Matthew 1:1 NIV
[1] This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Matthew seems pretty confident that Jesus is the Messiah, a word with so much power to reckon with us and all that has captured us that I am not sure how big or long or loud our explanations of Messiah could be and still be only an approximation of the real.
Some synonyms: King, Anointed, Savior, Redeemer, Ransomer, Hero, Deliverer, Protector
The Reckoner.
Like you I dread
The cascade of terrible deals waiting each day in the junk folder of a yahoo account
Offers for things I don’t want, need, fear
Including Nina’s daily offer of
Gorgeous Russian brides
(Which raises so many questions)
I decide to believe
They are all nesting dolls
With the hopefully-hypothetical Nina the biggest mama doll
Seamed at the waist so
Each smaller iteration can come out
With her own
Painted-on wedding dress, bouquet of flowers
in a line they become their own wedding procession
Waiting for Someone to breath on them
Immortal life
Making us all real.
I leave the shower curtain on the living room floor and the little boy who does and does not resemble us takes it up, exclaiming, the periodic table! with the remains of his little boy voice.
Later, after forgetting and days of heavy gravity, I lift the curtain and pierce each hole again, arms growing heavy-diagonally, the way trees grow.
Admire the way they have been ordered each in their brightly colored boxes. Iron, gold, carbon, oxygen, and the exotic ones we seem to have conjured to fill up the empty places.
He speaks to us in parables.
When I tell you I found the old mushroom-colored sweatshirt which saw us through thick and thin you will know I am talking about the way the Romans used to have it done, long pole, wad of cloth, vinegar soaked as we raise it to the real hero, his naked pain, the way he eschews ordinary safety for a stretched-to-the-limits agony
I take the brush, add the cleanser, wipe it all down with an uneasy litany
Drab for color
Old for young
Plain for beautiful
Forgotten for remembered
He says
Me for you
Death for life
Life, everlasting.
Just an ordinary looking guy with an odd refugee backstory who comes along, works with wood, talks some smack, heals the crowd, dies for all, inexplicably
Rises again.
The end-the beginning
for all of us.
Imagine them as you will but never
Assume your scepticism will make them
Mythological again
In the smoke of our discarded daughters
/commerce of indifference
Shoots craps in crowded rooms
Sweat-palmed cash for common shame
Summon these
Monsters of righteousness
From this fire we
have made of love.
I have a bag of parables and pet theories I used to bore my youth group with…regularly.
One of them was the lottery ticket theory, which goes something like this:
If a rude person verbally assaulted you in a parking lot and insisted that they were handing you a winning lottery ticket you might be put off by the assailant, but you would be a fool not to take the ticket and check the numbers.
Jesus is that ticket.
We Christians are absolute morons–rude, pushy, myopic, prejudiced, morally flaccid.
You name it, we flub it.
But Jesus did not. He flubbed nothing. He gives us back our lousy, flea-bitten lives, whole and restored.
Why bother restating an old story from my former life?
Because I believe.
Because I still believe.
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.
First of all, let me restate for the record:
I am an egregious sinner and a (to quote my adopted daughter)–“failed parent.”
So yeah. Don’t be me:)
Second, a story…
When I first became a parent it was to a 12 year old boy who had been through hell.
He flipped out fast, threw rocks at our neighbors’ cars, and his caseworker told us our only option was to call the police.
Our next two charges we kept, despite the fact that they screamed at the top of their lungs 2-3 hours a day.
We lived in a cute little neighborhood. Imagine our neighbors’ chagrin when the howling started and their tremendous relief when we finally moved.
Imagine being young, reasonably cute and surrounded by a maelstrom of LOUD everywhere you went.
I still can’t believe we did it.
But we did.
Because we believed
In Jesus
Still believe, actually.
Before I wrote this I asked my oldest biological child how how life would have been different for this child and the family if I had followed advice we have encountered over and over about hiding our adopted son’s predations.
The answer was a chilling thing–
If I had, if we had, hidden the crimes against our children and supported their predator, we would have unleashed darkness on our children.
In other words–we had to tell the truth, be the failures in the eyes of family, church, and community to succeed in the one thing that matters–showing our children they are precious.
In fact I would say this to all of them the same–you are precious.
And if you are a threat to yourselves or others I will be the first person to call the police.
Because, my dear, we all deserve the law–it’s gravity and protection.
Beneath a grim and unavoidable Cross.
Pastor Chuck Jacob preached a sermon recently on a particularly amazing portion of Isaiah 52 and 53. Much of Isaiah sees the future to the face of Jesus. And thanks to Handel, much of what Isaiah saw is put to soaring music as well as words of hope.
But. There is one small catch. Maybe two. First, Isaiah is thought to have been martyred for his prophecy, and second….
Jesus gives us hope by becoming our disfigurement. That is what Pastor Jacob describes–God made flesh and then made Calamity for us.
I often think about The Princess Bride Not only does Westley endure the unendurable in the quest for love, he then gives one of the most apt descriptions of disfigurement ever–
Wrong! Your ears you will keep and I will tell you why…so that…”Dear God, what is that thing?” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what “to the pain” means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
Tough stuff for a romantic fable, but an efficient echo of redemptive agony–Jesus became disfigured and unrecognizable as the real embodiment of the sin, filth, violence, and casual cruelty of Man. We, if we dare to look, see him as a monster as he dies for us. We fail to recognize the monstrous signature of our own clawing sins.
He goes to hell disfigured. But what would be a dreadful, eternal quietus for us is the force of redemptive power–him for us, God poured out for me.
Part 1 of 2
Carrying Light 