There is a fascinating story that links Easter and Passover, and most of the world goes on blissfully unaware of it. Most know that Easter and Passover are in the same general season of the year, sometimes on the same weekend, sometimes diverging. But what most don’t realize is that the Christian observance of Easter actually arose directly from the Passover. No, I don’t mean from the resurrection. I mean from the Passover itself.

Part of the confusion arises from a curious use of terms. The Hebrew word for Passover is Pesach. It is translated into Greek and Latin as Pascha. Everywhere in the Bible where the Passover is mentioned, in Greek and Latin versions, it is Pascha.

Now follow me carefully through this. Throughout the Latin and Greek churches, the day of the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus is called, in their own languages, Pascha. But when the discussions of Pascha are translated into English, they become Easter. Always.

How on earth did this happen? And on a related question, how on earth did colored eggs and Easter Bunnies become connected somehow to the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus?

Why do you suppose God leaves us with so many unanswered questions? And why are some of the truths of the Bible so, well, obscure? If God wants us to know something, why doesn't He come right out and say so? The fact is, that on the really important things, God does come right out and say so, but there's a whole lot more to be known and God has placed in the heart of man the desire to know everything. We are not just content with a little bit of knowledge. We want to know the whys and the wherefores and we get those answers, and we still have more questions. Everything of course, is a little more than our small brains can hold, but there is a lot more that we can know.

As Paul said, "Now we know in part" (1 Corinthians 13:9). We call the Bible "the Word of God", and indeed it is, but that word comes to us in the form of the testimony of a cloud of witnesses. And just as a good investigator can take the testimony of one witness, combine it with the testimony of another witness, he can then come to know something that actually isn't in the testimony of either one of them, and it is only by knowing what both of them said, that you can discern what really happened.

So we can sometimes find insights into things that are not actually said by any of the witnesses in the Bible, we do it by taking a little bit here and a little bit there and we say, "Wait a minute, why did he say that?" It is like a great puzzle of life where we struggle to put together all the pieces and discover pictures previously unknown and unseen.

When the Pope viewed Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Jesus Christ, he is said to have remarked, It is as it was. The Vatican later tried to spin that remark to bring it back in bounds, but I have little doubt the Pope said exactly that—because that is the avowed object of the movie, to tell the story of the suffering of Jesus as it was.

But that seems to be a real problem. And if the Pope is right, then it is not Mel Gibson’s movie that is the problem; it is the Bible. Few things I have read bring this into focus like an article in the February 15th Newsweek by Jon Meacham. In his article titled, Who Killed Jesus? he asks:

Does the death, the execution of Jesus lie at the feet of the Jewish people?

No. It does not.

But making that simple denial does not tell the whole story.

I love a good mystery. Puzzle solving is a favorite pastime of mine. So perhaps I can be forgiven for saying in a recent radio program that God also loves a mystery.

Sometimes of course, God speaks plainly—the Ten Commandments are plain enough—but at other times the truth is far more subtle. I might offer reasons for God’s subtlety, and they are there, but I hardly need to prove that. Anyone who pays attention to God’s actions in the world will be well aware that God prefers to be subtle, even when you’re confident that when something has happened has been his intervention.

The Bible is more than mere subtlety. It is a collection of the testimony of witnesses, and while I certainly believe in the inspiration of the Bible, I also believe that God doesn’t engage in witness tampering. The Holy Spirit sees to it that the witnesses are in court and that they tell the truth. After that, we the jury have to evaluate their testimony and try to figure out the larger picture.

Now, if you have ever watched a bunch of Perry Mason mysteries, or this type of courtroom dramas, you can often find your way to the truth of what happened. We know this even though no individual witness knows the whole story. You get a little bit from this fellow, you get a little bit from that fellow, and you get something from a third lady; and between those three things, the picture comes together.

Well, something like that exists in the Bible. There is enough corroboration of the gospel accounts to support the key elements of their stories. They all saw the resurrected Christ, for example, and they are all unified. Now there may be little details, but those aren’t important. The differences that you find in the accounts show us that the witnesses were not in collusion, in other words, this is important to establish the fact that there were four witnesses, not four witnesses telling one witnesses’ story, if you follow me. There are some first-class mysteries in the New Testament and many of them have kept scholars scratching their heads for years and provided material for countless doctoral dissertations.

Consider a case in point, the mystery of how you get three days and three nights between Friday night to Sunday morning?

What did the First Christians believe about the New Covenant? I’m talking about those Christians who were alive in the days when the New Testament was being written, when they could ask questions of those who had heard Jesus speak (or perhaps had even heard him themselves). These were heady days for those folks.

It does seem to me, in the discussions I have heard about the Old and New Covenants, that there is something about them that very few people have understood. But before I go into that question, I’ll have to cover a little background. So let’s discuss a couple of ideas: the concept of the mind as a closet never cleaned out and the dilemma of the double bind.

Also see the following messages:

• A Closet Never Cleaned Out
• The Double Bind

I know that Jesus was a gentle man. I am certain that he was kind, that he was merciful, and very gentle with the people he dealt with. But, you know, at the same time he was straight as a die—he was totally honest. And sometimes honesty can be brutal. He could look a man straight in the eye and tell him he was a hypocrite…because that’s what he was. When you see what a man is, you can tell him, right? Of course, sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t—but from Jesus that’s what you got. On one occasion, Jesus says to the assembled crowd:

[…] The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not according to their works: for they say, and do not.

Matthew 23:2–3 KJ2000

Nowadays, we think of a government divided into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The separation of powers and checks and balances are fundamental to our system. But Moses was all three to Israel: he was a lawgiver, he was an executive, and he was also the judge. But as the burden grew over time, the responsibility of judging was distributed to a system of judges. The judges were a legitimate authority in the community, and their judgements took on the force of law. Plainly, Jesus felt the judiciary was corrupt in his time. That did not in any way justify ignoring their civil decisions, but it meant that their moral authority was bankrupt. Let’s see what else Jesus had to say about the system of his day, and what we could learn from it, in Matthew 23.

There is a time in a man’s life when he must act—when he must seize the day. There are moments of opportunity; there are simple chances to do things—an opening to produce something really worthwhile. And when you let those moments pass, they never come your way again. It’s a deep lesson, a profound lesson, and I think it lies at the root of a curious incident in Jesus’ ministry.

In Matthew 21, Jesus is staying near Jerusalem in a little town called Bethany. He was on his way into Jerusalem early in the morning, and he was hungry. As he walked along the way he saw a fig tree, the season was such that there should have been fruit on it. He walked over to it, looked for fruit, and found nothing but leaves. And he said to it, Let no fruit grow on you again forever and the fig tree withered away.

Now, that seems to me like a strange thing for Jesus to do, and I don’t think he would have done—nor Matthew recorded it—it unless there was a lesson for his disciples and all of us to learn from it. There are times when you and I ought to be producing something—putting something out. And if we don’t do so, then our time will pass and we will never get the opportunity again. Jesus developed a theme not unlike this in the 13th chapter of Luke…

What is the Kingdom of Heaven like, really? Listening to preachers when I was growing up, I was under the impression that the Kingdom of Heaven was Heaven itself—that is was a city with streets of gold, where we dined on milk and honey, and spent all of our days looking up into the master’s face. There was a river there where we could get together with loved ones, renew old acquaintances, and shed copious tears when we embrace someone that we had not seen in so very long and had been worried about.

But, you know, Jesus’ disciples started out with a rather different view. They were looking for a messianic kingdom. They thought the Kingdom of Heaven would be Jesus leading a revolt and throwing out the Romans. We’re going to get a mob together, arm the people with swords, assault the Roman strongholds, and reestablish the Kingdom of David. Things would be like they were in the good old days.

But as the disciples listened to Jesus, they became a little confused about the Kingdom because when Jesus said, The Kingdom of Heaven is like… the parable that followed did not fit their presuppositions—it was not what they expected at all. The funny thing is…it doesn’t fit ours either. We’ll begin in Matthew 19, with Jesus’ answer to question posed to him by a young, wealthy man: Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?

What is it about children that makes some people so ready to dismiss them as though they were of no consequence? You know, I have finally become convinced that one of the the reasons children behave badly is because no one pays any attention to them when they behave well. After all, a kid who behaves all the time is like wallpaper, a piece of furniture, or background music—they’re there, they’re appreciated. We pat them on the head, feed them, make sure they have clothes to wear and a bed to sleep in, and there’s really no worry apart from that. On the other hand, when children are bad we pay attention. Many kids are willing to risk the wrath of Mom and Dad just to get some recognition.

Too often, children are treated like non-persons. When I was growing up, I heard it said that little owls have big ears when the conversation around children turned to something they shouldn’t hear. Now, people say all kinds of things in front of children like they were waiters in a restaurant. And when they are inconvenient, we can just get rid of them. I don’t mean kill them off (though, regrettably, in extreme cases, that happens). I’m talking about parents who leave their children home alone and go off on vacation—little kids. And then there is the ever-increasing number of children who are being raised by their grandparents because their parents are unable, or unwilling, to get their lives to together. I wonder about what we are going to do when the last generation of grandparents—who really care about children—are gone. Jesus provides for us an excellent example of the proper attitude and responsibility towards children in Matthew 19:

Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Allow little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 19:13–14 KJ2000