how faint a whisper

glimpses of God in a heaven-crammed earth

Author Archives: adriennehope


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Lenten waiting

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I have a worn index card in the front of my Bible with the words “wait on the Lord” on the front, followed by a list of verses. At some point a few years ago I decided, in the midst of the slow discovery of reading, to start writing down every time I came across these words or concept in Scripture. I don’t know now why I needed the reminder in that season, and I stopped capturing them long before completion, but not before preserving this small remembrance that Scripture calls us, repeatedly, to wait.

In the church year we usually focus on Advent as the waiting season, and of course it is: a waiting for the promise, the birth, the arrival. But this year I have been struck by the remembrance that Lent, also, is about waiting. Advent, and then Christmas as its culmination, is a joyful and expectant waiting, in a sense waiting for the “already.” Then we journey through the few glorious months of Epiphany, reminding each other again and again of how God is present with us, and then we come again to Lent. Lent, slipping in to remind us of the other reality in which we dwell, this waiting of the “not yet,” the waiting of the brokenness for which Christ went to the cross, a brokenness and need that still defines our world and our lives, and all too painfully so.

Waiting, however, is not sedentary. And it always keeps in sight the object. I think this is why I have come to love using the word longing to capture this reality of our existence. It is the longing that the psalmist cries out with in Psalm 130:

my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning –
yes, more than those who watch for the morning.

In the insulation of our present age the full understanding of these words can be lost. I have never been a watchman, striving to remain alert for the safety of the city. But in a different way I have glimpsed what it is like to wait for the morning. It is sitting in the utter darkness of the wilderness, completely dependent on a series of events I have no control over for the bringing of light, warmth, and the freedom to move forward into the day. It is feeling that I can hardly focus, glancing up every five seconds to scan the horizon with desperation for the slightest first signs of pink. It is feeling, in the depth of the morning cold, that even though reason tells me the sun has risen every day of my life, for a split second I am afraid it never will and if so, I will not make it. So I watch for the morning; long for it with the knowledge that in some very real way, my life depends on it. So the writer of Psalm 130 weaves these words together, this watching and waiting and hoping and redemption, because they can only exist together. Because waiting is about the action of hope looking to the promise of redemption.

But waiting is also about the realities of life in a world of brokenness, limitation, and need. Going forward to receive the ashes at an Ash Wednesday service, one of the traditional statements proclaimed over us is to remember that from dust you came and to dust you shall return. Or, as Psalm 103 says it, “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” Its place remembers it no more. To wait is to accept this place non-remembrance. To name that I am not the meaning of my own life, that God’s freedom has an eternal scope and is not so narrowly defined as to mean my pursuit of self-defined happiness and fulfillment. It is to choose, as Wendell Berry says, to “plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant; that you will not live to harvest.” It is to say that the limitations of our creatureliness are okay, in fact they are good. Our sin has always been to want to be more than what we are, and so we need Lent. We need to be reminded of our mortality.

Lent is a remembrance of longing. It is choosing to engage in practice what we know to be true in some deep recess: that we are a waiting people. That discipleship is primarily about waiting. Growing, yes, but anyone who has had a garden knows that growth involves a lot of tending, and a lot of waiting. And the practices of tending must come before the promise of fruit.

As one of those Lenten practices then, traditionally, we give things up. Why? To identify with Christ in the wilderness, yes. But also, to practice longing. To embody it. To feel it at some (let’s be honest) relatively easy place of our being, in order to remember that this is in fact the practice of a truth so deep that even touching its edges is greatly tender, and we feel it. And the feeling matters. It touches us at a different place than the thinking alone. And we need this reminder. Not morbidly, but because the recognition of brokenness is actually the first seed of hope.

The reality of our lives on this earth means that our hope must be planted and grow in broken soil, and practices of longing are like the tiller that prepares it. Those who need nothing do not need to wait. Those who are fulfilled do not need to hope. Only sinners need redemption.

And I believe to long in the way the Lord has designed us to is anything but ethereal, mystic, and theoretical. Brokenness drives us to isolation, to hiding behind illusion to cover our vulnerability. If we do not exist at a level of relationship with others where we see and are seen in our insufficiency; where we demonstrate publicly in our failure and our falls how we are still waiting for redemption; we are not driven to lean into the hope of our longing. We do not have to incarnate the love of God and remind each other of truth, which is the great gift of relationship. If we do not feel our lack, we cannot long for the fullness of Christ and we cannot recognize its shadows here and among us.

So my prayer this Lent, for myself and for you, is that in all the tenderness it entails, we will wait. Wait together. Need each other. Embody longing. Speak the truth of freedom. Refuse illusion. Practice.

Remember our need in order to plant seeds of hope.

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to be a refugee

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61 days ago I came out of six weeks in the mountains in Wyoming.

Yesterday, I went back to the mountains. This time to the Adirondacks – my home mountains in many ways. It was a whirlwind trip – eleven hours of driving to hike for ten, an 18 mile slog up and down Allen Mountain in the rain, another peak checked off.

And while yes, I did need to complete this infamous of the High Peaks at some point on the way to my 46, mostly I went because I needed to escape to the mountains. I went because my time in the Winds of Wyoming began a summer that has profoundly shook and shaped me, and because I am still whirling in it all. Because in three days, on Monday, classes start for my fifth semester of grad school, and I’m not ready. Not that I don’t want to be here, that I don’t love what I’m studying, that I don’t feel profoundly privileged, but I’m weary. Emotionally, physically, spiritually bone-deep-weary, and I’m not ready for the pace and the demand and the discipline and the focus. I feel very weak, and very broken, and very much not enough.

So I ran away to the mountains for space and time. For that strange truth of how pushing my body beyond comfort, drinking in ordinary beauty, having silence and no screens and it not mattering if the rain ran down my face in sheets: how all that can be needed, healing, and re-setting. So I went, and most of the time I didn’t even know what I was thinking or praying, but I just walked in the realness of my heart and life with the Lord, and pleaded for Him to walk with me.

This morning I opened up a book I am working through called Habakkuk Before Breakfast, and read this portion of liturgy:

So why are you here?
Every heart, every heart to love will come,
but like a refugee.

Then come, dear friends,
come as refugees to love,
come and bring your broken offerings,
                your broken hearts,
                your broken bodies,
                your broken spirits,
                your broken lives.

What time is it?
It is time to tell the truth.

Come as refugees to love. Such an interesting phrase, and I am caught in it. To be a refugee is to have abandoned all else, to come with everything I have, to have no backup plan, to have reserved nothing, to be utterly at the mercy of the place to which I have come. To bring it all, and trust it all, to Love. No story unexplored, no pain unseen, no shaping unsurrendered. (It is time to tell the truth.) Reading and reflecting on these words felt like naming a known and current place. This is the moment I am in: that of being invited to bring all that I have, leave nothing back, and realizing the truth is that what I have to bring is so very broken.  All of it. Even some of the Lord’s gifts that I have run away with I have broken and now I bring them back, humble like the prodigal, having no next step from this, no back up plan, but knowing – in the deep parts of me that actually know the truth of the Father’s love – that I won’t need one. That love always accepts the refugee. The pilgrim, you could say.

For 61 days I’ve been searching for the next step. Fighting for it. Built on beliefs which are true – that I should be always striving to discern in my journey with the Lord what is next; what He is saying and how He asking me to follow, how this new learning or space reshapes my life once again. This is the journey of spiritual formation, over and over and over again. But also this fight is built on the oh-so-deeply rooted fear that maybe what is next is not an end of being weak. A fear of being empty, and being led, like Elijah, out of the provision of the wilderness anyway, and into all that is being asked of me. Not being ready for it. Not having wrapped up this wilderness portion of the journey or the questions and stories it has unearthed. Feeling like some long-shut doors of my heart and life have blown open and now everything behind them is just sitting there, painfully revealed but with no sense of how I go about sorting and building. What goes on display, and what gets thrown on the fire? How do all these pieces get reassembled and what kind of wonder may there be when they do?

See, I’m a sorter. Part of it is necessitated by the incessant temporary feeling of my life; of thirteen moves in ten years and more than 100 days a year on the road. And so I sort: quickly. Everything has a place and within a few hours of returning from somewhere, it is in place. Because then I can move forward, be back “home” as quickly as possible, because the next departure is probably coming fast. Physical or emotional or spiritual, the ability to sort is a crucial part of feeling in control. So I want to sort this. I want to make note of the feeling, the realization, the uncovering, offer a prayer (legitimate!) of gratitude, then carefully build this piece of learning into place and start moving toward the next five steps.

(Also, when I’m trying to sort life through writing, I pile metaphors on top of each other…so let me go back to the original…)

The problem is that inherent in being a refugee is to come not knowing the next step. I have to know I bring nothing, but also all of me. I have to bring everything broken, understanding nothing is valuable in itself, but knowing that being met by love imparts value to even what seems like the most impossible places. So as I hiked yesterday, I think this was the shift that began. The shift to stop trying to fight the emptiness, the weakness, the weariness; to stop trying to “sort” it and therefore, by default, move on from it…the shift to instead just bring it. Surrender it. But not because in doing that it will be magically transformed into a felt strength and fullness, but because I will be transformed when Love accepts the broken, passionate gift (as He always does), and turns and looks at me.

So in that space on the mountain, the Lord promised nothing, in a sense, except that He sees me. He didn’t even whisper, “my grace is sufficient,” though that’s true, but not in the way we often say it that twists the measurement of sufficiency to really mean self-sufficiency again. I’m pretty sure that’s not what He meant. In one sense, I don’t bring the empty cup to be filled. Definitely not so I can feel sufficient to dole it out again. Fullness is a promise of relationship with the Lord, I just don’t think it looks like we think it looks. A lot of times it looks like still longing. The point right now isn’t to be filled, the point is the cup is empty, and that’s alright. There are a lot of holes in the bottom of my life right now. I hope they can let the water seep through to the ground so that things can grow all the same, though I am in much less control of that process than I would like. Though the growth may be much more wild than I would have sorted my own life to yield. But in the wildness there is wonder and mystery and beauty, and more than control, I want to live a life of wonder, even if this is what that means.

I hope I have courage to plant the seeds I have been given right now; seeds of weakness, and weariness, and emptiness. I hope I have courage to sit amidst the scattered and broken pieces of a refugee life and just let it be. Just lament, be seen, and be loved.

Monday will come, and I will be fine. But not because I have figured it out, or know how to take the next step. Not because I am enough. I am just a refugee at the mercy of Love, leaning on His enough-ness for sustaining in my brokenness. Knowing nothing may change about what I have to offer for a long while now. I am not enough.

But I am also not alone.


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submission

Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit
Luke 23:46

 

How does God die? It’s the cornerstone of our faith, and I cannot fully understand. When I think about it too long, my head hurts. But this I do know: it was not a charade that Christ was playing with the Father. It was a real death, and it was not taken, but given. It was a real submission. He gave up His spirit. He Himself spoke of this, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of Myself.” (John 10:18)

I lay it down of Myself. Of my own accord. We’re talking about His very life here. How could He save anybody if He was dead? How could this possibly be the way? Individualism, self-sufficiency, and worldly definitions of success are so entrenched in our cultural and religious milieu that we can hardly suffer submitting an afternoon to the Lord, much less a killed desire, a deferred hope, a lower bank account, a larger body. Much less our very lives themselves. Christ was perfectly submitted to the Father in every moment of His human life, making this final submission no less astounding, but also utterly consistent. There is no way to do this halfway, He tells us. Either God is God, and He is sovereign and good and worthy of all sacrifice, suffering, and praise…or He is not. We cannot shop God like a buffet. Christ’s submission is a full, utter, giving over to the extent of ceasing to live. Not merely a placing under, but a giving over, a relinquishment of His hold on and rights to His life.

And the words He chooses to communicate this? Again, he turns to the Psalms: the songbook of the full spectrum of human emotion. Again, He does not speak lightly or choose randomly. Again, His words point to the far more that He is truly saying. In this moment of final submission, Christ speaks David’s words from the midst of a psalm that is all about proclaiming the truth of the character of God, and how it is worthy of trust.

Today, on this strangely Good Friday, we are in need of trust. In the midst of an increasingly uncertain world, we are in need of trust. We are in need of turning to one another to remind that we serve a God who is a rock and fortress, our strength and our Redeemer. We are in need of hearing, and proclaiming to each other the words of this psalm, “Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You in the presence of the sons of men!” We are in need of submission of all that seems broken and backwards and impossible and un-Good, to the God who is the same today as He is on Sunday; the God who is always – always – working redemption.

Yes, Jesus the God knew the grand arch of salvation history, and had even spoken of His own resurrection. But Jesus the man had experienced none of it, and He still had to die, trusting in an impossible promise. Submitting to a silent Father. Let us not cheapen the weight of this example simply because we find it so difficult to emulate.

There is a point on this day where words end. When the questions and the achings and the anger and the lament grow silent in the picture of suffering that acknowledges their worth as well as their proper place. We cannot have resurrection without death, we cannot have freedom without submission. Christ’s words, and the depth of His trust in His Father, brought Him all the way to death. To drink the cup even though He had asked it to be taken away. To submit that not His will, but the Father’s be done. But He can do so, perfectly for our example, because He knows the heart of the One to whom He is submitting. He knows the promises, even if He has not yet lived through them on earth. And He loves the Father. He loves Him enough to believe that even when He cannot see, that these hands – these mysterious hands that created light from darkness, that draw life from death, that craft pathways of goodness through pain – the Father’s hands never fail, never let go, and are never able to be snatched from.

Into those hands, Father, we submit.
And we confess that we are terrified of that prayer.

May this Good Friday be not merely one of remembrance, but one of submission. Submission to the fortress and rock, the strength and Redeemer, the One who has laid up good things for His children, who calls us to wait and to hope. On this darkest of uncertain days, may we trust the God who is making all things new, even when so much of how remains an unseen mystery.

 

I see my faith before me
It’s always there before me
And I can no more own it
Than I can own the road that I am on
And I don’t know where it leads me
I don’t know where it leads me
Peace and resurrection
Suffering and dejection
I don’t know

My body’s tired from trying to bring you here
My brow is furrowed trying to see things clear
So I’ll turn my back to the black
And fall
And wait for the mystery
To rise up and meet me

Sara Groves, Mystery


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authority

It is finished!
John 19:30

Finished is a bit of a misleading word in English, perhaps. The Greek word means not merely to end, but to come to completion, to the fullness, once for all. Like Jesus’ very words about Himself and the law: “I did not come to abolish [the law], but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17) Or like Paul’s echoes: “…that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:4)

The endless sacrifices, the bloody requirements of atonement, it is finished.
The separation of God and man, the need for human mediation, it is finished.
The salvific efforts of works, the requirements of the law, it is finished.

We didn’t live in that time before the cross, that time when the people needed a priest and pigeons and a goat being sent out of the city and an incredibly complex and bloody system to know that their sins had been forgiven. It is difficult for us to imagine the generational longing of an entire people and religion for the Messiah to whom all this pointed, who would come and redeem and free them from all their oppression and sacrifice. Their knowledge of their own unsettledness in life was so deep that the celebration of their most important supper of the year was rich with symbols of their transience; unleavened bread because it didn’t have time to rise, sandals on, staff in hand. Into all this longing, then, Christ spoke at this moment with the authority to fulfill everything towards which they were striving. JRR Tolkien called Christ the great eucatastrophe (literally good-catastrophe) of history. This moment was the sudden shift in the story when the fate of the characters, seeming until now to be certain destruction, is suddenly diverted from it.

I like this metaphor, because what it offers is the remembrance that we can be diverted from certain destruction, the climax of the story, and still have a difficult road ahead of us, an arduous journey home. We may not have lived in those days of the Jewish law before the cross, but in some of the most important ways we have something to learn from them, for the consistent experience of our lives is still incompleteness. Too often, however, we don’t live into the remembrance of this truth, we simply try to distract from it. Christ’s words, though, remind us that we are not home, yet the work in finished. We have been once for all time saved from utter destruction, but we still have a long and hard road ahead of us. The fascinating gift of even the tense in which Christ spoke this word is that it carries the connotation of the ongoing result of a completed action. Not “I have finished it” or “it is being finished,” but this weaving together of the two; the work is ongoing within the context of its completion. The emphasis is on this present nature of the finished work. How do these words, then, stand as not an echo in history, but its very bedrock? How does my life change when I understand its incomplete-feeling present always and only in light of its completed end? This is the heart of pilgrimage and the calling of our lives.

The stunning reality of the fact of these words coming from the cross is that it radically redefines our understanding of authority. Christ didn’t speak this from the Mount of Transformation or even from the empty tomb, He spoke it from the cross. And I don’t think He spoke in resignation, I think He spoke with the confidence that the words themselves carry. I think this was a proclamation of fact for all time to come, not a broken admittance of His life in this moment alone. It was a statement about His eternal purpose, not His temporary reality. I picture His head held high, His eyes clear, His tone weighty, but steady, knowing the ultimate authority He commands at that moment. That authority had nothing to do with calling legions of angels, coming down from the cross, bringing the Kingdom the world was looking for. Even today, that authority still has nothing to do with taking over the systems of the world, establishing a moral reign, and making life as outwardly, socially, politically, or physically comfortable as possible for those of us who follow Him as King. No, authority as Christ demonstrated it was not afraid to be broken for the will of the Father, mocked and misunderstood and proclaimed as a failure in every way. But the foolishness of God is wiser than man, for He has all of eternity in view. The authority of Christ, His ability to complete the work, was demonstrated in the moment of utter self-sacrifice and ultimate vulnerability, bringing about the possibility of ultimate flourishing for the children of God.

It would not be inappropriate, given the weight of their importance for our lives ongoing within their completed salvation, to echo these words in grateful remembrance as we do the proclamation of truth only a few days to come:

It is finished! It is finished indeed.


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pain

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is,
My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?
Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34

Oh this ineffable moment of Christ’s despair on which hangs the lifetimes of our hope! In the most broken of circumstances, the most desperate of cries, we have never known a moment over which God’s hand did not reign, over which His face was not turned to this world, etched with both patience and anger. We have never known a moment where the grace of redemption did not frame the story. We have perhaps uttered this cry, but we have never actually known it. And not only that but Christ, from eternity past, had never known a moment where He and the Father did not dwell in perfect intimacy and oneness. It is a union we think and study and talk a lot about, but we do not really know, not in the experiential definition of knowing. This moment of separation, then, is a rending which we are dependent on, but cannot fathom the terrifying darkness of. When the writer of Hebrews reminds us that Christ has in every way suffered as we do, this is yet another miraculous indication of that truth: Christ knows the full weight of human loneliness and abandonment, beyond even what we will ever know, facing the utter silence of God.

This darkest moment of all history, however, is not without hope. It’s absolutely woven through with it! Jesus was a Jew: He knew what He was quoting with these words. Even if the full psalm did not flow from his lips in the impossible exhaustion of that moment, Christ was proclaiming to Himself (and to us, for all eternity) truth, at the very moment it was most impossible to believe. He knew that it only takes David two verses before he exclaims what must be the second breath of all anguish: yet You, God, are holy. You are worthy to be trusted. You delight in me, and that is not contingent, as the voice of the mockers would try to proclaim, on delivery from the cross. So neither will my trust be contingent on that rescue. Neither will my unswerving proclamation of truth be moved by circumstances which seem opposed to it. Yet, the psalmist wrote. Not only “you are holy,” but YET you are. Yet, but, despite, in the midst of, however, nevertheless. The holiness of God is not always plainly evident in our circumstances, and the believing feel of it does not always come, no matter how we cry by day and by night. It is simply true, and it is enthroned in our praises. It is lifted high by remembrance, proclaimed by faith. And for even this, we have the example of Christ.

We do not discipline ourselves to learn truth to no end.
We do not preach truth to ourselves everyday as an empty rhythm.
We immerse ourselves in truth so that in the very moments our human hearts cannot believe it, when the deliverance has not come, when the dream is dying, when the abandonment feels absolute, the truth of who God is is the unconscious thought to our minds, the practiced word to our tongues. And we know it; somewhere deeper even than feeling, we know; by remembrance and by discipline and by experience. So the question of forsakenness is followed by the truth of holiness, and the response of trust.

The other gift of these words of Christ, however, is that they show us that even for One who knew all this perfectly, who proclaimed it perfectly, the knowing did not negate the ache, the cry, the truth of that feeling. God is holy, yes, but it also feels like we have been forsaken. The unfathomable piece of it all is that this feeling of God’s abandonment, which is still to us only a perception, even in our very darkest moments, to Christ was a reality only He could bear. Only He could bear it for us then, only He can bear it for us now. He was born to bear it for us, to save us then and to intercede for us now. Without the death of Christ, our darkest moments really are absolutely dark, precisely because God is holy. But holiness becomes a hope through the transforming faith and unmeasurable pain of the only One who could ever hold the knowledge of truth through actual forsakenness. By His wounds, we are healed.

These words of Christ have pierced me with pain, wonder and unspeakable thanks:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Precisely because even at that very moment, He was, is, and will always be – holy. And that is our only hope.


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need

I thirst!
John 19:28

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Jesus was dying.

It is easy to spiritualize, to theologize, to talk about the events of this history-defining afternoon only in language of redemption and prophecy and divinity. Somewhere in the pious-looking artistic renderings, theological wonderment and resurrection already known-ness, we lost sight of the necessity and physicality of His death.

It is easy to forget the man. It is easy to forget the human flesh that was suffering beyond our imagining and could no less feel the pain as we could.

I do not think these simple, aching words were merely the calculated production of an omniscient God fulfilling a prophecy, though of course they did. I think Christ, the man, was thirsty.

He was broken, aching, bleeding, dying,
Body screaming for relief,
Lacking the most basic of all human desire,
In desperate need, and they mocked Him.
Unable, by His willingness to endure the cup to its dregs, to meet such a simple need for Himself,
Willing to risk further humility in proclaiming it,
Unafraid for us to see that dying was not easy,
Longing for us to know that need is not an indication of God’s absence.
But instead, being broken has consequences,
Sacrifice means there are things we cannot do for ourselves,
Humility means we have to ask,
Sin means our need may be mocked.

If this is the example of our Savior
Do you see the utter insanity
Of expecting to complete our own sacrifice by the power of our will?
Of expecting to breeze through life utterly fulfilled?
Of thinking perhaps we may not have to die at all?
We cling desperately to the belief that perfection is possible,
If only we work hard enough to be enough,
We can go without need and without pain and without mocking,
And perpetuate the lie that weakness is to be avoided at all costs.

But weakness is the way of the cross
To need is to be dependent
And so to proclaim the glory of the One who is sufficient.
To need is to declare the reason for the cross in the first place,
To declare our common humanity,
To lean into its gifts:
When neither you nor I can live nor die in our own strength,
I am free to speak of my need, my brokenness, my weakness,
And you will pour me a tall, clear glass of the sweet water of the truth of the cross.

I think Christ, in that moment, was desperately, unrelentingly in need.
I think He was thirsty.


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provision

Woman, behold your son! …Behold your mother!
John 19:26-27

The disciple whom Jesus loved.

We read John’s self-chosen name without really taking in the reality of a relationship that could define itself as such. That John would have the confidence to proclaim those words is astonishing. Who are you? Oh, I’m the one the King of the World loves. But of course, while at some intellectual level perhaps John could grasp Jesus’ King-of-the-World-ness, mostly I think Jesus was his friend. And while Mary had been told long ago by the angel that Jesus would save the whole world, mostly I think He was her son. Mary and John were incredible, yes. But they were also ordinary. Just because He loved the whole world doesn’t mean Jesus was any less woven into the fabric of their lives through intimate relationship. Just because He died for the whole world doesn’t mean they felt any less the ripping strands as they stood and watched. In fact, they probably felt it the most, because of their relationships, and precisely because they stayed and watched. It is difficult to imagine what those heart-wrenching moments were like for these two, as their Savior and Son and Friend was torn from them.

Yet, it is also because they stayed that we are given these words of Christ. They opened themselves up to love Him enough that even though they knew profound pain could be the only inevitable end of this relationship, they also knew the joy of intimacy was worth it. And because they stayed, and because they loved, we see this beautiful glimpse of Jesus’ intimate provision for relationship, and of relationship itself.

It rubs something in us the wrong way to say that Jesus might have somehow loved a few people at some sort of level of greater intimacy, as if God could have favorites. But that’s because we calculate love in measures, as if it was a product given, taken, or exchanged. We talk about loving something more, which necessitates loving other things less, and in the limits of English particularly we are forced into the linguistic corner of having only one word to use for loving both oreos and a lifelong friend. God doesn’t love more or less, doesn’t measure or dole out. God IS love. Love means He gives Himself, in fullness to and beyond our capacity as He knows it at any given moment. There is not a human measure by which to judge what fullness looks like to one or another. We are simply all full, cups running over with His love. So while Christ, in Divinity, loved no one less, we do see that He clearly lived in intimate human relationship more closely with some than others. He loved the crowds, yes, but that differed from what the fullness of His love to His disciples looked like, and that differed from the fullness of His love to His three closest disciples, or to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, or Mary Magdalene, or Mary, his mother, and this disciple who is explicitly named as “the one whom Jesus loved.” So surely, in that reality, Jesus loved Mary and John in a beautiful, uniquely intimate way.

In that moment, then, dying on a cross to meet the ultimate needs of humanity for all eternity, His love also reached down to meet the most practical, relational needs of these two. In all that was happening internally and externally in that moment, a piece of Christ’s heart was concerned for provision. A piece of Christ’s heart knew that yes, the Spirit would come and His presence would dwell with them, but also, in an incredibly human way, He was leaving them, and that left a real, relational void that I am sure never stopped aching until the day they were reunited with Him for all eternity. Knowledge of the intimate presence of God in our lives does not fully erase human relational need. It does not fully ease human relational loneliness. It does not fully remove the ache of human relational loss. Culture says relational longing is fully met by the pursuit of pleasure, in whatever temporal means, as quickly as possible; usually sexually. The church, unfortunately, often says (though at times without speaking) that relational longing is fully met in marriage, doing unspeakable damage to the hearts of both singles and married alike by promising them something that cannot stand. To grieve and long and need is not solely to lack some particular definition of intimacy, nor is it to lack sufficient faith, it is simply to be human in this relationally broken world. Jesus was a man and He knew this. He knew He could not fully ease this pain for Mary, John, and so many others. He knew this, and yet also knew that He was the eternal provision even in that ache. He knew that He had lived with them in order to show them how to live with each other.

I wonder if He wept, asking John to fill the role the faithful son in Him desperately wanted to? But I imagine His heart also swelled with joy, knowing all that lay before these two and the richness life would hold as they continued in the provision of relationship He had opened to them. The eternal reality of the relationship of all who would believe in Him erases previous barriers and limits of intimacy. Mother, see? Through my love this is also your son. Son this is also your mother. I have given you an example; live into it. He was leaving, but the beauty of Christ-defined relationships was only beginning. These relationships, our relationships as believers, formed and centered on Him, are His provision for us to walk this weary life. They are not incidental, they are not disposable, they are above all not to be lightly tread. We are relational beings, shaped in the very Image of God, and relationships that dwell in the heart of God are the most profoundly practical and intimate gifts of His presence and provision. From the very moment of utter human brokenness on the cross, Christ speaks to the ones He loved to remind us of this truth.


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grace

“Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise.”
Luke 23:43

Oh, the theological weight that has stood on these words! God’s economy is not even, measured, or fair by any worldly standards. No, instead the condemned sinner, literally in the very act of being deservedly punished for his crimes, appeals to a grace nothing in the history of the world or his life gives him context to understand. This wasn’t how it worked. Myth and religion and culture all said basically the same thing: life is all about reimbursement. Give to the gods, to the emperor, to the earth, respect or money or worship or performance, and if you’re lucky you will get back what you deserve. There was no happy ending, hardly even a best case scenario. As human, you do what you can to please powers so far beyond you, and hope to land on the side of better than most. Almost every culture had a story of the fall, but redemption had not entered the scene. Can you see it? Can you see the necessity of God’s first action, the irresistible drawing of grace? This man did not deserve to figure out the truth. A lifetime on the scales stacked against him; despised, no doubt, by the state which was killing him; probably unknown at all to the church, or, if he used to be known, even more hated for whatever this great failure he bore was. As unlikely a convert as Christ was a Savior.

It makes me wonder about his life. Had he heard of Jesus, finding himself drawn by something inexplicable to groups that were talking about Him in the market? Did he hunch in the back of the crowd on the shores of the sea, or the side of the mount, as Christ spoke His mysterious truth? Was he overwhelmed in those moments by a longing so strong it began to crack the edges of his hopelessness? Was he afraid to let go? Afraid to be disappointed again, and so he shook off the impossibility of hope with the brutal reason of reality? Have you seen my life? Perhaps he thought. There is nothing in it, or in this world, that whispers the possibility of a Savior. Have you seen what I’ve done?

It was a relatively small area, and I often wonder how far Jesus’ name had spread. But who knows? Maybe this man hadn’t been paying attention, too busy trying to survive to dream. Maybe this is the first he saw Jesus, the first he even heard of Him. Maybe Christ’s posture of humility was so different, so jarring, that even in the man’s despair it caught his attention. Maybe, as he watched the mockers, something tugged at his heart: What if it’s true? It can’t be…but what if it is? What if life is possible, even for me?

Whatever the story, however long it had been being written, hope had found its way in. Faith had found its way in, from the God to whom no doors are closed. Grace had found its way in, from the God to whom no soul is unreachable. And however much that man knew, the extent of his faith is not what merited Christ’s response. Hanging on that cross, completely without reason to believe, as the source of this hope hung dying next to him, he did the only thing any sinner needs to: he turned. He made the slightest, faltering step and grace exploded onto the scene: vast, unmeasured, boundless, and free.

Without a doubt, he did not fully understand the truth of who Christ was. Do any of us? But somehow, inexplicably, he had faith enough to believe that this man had a Kingdom. And he did understand the desperation of his own need, and from that appealed to the greatest hope he could imagine at that moment; Lord, remember me.

And knocking aside the scales of this man’s life, Christ spoke the only weight that matters: grace.

I think He said it immediately, and I think He said it with unmeasurable joy: Today, you will be with me in paradise.

Christ died first, Scripture tells us, while the soldiers had to break the legs of these other two. I wonder what the rest of those remaining hours were filled with for this thief on his own cross? Did his faith falter, seeing the One who promised silent and still? Did he begin to wonder, terrified as the earth grew dark and shook with quakes, who it really was that he had just appealed to? How did hope endure in those few moments before his inevitable death? I think it was the grace of Christ’s words that he clung to, the promise of eternity, offered the same to all who believe in His name. But this man – this man, in all his suffering – had a severe mercy very few get to cling to, for he knew how long he had to wait. Perhaps he whispered it to himself with every agonizing breath: Today. Christ said today. Today I will be with Him in paradise.

In Christ’s words to this man, whose name we do not even know, we see the unalterable truth that no matter who, no matter what, no matter how long has gone before or how long is left to wait for paradise; His grace is sufficient.


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compassion

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”
Luke 23:34

I doubt these would have been my first words.

In fact, I know they would not have been. I know, because even now, in the midst of my comfortable, insulated, well-fed and well-loved life, where what often feel like sins against me are more likely just inconveniences; even now, these are not my first words. They are not often words that arise naturally at all, and especially when the injury is of any significance. Of course they knew what they were doing, my wounded heart cries! And even if not, the pain doesn’t lessen. How can forgiveness be His very first word after betrayal?

But of course forgiveness is not an absence of pain, an erasure of betrayal, or an act of the will. Forgiveness is a Divine act, a heaven touching earth moment, a choice of redemption in brokenness, the truth of eternal relationships within temporal ones. And forgiveness is only possible when our heart has sat at the foot of this Cross and known itself seen in the dying compassion of Christ.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus does not say “I forgive them, Father?” Instead, He appeals to the Father: please! Forgive them. Is this because Christ was somehow unable to do the forgiving Himself? Never. He is in the midst of proving by His very act of sacrifice the cost and extent of His forgiveness. But maybe in the humanity of Christ’s cry we see a glimpse of another truth: that forgiveness is one of the hardest things we are called to do, for it asks for an act as well as a feeling. It starts with sacrifice, then demands compassion, and we are capable of neither without a pleading appeal to the Father.

Sacrifice. Sacrifice was the means to forgiveness in the history of God’s relationship with His people, ever since that moment when God killed to cover Adam and Eve’s shame. Christ knew His role, and these words are a prophetic appeal of compassion to the heart of God from the One who knows He is about to change everything about how humanity can reach it. Does the Father need reminded? No, but the ones nailing Christ’s wrists to the cross did. The ones mocking from the ground and from his side did. This cry came from One who knew fully His role as sacrificial Lamb, undoubtedly, but it also came from the relational, time-bound heart of a man, and it is perhaps that example that pierces me most deeply. In that moment of ultimate physical suffering and alone-ness, Christ did not turn inward, but looked out and saw those around Him. Father, even these! His compassion cries. They are blind to the meaning of this moment, to the truth of who I am. Oh Father, is it possible? Can this sacrifice be for even these? The aching compassion of the truest love this world has ever seen breaks my heart in its example of attentiveness. In His moment of deepest injury, of betrayal none of us will ever know, even then, Christ was pleading for others.

Every day, the Lamb sits on His throne and points to the eternality of that moment over and over and over again. Every day, for my soul, Christ turns to the Father, saying, “Father, forgive her. She knows not what she does.” And God looks at Christ, dying on that cross, and me lost in that shadow, and says to me, I do, beloved, I do.

May we never diminish Christ’s compassion by disbelieving our seen-ness; our belovedness. May we never be ashamed to everyday give evidence of our need for the cross. May we never forget that we dwell within the relational heart of Christ, with His strength beyond our own for all that it asks of us. And may we respond with willingness to the truth that mostly, what is asked of us in this Cross-shadowed life is the everyday dying of a thousand deaths: deaths to myself, and deaths to others. Sacrifice for the sake of relationship, compassion as the fruit of love.


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Last Words

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A Good Friday Tenebrae service is my favorite of the church year. It’s an ancient tradition which has taken different shapes but consistently features the extinguishing of candles throughout the course of the service, usually ending in full darkness and silence. It’s not a tradition I grew up with, however, so I remember distinctly the first time I sat in a Tenebrae service, visiting a friend for Easter weekend. As both the lights and the mood disappeared further into darkness, and the noise of appointments and travel and roasts in the oven faded slowly in the lingering echo of the Scriptures, I did not merely remember that Good Friday historical moment, I felt it. I felt, for maybe the first time, the sorrow-weight and glory-weight of those hours on the cross. I felt that it was right to bear it tonight.

As I sat there, throats cleared and chairs squeaked until finally, after only an anxious minute or two, the first few people got up to leave, and a relieved multitude followed quickly. Within a few minutes more, there were only a handful of us left. I sat there wondering how long they would let me stay; let me sit in this silence that shut out all else that was less important in life, which of course was everything. I wanted to be with Christ in that moment just a little longer. I probably could’ve out-lingered the churches’ welcome and the insubordinate part of me smiled a little wondering what the altercation of asking someone to leave a time of reflecting on the passion of the Lord might look like. But of course that wasn’t the point, as the reality of our lives is that we must carry the passion of the Lord out, finding out what remembrance means in the noise, movement, brokenness, and joy of everyday life with everyday sinners and saints.

But for one night, it’s good to linger a bit. We don’t naturally do so, not merely because of the silence, but because in our tension-smoothing culture we are much more comfortable focusing on the morning of Easter. We are more comfortable with Christ triumphant, seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us. It is good and right to rejoice that we live always in the sunrise of Easter, but we miss an unspeakable wonder when we rush through the night that allowed for that sunrise. It is also good and right to remember that Christ on the cross, broken and bleeding, was even in that very moment triumphant, completing the most intimate and ultimate intercession for us. And that of course is why we have Lent and Holy Week and Good Friday services; this season of confession and brokenness; so that we remember.

The modern Protestant adoption of Tenebrae services has usually shifted from reading the traditional Psalms of the Catholic hours to the reading of Scripture passages that specifically recount the passion of Christ. At times, even more specifically, the service focuses just on the seven statements of Christ from the cross that the Gospel writers give us. I don’t know all the history behind that shift, but I wonder if a part of it has to do with lingering. In the sweeping arch of Scripture, the crucifixion narratives are so relatively short, yet they are the story’s defining moment. How can these words of Christ draw us into further understanding of that moment? What do they show us about His heart?

These are the questions I have found myself lingering in during this Lenten season. Several weeks ago I first listened to a new song by Andrew Peterson called Last Words (Tenebrae). The song consists solely of these seven last statements of the cross, building on top of each other like a round, then slowly fading out again in the style of Tenebrae. It is simple and haunting and moved me to tears. There was something that caught me in all those words in one place, played on top of each other as if capturing one extended moment; something about the unfathomable relational depth of the heart of Christ. In a year when Advent struck me anew with the powerful humanity of the Incarnation, this seemed like an appropriate following meditation for Lent, though I did not seek it out. I found myself singing phrases of the song over and over again as I went about my day, lingering not only in their theological significance, but also in what they have to show us about the core of being human. For if greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends, Christ in those moments on the Cross demonstrated not only the perfection of Divine love, but also the fullness of human love, wedded in one as only He could do. I am a lover of words, and if everything Christ did and said was intentional, why these words? What do they say about His love? Why did they deserve his labored breath?

Out of these questions, then, came reflections. Not answers or treatises or complete statements of theological significance, but a few captured thoughts of how my heart is being shaped from lingering with each of these last words of Christ. Reflections that contain a little bit of my repentance and wonder and hope from glimpsing how these seven words show us the compassion, grace, provision, need, pain, authority, and submission of the relational heart of Christ in those last moments.

I’ll share these reflections one a day through this Holy Week, and pray that what may be few, faltering words will be used to draw us further in wonder and praise of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who, “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, scorning the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.” (Heb 12:2-3)

For consider Him. Linger with me?