Scripture Focus: John 15.18-25
18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ t If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

Reflection: Countering Hatred
By John Tillman

Hatred has grown in the two years since I first wrote on this passage. Hatred is big business. 

Hatred sells papers and generates page views. Hatred fuels political fundraising. Hatred builds audiences. Selling hatred earns advancement in a world where every follower and every click means not just money, but power.

It should be no surprise when the world’s hate machine turns on Christians. It’s not like Jesus didn’t warn us this would happen. When Christianity was a cultural norm, Christ’s words about the world hating us because it hated him first could seem odd. In today’s world, they make sense.

True persecution around the world has risen. Christians who aren’t facing hatred or persecution from governments or other religions are, increasingly, facing it from each other. Some Christians are embracing or expressing hatred in other ways, including violence. 

Christians engaging in violence based on misguided interpretations of scripture is, sadly, nothing new. Christians brutally criticizing each other to the point that people part ways with their denominations or the faith is also, sadly, not new.

Even if we are hated by the world, we must not be tempted to embrace worldly solutions. The world says to acquire power and crush our haters. This is unacceptable and antithetical for Christians. 

Power can’t make someone not hate us. The solutions to hatred are relational, not political. If our truly persecuted (not just hated) brothers and sisters are courageously loving and forgiving Muslims, Atheists, and others who torture and kill them, how can we do less from our relatively safe position?

Jesus said, “they have seen [his works]…yet they have hated.” (John 15.24) The mission Jesus gave his disciples in the face of hatred was to show them the Father’s works. Have we done so? Or have we reflected hatred back to the world?

The gospel solution to hate is to love our enemies, overcoming evil with good. It is better to suffer worldly loss (an election, our lives, or anything else) than to win using the tactics of the world. (Temptation of Jesus: Matthew 4.1-11; Luke 4.1-14)

Perhaps one reason we hold on to hate and power, refusing to love our enemies is that at heart, we really don’t want to end up like Jesus—powerless and crucified. Yet, ending up like Jesus is the chief goal of Christianity.

May the Holy Spirit work in us to make us more willing to lay down on a cross than to crucify someone.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
Today if you shall hear His voice, harden not your heart.

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis TickleToday’s Readings
Exodus 36 (Listen – 4:47) 
John 15 (Listen – 3:20)

Read more about Ending up Like Jesus
Christians must recognize that there are no political solutions to being hated.

Read more about Overcoming Hatred :: Worldwide Prayer
This prayer’s blunt confession is one that our culture deeply needs to pray. We are consumed by hatred. God have mercy on us.

Scripture Focus: John 12.12-13
12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,
“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

Reflection: What Wondrous Love Is This? — Lenten Hymns
By Jon Polk

While the anonymous author of the hymn text “What Wondrous Love is This” may be lost to history, its lyrical beauty and simplicity are timeless.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

The hymn originates from the Appalachian region of the United States in the early 1800s. While hymnals were not commonplace at the time, the lyrics were first published in two different camp meeting songbooks in 1811, one in Lynchburg, Virginia, and the other in Lexington, Kentucky.

Because hymn books were rare, authors would often write lyrics that were simple and repetitive to aid congregations in learning the songs. This was not indicative of a poor writer, rather the repetition served to increase retention of the words and message.

The tune of the hymn was similar to a 1701 English song, “The Ballad of Captain Kidd,” which recounted the exploits of a sailor who had been executed for piracy. Many other popular songs had also been set to the same melody. In this way, the tune was memorable and easy to learn, much like singing “Amazing Grace” to the tune of The Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling” or the old Gilligan’s Island TV show theme.

Furthermore, the song was discovered by composer William Walker during his travels in Appalachia and published in 1835 in his collection of shape note hymns, The Southern Harmony. Shape note singing was a popular form of musical notation using shapes to denote different pitches. Since most people in that day could not read music, shape notes made it possible for everyone to sing.

The season of Lent provides an opportunity for us as Christians to consider what messages we repeat over and over with our voices, actions, and attitudes. Do we present the simple message, “When I was sinking down, Christ laid aside His crown,” clearly and accessibly to those who have ears to hear?

Does the world hear a Church that repeats a message of its own selfish needs and demands, or do they hear us proclaim, “To God and to the Lamb, I will sing”?

Ultimately, what is the deep song in our hearts that we will repeat, not only in this life but through all eternity?

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free
I’ll sing His love for me,
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity I’ll sing on.

Listen: What Wondrous Love is This? by Fernando Ortega
Lyrics: What Wondrous Love is This?, anonymous  — Lyrics from Hymnary.org

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Bless the Lord, you angels of his, you mighty ones who do his bidding, and hearken to the voice of his word.
Bless the Lord, all you, his hosts, you ministers of his who do his will.
Bless the Lord, all you works of his, in all places of his dominion… — Psalm 103.20-22

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Exodus 33 (Listen – 3:49) 
John 12 (Listen – 6:26)

Read more about Bearing Reproach
By these things, we are the Lord’s messengers, preparing the way, carrying the gospel to all around us.

Read more about Justice to Wormwood
It will not do for us to sing about justice without bringing it to pass.

Scripture Focus: John 9.34
“You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!”

Reflection: Steeped In Sin
By John Tillman

The Pharisees are partially correct in the above passage; the formerly blind man was steeped in sin at birth. Where the Pharisees were in error was denying that they were also steeped in sin.

There are two ways of thinking about sin. One sees sins as individual actions. In this calculation, we total sins up, like fines in a legal system. We interpret sins as individual, unconnected actions.

This mode of sin evaluation is favored by the Pharisees and many modern Christians. Thinking about sin in this manner makes it measurable and able to be compared. No matter how bad we are, we can always find someone who makes us look good by comparison.

This thinking also leads us, like the Pharisees, to see those in difficulty or hardship as suffering from their own sin and wrongdoing. This allows us to further exclude and punish the suffering while absolving ourselves from any responsibility to help them. Today, many view the poor through this lens, seeing generational poverty as the fault of the poor, and the community’s responsibility as minimal or non-existent. This view of the poor can’t be found anywhere in scripture—except perhaps in the views of the Pharisees.

Sin is not just some bad things that we sometimes do. Sinful actions are “sins” but sin is more than actions. It is a condition. It isn’t just a condition that we live with. It’s a condition that we live in. Paul tells us creation groans to be released from sin, and we feel its effects. Sin is pervasive. It seeps into the cracks and corners of our souls and our society’s systems.

Sin isn’t like a disease, a condition inside our bodies, as much as it is like an environmental condition, an inescapable influence that surrounds and penetrates us.

Sin is gravity. It is our atmosphere. It is our water. We are radioactive with sin. It vibrates out of us in ways that damage and harm us and anyone we come near.

We need Jesus because only his righteousness is the antidote to the radiation poisoning of rebellion. Making better choices and “sinning less” is a pleasant side effect. 

We can blind ourselves, like the Pharisees, refusing to see our sin. Or we can admit our former blindness and, seeing Jesus, we can say as the formerly blind man did, “Lord, I believe.”

Music: “Gravity” — Lecrae

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
The people who have dwelt in darkness have seen a great light.

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis TickleToday’s Readings
Exodus 30 (Listen – 5:06)
John 9 (Listen – 4:56)

Today’s Readings
Exodus 31 (Listen – 2:32) John 10 (Listen – 4:44)
Exodus 32 (Listen – 5:47) John 11 (Listen – 6:37)

Read more about The Focus of Christ’s Anger
Jesus spent time with people who, by every cultural definition and religious law, would be under God’s wrath. Sinners. Heretics. Financial swindlers. Fallen women. Foreign occupiers. Shouldn’t Jesus have been angry with them?

Read more about Suffering and Sin
We feel less responsible when we believe only the lazy are poor, only the promiscuous are in danger of sexual assault, only hedonists become addicts, and only nihilists suffer depression.