Beloved on Friday: Persecuted but not Forsaken

Something has shifted in how I experienced this Good Friday, and I am still struggling to put it into words. For many years now, I have used this day to enter more fully into the sufferings our Lord endured—not because they were insufficient in and of themselves, but because I want to knowChrist, both in the fellowship of His sufferings and in the power of His resurrection. Keeping vigil with Him through the hours of the night on Thursday and then through the horrific series of events that culminated in His death on Friday afternoon has been a labor of love, motivated by my desire to feel the things He felt and therefore adore Him more fully.

My experience of trauma and abuse several years ago radically heightened my sensitivity to our Lord’s experience of the same. As I mentally replayed a blow-by-blow account of all Jesus went through during His arrest, trials, “breaking” by the Roman guards, and finally crucifixion, I would focus on the Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 descriptions of His suffering, focusing in especially on His sense of abandonment by the Father. The overwhelming horror of it all left me in anguish at the foot of the cross, longing for it all to be over and for Sunday to come set things right.

I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; He heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.

Return to your rest, my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.
Psalm 116:1-2

But last night’s Maundy Thursday vigil framed my experience of today in an entirely different light. Bouncing back and forth between John 13-17 (Jesus’ final words to and prayers for His disciples) and Psalms 113-118 (the Psalms He and His disciples would have been singing as they finished up their Passover meal and headed out to Gethsemane), the theme of God’s victorious love kept ringing in my ears. Of course on Passover night they would have been reflecting back on the progression of God’s love in redeeming Israel from slavery, from the sea, from the surrounding nations and their gods, and from their own fears as they progressed from Egypt to Zion. And this is the narrative, as N.T. Wright argues in The Day the Revolution Began, in which Jesus chose to frame His own unfolding story.

How would Jesus have been experiencing the victorious love of God in the midst of His own suffering?

But how would Jesus have been experiencing the victorious love of God in the midst of His own suffering? As He sang these lines about love and faithfulness, trust and deliverance while grappling with His impending betrayal and death, what was He thinking? It is easy to see the love of God for us in the sufferings of Jesus, but where was the love of the Father evident for Him in these events?

“Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him.If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
John 13:31-32

“If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. …the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me,but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
John 14:29-31

This is where Jesus’ lengthy discourse with His disciples in John 13-17 opens my eyes. Apart from preparing His disciples for the trauma they would soon face, Jesus was processing His own thoughts on what was about to happen. He did so in external dialogue both with His band of confused friends and with His very present Heavenly Father. Again and again He affirmed the goodness of what was about to happen, not just for His disciples’ sake but also for His own.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. John 15:9a

…You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
John 16:32b

Far from the heresy commonly sung in some Christian communities that “the Father turned His face away” from Jesus hanging on the cross, Jesus grounded Himself in the sustaining faith that His Father would never leave Him nor forsake Him. Those last few hours as He prepared for His fast-approaching “hour,” He couldn’t say enough about the Father’s love for Him. While this was partially for the benefit of His disciples, I’m increasingly convinced that it was also for His own benefit. Just as the Father’s affirmation of His belovedness at His baptism had sustained Him through the trial of the wilderness, Jesus’ repeated affirmation of His own belovedness to the Father was preparatory to His ability to keep believing and living in it when everything around Him would scream otherwise.

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”

“And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” John 17:1, 5

At this juncture, Jesus’ requests of the Father were in line with the horrors that would soon befall Him. Having just urged His disciples to ask the Father for their heart’s desire and promised that He would grant it, Jesus asked the Father for His heart’s deepest desire: to be glorified both in the Father’s presence and along with His beloved friends. The cross was the next crucial step towards the fulfillment of this prayer, and both Jesus and His Father knew it. He would be lifted up from the earth as a spectacle for all to see, through one set of eyes a spectre of gore and shame but through another set of eyes a vision of victorious love.

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” John 17:24

The Father was not only loving us though the cross; He was also loving His precious Son. Though Jesus’ prayers for deliverance in Gethsemane and His feeling of abandonment on the cross manifested the depths to which His sufferings took Him, the overarching narrative in which He consciously engaged was one of being profoundly loved. He was living in His own exodus story, paving the way to bring along the multitude of brothers and sisters He wanted to share in His glory. No one took His life from Him, not even the Father. Rather out of a profound sense of loving and being loved, Jesus willingly entered into the most agonizing labor love has known. And the Father and Spirit endured it along with Him.

Out of a profound sense of loving and being loved, Jesus willingly entered into the most agonizing labor love has known. And the Father and Spirit endured it along with Him.

This transforms the way I walk with Jesus both through this painfully victorious day and through the Good Fridays that will surely come in my own life. Because I am so profoundly loved by the Father, His Son, and their Spirit, I have the opportunity to join the family business of laboring over our shared inheritance, the Kingdom of Heaven made tangible on earth. In the dark hours that are part and parcel of that advancement, I will not suffer for Jesus, but rather with Jesus.

As His own story so beautifully manifests, all believers’ experiences of trouble, hardship, and persecution only confirm how very held we are in the love of God. We enter not into a family relationship where our Father is opposed to His children or afflicts suffering on them from an aloof distance, but where He is with us, for us, and at work through us by the power of His victorious love.

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:36-39

 

An Awkward Feast

Yesterday’s BBC headlines opined that this could be the most awkward Thanksgiving ever. Following months of heated debates, antagonistic facebook posts, and threats of leaving the country from both sides, American families may find it difficult to sit around the same table and talk with each other again.

I have to admit that I have been shocked by the nastiness this election dredged up in all of us. I heard in our conversations a heartlessness and cruelty towards the opinions and interests of others that should have shamed us, but didn’t. In fact, we modeled for our kids (and for the watching world) that it is perfectly acceptable to mock, slander, verbally attack, and basically dehumanize whomever we disagree with. It is almost as if, for a suspended period of time, we chucked out all our Christian morals about the fruit of the Spirit and supported the humanist assumption that all is fair in love, war, and politics.

In the wake of all that, how do we regather as families, churches, and communities who have been torn right down the middle by our political battles? Do we simply pretend like we didn’t say the things we said? Do we confront each other with “I told you so”s or “I can’t believe you would”s? Or do we simply avoid each other, silently retreating from those we have come to see as the enemy?

Having watched Christians on both sides of the emotionally-charged fence navigate the aftermath of the Scottish Referendum and of Brexit, I would suggest that we approach this Thanksgiving feast the way Christians throughout the ages have been called to approach our Eucharistic feast.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God… Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Ephesians 4:29-32

More important than preparing our turkeys, we need to start by preparing our own hearts, asking ourselves, “In what ways have I contributed to the problem? What attitudes or assumptions have I held on to that may be unnecessarily distancing others? Have my rants and jokes and snide comments communicated the love Christ bears for them?” If we start by working the planks out of our own eyes, we may have a better chance of seeing each other with renewed compassion.

…remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
Ephesians 2:12-13

Zooming in on ourselves is a critical first step for creating humble pie, but zooming out allows us to remember why we bother with a feast in the first place. We come to the Lord’s Table because we are broken and needy refugees, desperate for His healing touch, His cleansing blood, and His life-restoring presence. We come because our relationship with Him gets strained or distant and is in constant need of renewal. When we come confessing our sins and sincerely seeking His face, He never turns us away or hides behind distancing excuses. He places Himself in our hands, once again offering us the opportunity to both delight and hurt Him (which we inevitably do). And because of Christ’s conciliatory posture, we (who just as often behave like His enemies as we do His friends) can again be at peace with God.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
Ephesians 2:14-16

And as sweet as this peace with God is, it is not complete until we share it with each other. After all, communion was never meant to be a private dining experience. I am not the only one He invites to His table! If I claim to love God, then I must love those whom He loves. If I care about what is important to Him, then I will invest myself in reconciling the relationships that He poured out His blood to make peace between.

For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household…
Ephesians 2: 17-19

I hear Christians from opposing political camps talking as if they can no longer share fellowship with each other. For many it is the pain and betrayal they feel from those who seem to have blatantly compromised their Christian values by the way they have behaved or voted. For some it is simply the inability to understand why certain issues would be such a big deal to the exclusion of others. Regardless, as those who have been invited to sit together at God’s table, it is simply not an option to hold on to our relationship with Him without also working to reconcile our relationships with each other.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3

We might be tempted to wonder why God would include at His table such an odd assortment of guests. What with our disparity of cultural values and political positions, not to mention emotional temperaments, personal perspectives, and communication styles, how can He expect us to all sit together and enjoy a peaceful conversation? It may be that we have to do a lot of teeth-gritting as we put up with each other, praying frantically that the Spirit will override the divisive reactions which naturally come springing out of our lips and replace them with His own fruit.

God never promised that diversity would be easy, or that unity would come naturally. Overcoming barriers of caste, gender, race, nationalism, and political persuasion to gather His people from every tribe, tongue, and nation into one happily dining family is nothing short of a miracle. It takes constant forgiveness (even of those who don’t know they need it) and vigilant sensitivity to the fears and pain of others.

But this is exactly the awkward social situation into which He invites us to come and dine. And as our stubborn love keeps us together at the table, the miracle of His grace gets put on display for a watching world to see.