Have you ever had a friend who you trusted completely? For reasons of time and circumstance you thought–this person has my back.
Or something…
Most of us would like it if God were a glorified Santa Claus, providing winning lottery tickets and easy answers.
He is not. He is “not a tame lion.”. And this is a dark world.
But if you get to know Him well, you learn something–God is completely trustworthy.
Lucky for us His love never fails.
The first question this morning: when will it be Christmas again?
365 days can seem like forever. A long time to wait for Christmas.
It has been about 736,570 days since the first Christmas. And it was about 1.46 million days of recorded history before the first Christmas.
Suddenly a single year doesn’t seem so long. To wait for a Savior? To wait for hope?
The good news of Christmas is the gift of a child–precious, poor, unlikely, who shed his light over us.
Every day Christmas when Jesus is with us.
How will you celebrate salvation?
I have clung to this verse rather feverishly through the last 4 years:
Isaiah 53:12 (NIV)
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Because I am a transgressor
And he was numbered with me
It really does not feel good being a transgressor. First there is the spiritual malaise of sin. Then there is the divide it creates between me and God. Next there is this fun fact: while all regular humans are sinners, we pretend we are not.
Jesus was no regular human.
He was poor, dark, and hated. His nickname was “bastard.”
He bore our shame.
He bore my shame.
Isaiah 53 is a chapter as hard as obsidian, so painful, so crucial. And it was written by a guy who walked around naked for 3 years just because God told him to do it.
I figure the naked walking was God’s writing seminar. Not fun or pretty, but soaring, redemptive, essential.
Do you know Jesus?
If you do, you know the only color that matters when describing him is blood red. Blood shed for me, one miserable transgressor.
And if you don’t? Walk that road, that narrow road he lights for us, to the Cross that sets us free.
Isaiah 1:18
This morning I listened to an excellent sermon.
The pastor had a great pastor voice–warm, sincere, sonorant.
The text was a biggie–Abraham and Isaac and the God who provides.
The sermon points were worth writing down, like a good recipe.
But.
But if my calculations are correct the sermon was delivered when the pastor was sliding down a hill of temptation, sin, and loss that he would not survive.
Good sermon. Worth playing at a funeral.
The truth of the sermon does not change if the speaker is not following the recipe.
But his willful hypocrisy will make the valley harder for his community, his family, his children.
By contrast Jesus preached a sermon and then exceeded the scope of that sermon by miles, years, eternity, and hell.
That is right: Jesus was damned for us.
We will be judged by the measure of our lives or his, our words or his.
I choose the God of life because he walks a path of sacrifice and love and then looks over his shoulder and says,
c’mon, follow me.
Follow Him, walk the hard road all the way to life…everlasting.
I drove by the outlet mall on Black Friday; people were parked on the grassy margins, everywhere.
I go to the store; the area by the checkout is bunkered with coffee makers and candy canes.
I see pictures of Santa Claus everywhere. Movies about with saccharine messages about the “Christmas spirit.”
Like that is a real thing.
The truth is a poor teenager in a barn laboring to bring forth a child. If Santa did not give Jesus a decent hotel room to be born in, who are we to expect xboxes and flat screen tvs?
We are defined by gods and idols or…we are defined by that little child in the manger.
Somethings are either/or propositions:
Life or death
Angels or demons
Truth or fiction
A small tribe on the outpost of history waited for thousands of years for news of their King, the God who saves.
And it has taken us a cool 50 years to forget he is the reason for this celebration–the only Christmas gift that will matter forever.
When a great man dies it is fitting for the rest of us to stand in his honor.
So I do.
But it is even more worth noting that Mr. Mandela was just an ordinary man who stood when it cost him.
Stood when others ran.
Stood when sitting, hiding, turning, leaving would have been easier.
He paid in minutes, days, hours, years, indignity, and heartbreak for a freedom that should have been his birthright.
What ordinary men do…
This was over a decade ago. A small storefront church, a young mother speaking.
She spoke about a children’s song–
Jesus loves me this I know/for the Bible tells me so/little ones to him belong/they are weak, but he is strong/
The song is so simple, so elemental, but it is only a portion of a longer hymn few of us know or sing.
We like the idea of Jesus being strong until he requires something of us.
We like the idea of Jesus being strong until he requires us to acknowledge our weakness.
We are weak. All of us. There is not a living creature on the planet who can stave off death, yet we cling to the illusion of our self-sufficiency.
The young mother that day was focused on the call of the Gospel–one man able to save us from death forever, and how to bind that good news to her children, all God’s children.
How many times have you heard a person cry out in grief and pain and then seen people answer–
stay strong/you are strong.
No. You are not. None of are. We are weak. That is the point–we are weak. He is strong.
So when sin and grief and pain hit you hard remember this: the song is true.
We are weak
He is strong
Only his strength can save us
From the swirling darkness of this
Dying world
I have a childlike way of seeing the world. There is a story in The Little Prince that I have found very useful over the years.
The narrator tells us that he once drew a picture of a snake swallowing an elephant. When he showed the picture to most people the drawing they exclaimed,
nice hat!
They could not picture the inside of the snake–the hidden elephant, if you will. He determined to talk to the hat people about insubstantial things–golf, the weather.
I find my hat picture is acknowledging great darkness in this world. Who wants to read about child abuse? Who really wants to write about it?
Not me.
I would rather not. I have done it aggressively, unapologetically over the last two years because I realized that it is a too-common story exacerbated and perpetuated by silence.
It has been an ugly cause. Made the more ugly for me personally because I realize how many “good” people do nothing.
I won’t ever be good at talking about golf while the world is burning.
Someone I cared about and once trusted as an elephant-seer had a conversation with me that reminded me how lonely the world of the abuse survivor can be.
The person’s discomfort was palpable and they couched it in terms of my Christianity. I have a feeling a lot of people look at my story of unhappy endings and think,
she must have done something wrong.
Of course I have! I am a sinner. But mental illness and child abuse happen everywhere, not just in my life. We don’t talk because have been taught to be ashamed.
That is not freedom in Christ. Freedom in the love of God involves a central story of pain, humiliation, agony, the death of God.
I cannot see the survivors of the crucifixion singing glib songs of cheap sentiments in the days of the cross.
Beware of people who preach resurrection joy without crucifixion agony.
The story of heaven can only be told if someone is willing to reckon with hell.
Thank God He did.
Not quite four years ago.
It was a watershed moment. I looked around the courtroom at the other bewildered parents, frankly wishing that my (adopted) son was just a weed dealer or boat thief.
He had done so much worse, and to people who were too young, innocent, and precious to deserve such terrible affliction.
I whined to God–why?! Why me? Why us? Why this?
Too much to bear…
That was my line of thinking until steady eyed Jesus reminded me of the thing He had done for me–
…numbered with the transgressors
I was numbered with the transgressors.
The message was clear–if He, blameless God, could be counted with the evildoers, I could stand this terrible heartbreak and shame.
After all, He was numbered for me, an actual transgressor.
We often forget what misery we have bought but not yet fully paid for in our rebellion against Love.
Love, heartbroken for His children. All His children.
Rain comes down
After the rush
After the game
Someone, always someone has to
Drive home in the dark
Defeated
Whilst the victors go to Walmart.
You bring rain
You always God
You bring rain
And with it midnight lullabies
For an old insomniac like me
I understand the darkness
In his voice
In his shared sense
Of humor
How “finishing the job”
Could seem so reasonable
To a monster-
o-us–
She listens to the darkness
The rain
The lullaby for a child who would not
Ever
Relent
Now become a man
Face your god
Face your God
No wonder you do not believe in
One
When the other is something so unspeakable
Carrying Light 