload. It was incredibly embarassing, but it is also important for me to worship with the community. Does the disability negate my need to be in the community worshiping our King? Does it mean that I have less capacity to serve in the Kingdom? No, but it does mean that sometimes someone is going to have to help me out – as Teresa from Cuppa Shebrews did when she saw what was happening. But I saw no charity in her eyes, I saw a family member treating me like a member of the community. That’s rare.

That right there was embarassing to admit to. In this community there are some who believe that if you are afflicted, it is because of sin – and yet this is nothing but my personal thorn in the flesh, a thorn that tests the character of others and tries their hearts and serves to continually humble me.

And I look at my humiliation and then I cast an eye on my beloved son, whose disability is exponentially worse than mine and far more humiliating, and has afflicted him from birth – whereas I was spared until I had a stroke at the age of 27. If anything, he needs fellowship and community far more than I do. He needs acceptance as a human first and foremost, as every citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is entitled to as the sons of God. He needs inclusion, and he needs to know that slowing down for him really isn’t burdening anyone – mostly we go fast simply out of our need for constant entertainment and stimulation. We move too fast for the sick and infirm – and the elderly who we would do well to take the time to sit and listen to. We move too extravagantly for the poor and needy. We move too selfishly to take the time to think of the oppressed.

Community requires slowing down, and we are moving way too fast. The most of these are setting the pace, and it isn’t a very equitable one.