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Dr. James Emery White Christian Blog and Commentary

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Dr. James Emery White

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

“Good” Friday (2024)

  • 2024Mar 28

good adj. better, best a) a general term of approval or commendation; b) suitable to a purpose; effective; c) producing favorable results; beneficial

The amazing thing about Good Friday is that it was – and is – part of the “good” declared by God at creation. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, NIV). The Fall was not good; sin, disobedience and suffering are not good. But God’s purpose in creation and the redemptive drama that ensued were – and are – good.

Some would put God in the dock for placing such a burden on human life—that through our creation and giving us free will He knew the suffering we would experience. What is less noticed is how God always knew of Good Friday. In the rapture of creation, the cross loomed large. Yes, there would be suffering, but none more so than for God Himself. 

C.S. Lewis writes:

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing—or should we say “seeing”? there are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a “host” who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and “take advantage of” Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

What an ultimate “good” this must have been; declared at creation, consummated on Golgotha. But it wasn’t a good designed for God. There is no good to be added, or deficit to be addressed, in His being. 

It was a good for us.

Many books have come out of late portraying the heart of God toward us as a lover pursuing the beloved, a fairy tale where God is the prince and we are the maiden. “Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden,” begins Soren Kierkegaard, who first fashioned the popular analogy. 

The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist—no one dared resist him. But would she love him?

She would say she loved him, or course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it’s only in love that the unequal can be made equal.

Yes, this is the heart of God, and He is on just such a mission.

But the deeper truth lies in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. We are not a beautiful maiden. There is nothing becoming in us whatsoever. Instead, we are desperately criminal, and the only rescue grace would bring would demand storming the Bastille in which we are rightfully held. This is precisely what He did. “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8-9, NIV).

And that’s an even better story. And it’s the one story that the world does not already have, and most needs to hear.

James Emery White

 

Editor’s Note

This blog was first published in 2005 and has been offered annually on or near Good Friday.

Sources

Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.

Soren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

Holy Week 2024… So What?

  • 2024Mar 25

This past weekend has been known as Palm Sunday weekend.

So what?

It’s a fair question. In our culture, the significance of sacred days and times has long been forgotten. We live our lives on the surface of frenetic activity, seldom adding depth to any given moment. We surf and skim over a body of information but rarely dive into the depths of knowledge, much less wisdom. 

There are no “thin times,” as the ancient Celts would have observed; times when the separation between the eternal and the temporal was thin enough to walk the soul between both worlds.

But without that sensibility, we are lesser people.

So here’s the “so what.”

Palm Sunday is the traditional beginning of what has been known throughout Christian history as Holy Week—a week designed to focus our attention on the “passion,” or suffering, of Christ.

The story of Christ (a title meaning “Messiah”) is the story of God Himself coming to Earth in the form of a human being, a man named Jesus, living the perfect, sinless life, and then willingly going to the cross in order to die for the sins of the world.

The tradition of Holy Week began when Christians making pilgrimages to Jerusalem had a natural desire to reenact the last scenes of the life of Christ in dramas.

There is an ancient text called The Pilgrimage of Egeria, that describes a fourth century visit to Jerusalem. It was noted that people were already observing Holy Week by that point in history, so it dates back many, many centuries.

There are five days in this week that are set apart:

It began this past weekend with Palm Sunday and then includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

Maundy Thursday denotes when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet during what is known as the Last Supper on the night He was betrayed. 

The word Maundy is built off the Latin word for “command.” When Jesus washed their feet, He said: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV). It’s why some churches actually have a feet-washing ceremony or service on Maundy Thursday.

Good Friday is the day we mark the anniversary of when Jesus was crucified. I know, the word “good” is a misnomer. 

Or is it? 

Sin is not good. Suffering is not good. But what Jesus did for us, what His death accomplished on our behalf—that was good. Good because He took on our sins, and then hung in our place, paying the price for our sins so that we can be forgiven.

Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday, marks the time of Jesus in the tomb. To be honest, little is associated with this day, though it is named. Perhaps because few know what to do with the obscure verses Peter offers surrounding Jesus’ descending into the depths of hell. The medievalists called it the “harrowing of hell,” and that is perhaps its fullest sense. 

What is certain is that it was a victory lap.

And then, of course, comes Easter Sunday when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus—a day that so altered human history we are still talking about it and marking it 2,000 years later.

Each day is rich with meaning, significance and spiritual admonishment.

But it all began yesterday, lauded in tens of thousands of services, with Palm Sunday, the day of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

From the gospel of Mark:

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

“Hosanna!

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 

“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

“Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:1-10, NIV)

This was a fervor that eclipsed any iPad or iPhone introduction Apple ever construed. 

Palm Sunday was the celebration of Jesus that Jesus deserves. 

Yes, “Hosanna” quickly turned into, “Crucify him!”, which was one of the most tragic turn of events, perhaps second only to the Fall, when humans turned from worship to rejection.

But that’s what Palm Sunday calls us to remember. After Jesus entered to acclaim, He moved to clear the Temple. Not willing to succumb to a celebrity culture, He made it clear what the demands of following Him would entail. 

That’s what changed “Hosanna” into “crucify.” People were confronted with the weight and consequence of God. They had to choose: a tame God or a real God.

And now it plays out again, not in human history, but rather in our lives.

Every day. 

Welcome to Holy Week.

James Emery White 

Editor’s Note

This blog entry was first published in 2012 and has been offered annually in honor of Holy Week.

Sources

On Holy Week, and the individual days, see The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church; the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition; and the Encyclopedia of Christianity.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of ChristianHeadlines.

Image credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/artplus

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

Zone of Interest

  • 2024Mar 21

It may have seemed like an odd staff outing. 

Two or three times a year, instead of our normal monthly staff meeting, we have an “off-site.” Usually this is some kind of experience that stretches our leadership thinking or ministerial creativity. Our off-sites have been as varied as the Van Gogh immersive exhibit to a behind-the-scenes tour of a football stadium.

This month, we went to a movie theater and watched a film.

The Zone of Interest recently won the Oscar for best international film along with the rare distinction of also being nominated – as an international film – for best picture. 

Why did I want us to watch this film? Not all staff development has to do with leadership principles or time management. There’s also a need for cultural awareness and spiritual insight. 

The film portrays the real-life historical figure Rudolf Höss who was in charge of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He later confessed to overseeing the murder of three million people. While filmed at Auschwitz, you are not taken inside to view the horrors. You only hear them in the background—gunshots, screams... all form the backdrop of the “normal” life of Höss and his family inside their home just beyond the gates.

As one movie reviewer, writing for the Washington Post, put it:

The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s quietly shattering portrait of family life in Nazi-era Germany, is really two movies in one.

The film that audiences see on-screen – a bucolic domestic drama, filled with children, gardens, picnics, and daily rituals and squabbles – unfolds with quotidian ordinariness. Then there’s the movie we conjure in our minds, with images of emaciated bodies, shaved heads and anguished screams barely audible above the clinking teacups and cooing babies.

Rather than diminishing the horror, it adds to it. Rarely has there been a film that so powerfully portrays how sin and evil can reside in a human life without blushing. 

Many films portray horror by explaining it away—a dysfunctional childhood, a scarring event, mistreatment or abuse. There is a need to say, “Here’s why this person did horrible things.” The Zone of Interest does not delve into such matters. Instead, it simply portrays the deep theological truth that we do sinful things because we are sinful.

And how?

By dehumanizing others and then compartmentalizing our actions against them. Hence the title of the movie itself—the “zone of interest” was the antiseptic term the Nazis used for Auschwitz. The film ends with a telling symbol of Höss’ descent into the darkness.

I asked our staff to watch a 50-minute documentary on the liberation of Buchenwald before we went, a short film that very much revealed the horrors inside the walls of places like Auschwitz. Then we watched The Zone of Interest. The combination was devastating. As noted by a reviewer in the U.K., this year’s most important film about World War II wasn’t Oppenheimer—it was this.

To a person, I was told it was the most moving, meaningful, “best” staff outing we have had together.

Some wept over the sin of the world and how easily it is embraced; others renewed their hearts toward the lost in need of Jesus. All of us realized anew just how dark sin is and how it can penetrate any life,

... including our own.

James Emery White

 

Sources

Ann Hornaday, “‘The Zone of Interest’: Inside the Banality of Evil, On-Screen and Off,” The Washington Post, January 16, 2024, read online.

Emily Belz, “Evil Is as Evil Does,” Christianity Today, January 23, 2024, read online.

Robbie Collin, “Why the Year’s Most Important Film About the Second World War Wasn’t ‘Oppenheimer’,” The Telegraph, March 11, 2024, read online.

“Greatest Events of WWII in Color,” Netflix, watch here.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.