Reflecting or Deflecting?

"You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter. He replied, "I am not." "Didn't I see you with him…?” Again Peter denied it… (from John 18:17, 26-27)

When Peter denied Jesus, he was not only betraying his friend and Lord, he was betraying his own identity. For the last three years Peter had been walking with Jesus. Think of what a transforming life this had been for him: watching miracles and even taking part in them, hearing Jesus’ teachings, learning to pray and to love and to know God and to be known by God in a deeply personal way (remember that Jesus called him “the Rock”). To breathe the free air. To put it another way, he had become Jesus’ disciple, apprenticing himself after Him, learning of this new way of being in the world and of relating to God. The girl who approached Peter in the courtyard asked him whether or not he was one of Jesus’ disciples. His flat out denial betrayed his own identity. It effectively refuted all that he had learned and come to in the previous three years. All the life he had come to evaporated in that renunciation. He relinquished the new name God had given him. Turning from Jesus, he also turned from his own honor, his integrity, his character, his uniqueness, his seity. His own individuality God had given him.

This, of course, was nothing new for Jesus. Moses had done something similar after Mount Sinai. God had, per his request, shown him His glory. He had passed by him, and the experience left Moses's face shining, his whole body and spirit radiant, alive, awake, alert, aroused. It may have been a bit like a man just coming from a sexual experience with his beloved, his face and lips flush, his eyes open wide, his breathing heavy. Moses was beaming, gleaming, blazing, resplendent, like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion (Psalm 19:5). He then carried down the stone tablets and was unaware that his face was radiant like this. And he scared the people to death.

"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him..." (from Exodus 33:29-30).

Even Aaron was terrified. And so you know what Moses did? He hid his face. He intimidated the Israelites by his having been so intimate with the Lord, and it must have frightened and embarrassed Moses, and so he hid it. By hiding himself, he hid the glory from the people that most needed it. He shrunk back and hid his association with the Lord God, just like Peter.

Nelson Mandela could have been speaking to the both of them when he said that “your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

He could have been speaking to me, too. “We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us,” Mandela continues.

Oh, yeah? We were? I suppose His glory is the gift He has given to his closest friends throughout history, a gift that He gives to us still. Recently my wife and I spent time with a local community of believers where we were asked to share something personal that God seems to be up to in our lives. I shrank back. I spoke, but only superficially, a rock skipping off the surface rather than going to the depths. Why? Because I think I am embarrassed of my place with God, of His intimacy with me. Perhaps I hide because I am in disbelief that He would have me in this way, fuddled and bashful that anyone would notice that I’ve just been with the Lord God, and afraid that others would reject me for it out of fear and intimidation.

But that is not letting my light shine, as Jesus asked that I do.

“. . . And as we let our own light shine,” says Mandela, “we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Too Close for Comfort

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

-Psalm 8:1, 3-4

Can you imagine what the enormous black sky, peppered with a million bursts of light, must have looked like to David as he peered into it? No other lights to compete with its glory. No light pollution to drown out its splendor. The only noises those of midnight bugs and bats and prairie animals. He is overcome as he beholds its magnificence. His heart explodes with wonder as he ponders it all. Its vastness. Its beauty. That God had time and creativity and enormity enough to create it all – not just once upon a time, but this night, right then where David was. Unique. Never again would he behold it exactly as it was then. Everything would move. All would be different the next evening as God set out again to lavish his universe with His creative passion, expressing Himself to his children, pursuing their hearts. David got it. In this moment, he was captured by this God-of-Love. He recognized God’s pursuit and wooing, and collapsed into it.

“What is man that you are mindful of him?” he asks as his jaw drops and his breath stops in his throat. “How could you even have time for man?” his heart wonders. And yet… And yet… God not only had time for David, but he did it all for him, to have his heart.

But for our modern, sophisticated, educated minds it is too much to think that God would create such a lavish universe just for us. Sadly, we come up with anything we can to distance ourselves from His passion: scientific reasoning to explain away His creations, stuffy academic postulations to push back His passion; equations and formulations to eradicate His desire. Explain it away. Keep our distance. We are "enlightened" to learn that the earth is not the center of the universe at all and translate it to mean that we are not the center of God's heart or longing or the point of His creation. We become insignificant specks of particles on an insignificant planet held in place by the awesome force of gravitation (not the power of God Himself) in an insignificant corner of one of a limitless number of universes. To translate, it means that we have become not the center of a cosmic battle, an invasion, a rescue, a Redemption, but meaningless and pointless accidents in a sea of atoms and subatomic particles.

We come up with our scientific posits because the Reality is too much to bear, much like those in C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory who cannot bear to walk upon the grasses of heaven as they are because the blades are so substantive, and they only shadowy wraiths, that they puncture their feet and cause great pain. They are unwilling to grow in their soul-substance by standing in the blinding light of the unbearable glory. We rearrange the order of the Psalm to read not "what is man that God is mindful of him," but "what is God that man is mindful of him?"

I understand. I do the same thing. I often wake and rush off to my checklist of things to do rather than stand or kneel in the Presence of the Creator. I dabble in distraction rather than confide or be confided in by this Friend (see Psalm 25:14), to know His deep heart. I work to secure my place in the world and with the people around me rather than revere the Lord God (revere = adore, applaud, treasure, worship, wonder at, fall for, cherish, embrace, cleave to, enjoy, desire, grab a hold of, run after). I suspect we all do this. The disciples did. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John witnessed the astounding glory of Jesus revealed. Jesus took off his veil, so-to-speak, and Moses and Elijah were there, too, in their full glory. Peter and the other two were terrified and fell face down on the ground. Peter told Jesus that they could erect three shelters, one each for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses (Matthew 17:4). Tents, in other words. Tabernacles. Something to hide their blinding glory from the three disciples. It was too much for them. God honored their fear and sent a cloud to veil the glory from them. He will, it seems, only give us as much of Himself as we can bear.

But what happens when we pause and really consider even the work of creation? Spend half an hour doing nothing at all except staring out into the starry night. Don’t try to discover the constellations or name the objects you see; just let yourself be pierced. What do we discover when we do? That God is glorious. Copernicus gave us the heliocentric model of the solar system, that is, that the sun is the center and we orbit around it. We took that to mean that we were not the center of anything at all. That is where we got it wrong. Deadly wrong.

We are the center of more than we think.

Why would the earth need to “tremble before Him” (Psalm 96:9)? Why would “the heavens rejoice” and the “fields be jubilant” and the “trees of the forest sing for joy” (v. 11 & 12, 1 Chronicles 16:33)? Because the Lord “comes to judge… the peoples in his truth.” Or, in the words of Eugene Peterson’s Message paraphrase, “He comes to set everything right on earth.” Because of His redemption and rescue of His people… because He has set His heart on bringing us home (see Isaiah 44:23). Everything that God does is to bring us back to Himself (see Ecclesiastes 3:14).

God has made us for Himself. Adam and Eve lived in glorious union with God. But God’s enemy and ours came and stole God’s love from Him. Adam and Even fell from grace – that is, they fell from God. And now, a cosmic battle has ensued in which God has come with fierce intention to free us back for Himself. We are the center of a great cosmic battle. All of the earth is to shout to God with joy, you see, because He is powerful enough to cause His enemies to “cringe before Him” (Psalm 66:3) and to win us back from them. He is not only a restless Lover in pursuit of the bride that His enemy took from Him (that’s us), but He is also a Warrior with enough courage and power and strength to win us back. He will find us. He will win us. He will have us. Jesus coming, dying, and rising again has proven that much.

What is man that God is mindful of Him? Man is in fact God’s whole desire. His whole heart is bent on us. On you and me. Intimacy and communion and the adventure of His love is the whole purpose of God for us. That is the purpose for which we have been called (Romans 8:28).

God will give us as much of Himself as we will allow. Jesus is the glory of God fully revealed to us (Colossians 1:15). Through Him we can approach even God's throne with confidence and boldness, without fear or hesitation or reserve (Hebrews 4:16). We can come back to our Lover. We can come back home. This is the invitation of God to us through Jesus. This is our place. This is the beginning of our life -- the adventure of walking with God.

Where They Lie

For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.
–Jesus of Nazareth (Luke 19:10)

I’m pierced by how personal the gospel is. I mean, how different it applies to each of us in such specific ways, and yet it is the only salvation for us all, this daring rescue by Jesus. I’ve come to believe that he was about more than just granting me some kind of asylum, just “letting me in” when I die. And frankly, I’ve always heard this bit of Scripture quoted from Luke 19:10 to mean that I was a lost bit of wretch, but now with Jesus appearing on the scene I can be a “found” bit of wretch, with “found” meaning still really messed up on the inside, but I get to spend all my messed-up days playing harps on clouds in heaven when I die.

Yea.

This, my friends, isn’t what Jesus was saying. The good Jews of Jesus’ day would have well recognized who Jesus was talking about when he referred to himself as the “Son of Man.” He was referencing the Old Testament accounts and prophecies that used the phrase and referred to the Messiah, such as Daniel 7:13-14. But He was communicating so much more than just a simple nod to the reality of his divinity.

Let’s catch up with Jesus there at Zacchaeus’s house where he made the statement.

All right. Jesus comes into the town of Jericho, and he is swarmed (as was usual) by this crowd that were a mix of people who wanted to see Jesus do something really cool (they were there because he was happenin’) and those who were genuinely desperate for Jesus to heal them, or touch them, or speak to them. This day, it was the man in the sycamore tree that caught Jesus’ eye.

We know a lot about Zacchaeus, even in the brief description we have of him. He was a tax collector, and he was wealthy. Which means that he was a conniving scoundrel who stole from anyone he could, a traitor to his people, and apparently pretty successful at it. Oh, and he was short. And he made good tree-climbing decisions – sycamores are easy trees to climb.

So Jesus walks right up to the tree. Can you imagine what Zacchaeus must have been thinking? He only wanted to get a better lay of the land here. He only wanted to see who this man that everyone was going on about really was. And having the great people-reading skills they taught him in dirty-trickster-traitor school, I’m sure he felt pretty confident he could size this fella up pretty easily.

Except that Jesus came right up to him. And worse than that, he singled him out in the crowd. But maybe worst of all, Jesus invited himself over for dinner.

But, and here’s where something amazing happens that we have to infer from what we read here, Zacchaeus welcomed him gladly. And more than that, he made amends from his heart for what he had done in his identity as a traitor-thief. He gave it up – not the actions, but the identity and security of being wealthy and untouchable. Something really deep and very real was sought out, was reached, was touched, and was healed in Zacchaeus. Maybe it was that Jesus simply said his name – how did he know who he was? Had he always? Did Jesus know him whenever he had ripped that old widow off and stole everything she owned? And whenever he had sold his friend’s life off for a few pounds of silver? And whenever he had cursed God under his breath when he thought to himself, “I can never be touched – I am wealthy.” And yet Jesus came to him, yet he singled him out, yet he still wanted to be with this “sinner”?

Whatever happened, you have to admit it was pretty dramatic. And it happened pretty fast. That’s when we catch Jesus saying that he came “to seek and save what was lost.”

Now, notice the word he uses. He says what was lost. Not who. What. In other places, he means who. But not here. He means what.

What does he mean “what”? What “what”?

Back to how personal the gospel is. The “what” that Jesus sought out and saved in Zacchaeus was a place in him, a part in him, something shattered, broken, tossed aside, frozen, stolen. Something deep (look how transforming it was for him to have it back) and something crucial (he could not recognize God without it) and something personal (so much so, that we easily miss what just took place).

This is not an isolated incident in the gospels, by the way. Jesus did something similar with Peter in John 21 and the woman at the well in John 4 and Nicodemus in John 3. It’s all over the place, in fact. You just need eyes to see this really beautiful and really restorative and really personal aspect of the ministry of Jesus.

Okay, so a few minutes ago I was standing in my bathroom looking at myself in the mirror and this realization hits me that I am afraid. I cannot name the fear. I do not know what it is about or where it comes from, but I do know, at least, that I often suppress it or ignore it or just try to bury it. Tonight I let it rise from within me and I asked Jesus what was going on there. It is the result of some lies, hidden and subtle and undiscovered, that I have bitten into, that I have believed – about something really important – God’s heart, maybe, or my own, or my place with Him. I simply prayed, “Come, Jesus, show me where they lie.”

Nothing happened. Not yet. But I know it will. It has countless times before. This is what Jesus does to “seek and save” those lost places in us. To bring “the truth in the inmost parts” (Psalm 51:6). He will raise issues, bring up fears or hurts. He will take us back to where something in our souls was shattered like glass in order to find the pieces and bring them all back together, melted back into one whole piece by the fires of his Spirit. It’s the way Eugene Peterson phrases what Paul says in Ephesians 3, that we are to be made “whole and holy” by God’s love, or the Amplified’s translation of Ephesians 2:21: “In Him the whole structure is joined (bound, welded) together harmoniously, and it continues to rise (grow, increase) into a holy temple in the Lord.”

It is a glorious restoration. God is rebuilding the temple, and we are His glorious ruins. Stone by stone, piece by piece, He is bringing us back together within ourselves and within each other that we may be “for the display of His splendor” (Isaiah 61:3) – healing, rescuing, speaking our names, calling us, seeking out the broken pieces, showing us “where they lie” that we might know the truth that sets free – really free. That like Zacchaeus, salvation (life!) may come to us.

Setting the Stage: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 2

Continued from The Question: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 1

John the Baptist has already been proclaiming some pretty wild stuff out there in the wilderness, wild words to match well his wild clothes and choice of food. John’s a wild man, and a passionate one. He is known as John the Baptist because he has been baptizing folks to get them ready for the coming Messiah. And some people are starting to believe that there will really be a Messiah coming. A lot of expectation is raised, and a lot of anticipation. What will this Messiah be like? What will he do?

Those who are coming by frequently to the Jordan where John is preaching were known now as his disciples, or more simply, his students. They were listening intently to what John had to say. Why? I mean, why would anyone particularly want to hang around this wild man who was dressed in camel skin and ate locusts for dinner? What was he saying to them that drew their interest, anyway?

To answer that, let me back up a bit to tell you about John’s father. His name was Zechariah. This guy was a priest who had been chosen to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the temple of the Lord to burn incense. This was a very rare opportunity for a priest, and Zechariah was no doubt scared out of his mind as much as he was excited.

One of the first things we learn about Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth is that they had no children. They wanted them, but Elizabeth was barren, so their hope of having any sons or daughters was waning fast, and the chances were slim.

Now, even as a priest, it was a very rare thing to get to go into the temple of the Lord. Very few priests were ever able to do so. And Zechariah was the guy chosen to go in. Now, to do so it meant that he would have a rope tied to his ankle just in case he did something wrong and he’d die in there as a result of God’s holiness and the others would need to drag him out. So this was a pretty heavy and serious matter. What made it even weightier was what Zechariah encountered in there.

To be continued...

The Question: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 1

Be prepared to meet Him Who Knows How to Ask Questions.
-T.S. Elliot

When Jesus speaks to the disciples (who really, at that point, weren’t yet disciples) in John 1:38, he asks them, “What do you want?” Now, that in itself isn’t necessarily all that profound. I’m asked that question quite a few times a day. I ask it of myself when I’m in the drive-thru line or the 16 year-old kid with the Taco Bell hat asks it of me when I’m in line thinking seriously about one of those yummy crunchy tacos they have. My wife will sometimes ask it if me in the evening when we have a wide open few hours to do whatever we want to do together. Even the little dog on my computer screen that pops up when I need to search for something has a bubble above his head and the question, "What Are you looking for?"

So what’s so special about this time when Jesus says it? (As a sidenote, I’m just going to start living like everything that Jesus says carries a really deep truth, because I mean, afterall, he is the Truth, so it seems natural that just like a fountain gushes water because that’s what it does, Jesus is going to gush truth. It’s Dallas Willard’s contention that the reality that Jesus is the smartest and most clever man that ever lived doesn’t often enter our minds when we think of him as Teacher and Master of Life, and that is tragic.)

To get a clear idea what Jesus is really saying, and why, let’s set the stage a bit…

Continued in Setting the Stage: Jesus' Pursuit, Part 2


(Thanks, K, for the T.S. Elliot quote)