Believing

“I’ll be back in three days.”
That was the essential truth of Christ’s final night with His disciples, even though He’d told them before. They had all been with Him for the better part of three and a half years. They knew His personal habits, His quirks, His personal preferences in His day to day activities. He always spoke truth even when unpleasant, and this time was no different from any other in that respect. He was telling them that the “Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”(Mark 8:31)
So He told them the truth, but what if they had really believed Him when He first told them? How would their lives have been different?
I think it’s fairly obvious they didn’t believe His statement. If they had believed, Peter would have had no need to deny Him three times that night. Thomas would not have needed to touch His sundered flesh, or reach inside the gaping hole in His side. It was essential, I think, for them to see Christ still alive in spite of the wounds He still retained. He was not a healed risen Lord. He lived in spite of the wounds inflicted on Him outside of the constraints of human flesh. Organs were torn apart. They could not function. Yet He lived. God provided life even in the face of death as the only possible result of these wounds.
If they had truly believed Christ from the beginning they would never have needed to lock themselves away in fear of the authorities. If they had believed they would have had no fear of anything.
But the other half of the equation is simply this: Since they did not believe their ultimate subsequent faith was strengthened by the conceptions it had to overcome. They had to finally and completely understand that God was able and willing to overcome human limitations for their sake, because in the end they would need to do the same.
If they had really believed Him they would have understood His sacrifice. They had to see death conquered from the human side.
Assuming His victory would have rendered it meaningless.
Suddenly, what Christ had been telling them became reality. There was no sense of symbolism, or metaphor. There was no sense of ceremony, or fantasy.
One reality had been replaced by another that was completely outside of their experience.
They had always said they believed, but they knew what they had seen.
They saw the blood and pain. They saw the cross. They knew there was no coming back from what they, being human, knew to be final.
They knew what they saw with their own eyes, and they knew it was true. Up to that point they only believed in themselves and the knowledge they had accumulated during their lifetimes.
Their unbelief provides the contrast between what we have, and what we need.
That is the difference between stated belief and actual belief.
Between stated faith and actual faith.
Between fantasy and reality.
Between the life we want to live, and the life we actually live.
It is a decision to live up to a certain potential.
The decision to live as a potential hypocrite, or a potential martyr.
Each way of life has the potential to lead to either way of death whether you are called specifically to it or not.
We tend to think that the disciples had about three and a half years to figure it out, but it was really only three days.
They had three days to figure out if they were going to live by what He said was true, or continue to live life based on the failure of their own beliefs in fear of man. Because everything He had said and done was leading up to that period after His death.
There was one thing that the disciples got right about Jesus.
They understood that Jesus was going to do Something Big that they didn’t have to do anything about.
They weren’t doing anything and they were ok with that.
They didn’t mind that Jesus was going be the front man in a revolution (they thought). The last thing they wanted was to be on the receiving end of the first blow struck.
When they thought they knew what was coming they didn’t mind following what they believed in, because they still believed in themselves.
When Jesus was doing what they thought He was doing, they were happy.
It was when He left the path they thought they had been on that they weren’t so sure about their own actions anymore. I think they looked back on their actions over the previous three years and said to themselves,
“Maybe we’ve been stirring the wrong pot after all.”
The First Communion occurred before the Crucifixion.
When Christ broke the bread, He knew the pain of His broken body. (“This is my body, given for you…”)
When He poured the wine did He knew the blood He would shed. (“This is my blood…which is poured out for many..)
Since this came prior to the Crucifixion it is no wonder then that the disciples were so thoroughly confused.
They thought they were celebrating the Passover; a ceremony commemorating their survival. What was this talk of betrayal and death?
How could this pinnacle of the most significant week of their lives turn so quickly into what it did, particularly in light of His entrance to Jerusalem just the week before?
And then, against all expectation, He died.

But then He rose.
It was, again, the last thing they expected.
I can just imagine them thinking:
“He spends all this time speaking in parables and then goes literal on us?!”
Look at the contrast of their lives before and after their belief.
When Peter saw Him on the shore after He had risen he jumped in the water to swim to shore rather than wait for the boat. The minute he entered the water I think he yearned to break the surface just so his eyes could rest on Him again. When his feet touched the stones on the shore he felt nothing, for his need to see the Living Christ overwhelmed the need for any other comfort.
They preached openly in spite of the opposition of the authorities they originally hid from. They endured prison and torture. They joined the ranks of Hebrews “great cloud of witnesses” because they ultimately believed Him to the exclusion of all others, receiving the faith He offered.
Judas actively betrayed Him, and Peter actively denied Him, but both the betrayal and the denial had the same effect of cutting them off from God. These are important events, but I think the more important issue is that someone returned. I have to wonder which was the greater sorrow to Jesus; that Judas betrayed Him, or that Judas never gave Christ the chance to forgive him?
Faith is a gift of God; belief is a choice of man.
His gift is giving us Someone to believe in.
Faith in Christ means that we should believe everything He believes about us. He believes we are worth much, and because He made it so we must know that it is true. The logic is inescapable, yet we’d much rather see ourselves as worthless. It’s easier to accept our own failure when we don’t have to see how far we’ve fallen. It’s easier to be a victim than it is to take responsibility.
It’s easier in our own mental condition to say “Oops.”, and just move on than it is to acknowledge the pain we’ve caused someone else and ask forgiveness, in addition to asking Him to save us as well.

“Lord I believe. Help my unbelief!” He has overcome the greatest obstacle to my belief by conquering death, so the greater my faith has the potential to be.

In so many ways it all boils down to the difference between the words “say” and “do”.
Every day I make a determination about what I believe. I make a choice about what actions I will take in light of my Christian beliefs, and I make a choice to defy those beliefs as well.
This is the point of my sin.
The professions I make with what I say and what I do are often entirely different. Sometimes it may even be questionable even when my words and actions match simply because my motivations for those actions are known only to God and myself.
The struggle is completely internal, and usually unseen.
The disciples couldn’t keep any secrets from Christ. They weren’t getting away with anything when they sinned. Christ knew what they expected of Him, and He went so far as to tell them what they could expect of Him. They simply failed to understand it, or perhaps more accurately they chose to understand it in the way they wished it to be.
The disciples, just as we ourselves, learned to live by their own version of the truth.
And so it happens that the disciples and I have a great deal more in common than I would like to admit. I often wonder if the disciples were chosen solely as examples of the potential failures in our human condition that lead to the conflicts of faith that we all experience.
They made the choice to follow Him, and then despite having all their sins identified in His presence, they made the choice to stay as well.
Why?
When my natural tendency is to run from anyone who would identify my shame, why would they stay with Him?
Christ pursued the disciples. He approached them and said “Follow me.”
And if they are examples of human failings, they are also examples of saving Grace.
They are examples of the result of succumbing to the relentless pursuit of the Holy.
I am like them in my failings, but I am as much like them in the potential of what I can be, because the Source of strength involved, and its purpose, are the same.
Why do I stay?
Grace.
Forgiveness.
Mercy.
I stay, because He stays.
He came back for me!
And for that reason alone I can say on Easter with full conviction…
I Believe!©2008 Dan Bode