Easter: When Mind And Faith Intersect

This week is Easter week. Christians call it Resurrection Day. Easter is about when Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again after three days (on the Jewish calendar). It was like, "Will the real Son of God please rise from the dead?" Jesus did, and the effects of the resurrection are still happening today.

Here’s a short biography about Jesus from author Max Lucado. Jesus came from a faraway kingdom, went uncover as a man, started His universal ministry as a baby, had a low-paying blue collar job, did not have one religious person on His Board of Directors, became a friend of the crowd on the other side of the tracks, spurned the educated and religious elite of the day, afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted, died as a criminal among criminals, had quite a dramatic recovery, first appeared to a bunch of outcast women after His resurrection and then to others, started a movement with twelve unknown, and his movement is still going and growing today. 

I've been reading the Easter account in Luke 23:32-34. It's about four different groups of people present at Jesus's crucifixion. There were those two criminals crucified with Jesus, the rulers or ringleaders in religion and government, the crowd of people watching all this drama, and the soldiers ordered to crucify Jesus. It's interesting to observe each group's response to Jesus. It's also interesting to know that the place where they crucified Jesus was called "The Skull" or, in Latin, Calvarius, which means skull. We know it as Calvary. 

The rulers (both government and church) were sneering and taunting Jesus. "He saved others, let's see Him save Himself! The Messiah of God – no way! The Chosen One – no way!" They thought Jesus would act like they would in His circumstance, and save Himself. But Jesus came to seek and save the people who had lost their way from God, not to live for or save Himself. While all this drama was going on, Jesus interceded for them, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing."

The Bible says, "The people stood there staring at Jesus." The people didn't want to commit one way or another. It was zombie apocalypse groupthink, caught between the world of mental fear and faith, what they were seeing or what Jesus said He would do, i.e., rise from the dead. Perhaps they were afraid of the rulers or soldiers. Supporting Jesus could get you in trouble in those days with religious leaders and government leaders who influenced the soldiers.  

The soldiers just mocked him. To those battle-hardened conscripts, Jesus was a nobody. They played games with him because they had no skin in the game. They were doing their jobs. Jesus was one of many who lived and died at their hands. In a sarcastic statement that was more sour than the vinegar they gave to Jesus when he said, “I thirst,” they put a sign over Jesus, "This is the King of the Jews."

Then there were the two criminals. One "hurled abuse" at Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!" But the other criminal knew that he, not Jesus, was guilty. He asked Jesus, "Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!" Jesus replied, "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise." One criminal was ‘Paradise lost,’ and the other was ‘Paradise found.’ The people, rulers, soldiers, and the criminal who cursed Jesus were those 'Show me and I'll believe you' types. The other criminal understood the way to Paradise was 'Believe, and I'll show you.' That's called faith. He allowed both the mind and faith to intersect. 

Significantly, the place where these unlikely groups came together was called The Skull, or Calvarius. What's inside a skull? The brain. The brain is the organ we think with. Our mind can discern each group's thinking about Jesus. The rulers were thinking, "The Messiah of God - Ha!" So they got 'Ha' about Jesus. The soldiers thought Jesus was amusing, another of the many they had crucified. Their thinking was 'Ha-Ha.' The onlooking crowd’s thoughts were ‘Naah’ – I’m not getting involved in this. But the ‘Paradise Found’ criminal's thinking was 'Aha' about Jesus. That thinking saved his eternal life.  

We can also see Jesus thinking about all these groups except for one criminal: "Father, forgive them. They are not acting too smart for their britches at the moment and have no idea what they are doing." In other words, you and I cannot come to Jesus through our natural mind, our vast education or experience, or our ‘supercalifragilisticexpealidocious’ calvarius vocabulary. We come to Jesus by faith. That doesn’t mean that we throw our brains away. It means we don’t let our brains throw faith away. 

This Easter or Resurrection Day, let the Holy Spirit speak to what is inside your calvarius like the Holy Spirit spoke to the ‘Paradise found’ criminal's calvarius on the first Easter: "I'm forgiven! He has risen! We have risen indeed!" Aha! In other words, don't be a numb “calvarius.”