Jesus came with all the potential power that He wanted. He used it to heal the sick, raise the dead, touch the untouchable and heal the souls of the broken.  In fact, it’s not even the miracles that are amazing … what’s amazing is who he performed the miracles for.  The outcast.  The hated.  The enemy.

Yet, He was outcast, beaten, spit on, possibly raped (if was acceptable for soldiers to rape criminals) and eventually killed at the request of those he loved.  He could of … maybe even should have … destroyed His enemies … He had the power to, but He didn’t.

Sin, revenge, egotism is cyclic … but so is love. With one act of grace (“Father, forgive them”), a new narrative has been born … again and again.

That narrative was reborn at the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground.

The deceased Boston Bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was accepted by Peter Stefan, owner of the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors.  Stefan, who is seemingly putting his respect for the dead over and above his business’ prosperity, has been quoted as saying that everyone deserves a dignified burial, no matter the circumstances of their death.

As one may expect, Stefan’s funeral home has received numerous protests; and rightfully so.  The body his funeral home is housing is the deceased remains of a terrorist.  A terrorist whose actions injured 264 people and killed four; one of whom was a police officer, and the other a young child.  Not only did he accomplish this bombing, but he planned much more violence and destruction that one can only speculate he would have accomplish had he the chance to do so.

He was our enemy.  He killed an American child.  A beautiful son of our country.

An enemy whose body has been rejected by all the local cemeteries.  A body that has no place to rest.  And for good reason.  Could you imagine the grave desecration that would occur?  Could you imagine the curse that will reside over the cemetery that accepts a terrorist?

From a capital standpoint, it wouldn’t make sense for the cemetery to accept his body and lose future customers.  Who wants to be buried near a terrorist?

From a safety standpoint, it doesn’t make sense.  Cemeteries are already subject to vandalism and desecration, what more could happen if a terrorists body was interred in a place accustom to abuses?  Would the cemetery need to install security cameras?  People would vandalize his grave in the name of America.

Out of respect for those already buried and the families that buried them, a cemetery has reason to reject one Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  How can families feel good about the cemetery where their relatives reside when they are residing near a terrorist?

He was our enemy and must remain our outsider.  “Ship him back to where he came from!!!”, said some.  “Cremate his ass!” said others.  Perhaps the request to bury him in an unmarked grave was the most levelheaded suggestion; but, so far, no cemeteries have offered an unmarked grave for the terrorist.

And then on Tuesday morning, this piece of news comes out.  Paul Keane, the owner of a plot in the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground (and Yale Divinity graduate) wrote this on his blog:

I am willing to donate a burial plot next to my mother in Mt. Carmel Burying Ground to the Tsarnaev family if they cannot obtain a plot. The only condition is that I do it in memory of my mother who taught Sunday School at the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church for twenty years and taught me to “love thine enemy.”

I own the plot.  No one can refuse me access.

This is the cemetery lot that Paul is offering

So far, the response to Paul has varied between praise and protest.  And so it was 2,000 years ago.  Grace is always scandalous; but it’s also cyclic.

(NOTE: As of Wednesday morning, it’s still unclear whether or not the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors has accepted Paul Keane’s offer.  There is, however, an updated offer on Keane’s blog. )

Sometimes our weak attempts of denial break apart.  Our necessary lies that we tell ourselves to keep the evil at bay are hit by the truth.  The comforting catch phrases we were told crumble under the weight of reality.  And those lies, those attempts at denial, those catch phrases are usually religious in nature.

God is in control.

God means everything for good.

Or

God is punishing us.

God has a plan.

God had a higher purpose.

And then Newtown happens.  Crash.  Bang.  The God of our creation – created for our comfort, for our solace in troubled times – begins to break apart.  This perfect God who exists upon a pedestal comes crashing down.

Our God of all-power, of all-knowledge, of omnipresence, of all-love is no longer sustainable.  The iconoclasm of evil has struck again.  And we pause for a moment and question, “Is there something wrong with my God?”  We scramble for justifications, and we slowly piece God back together with glue and duct tape, only to have him rendered weaker, uglier and more susceptible than before.  We become fearful of doubts, fearful that this one or the next will be the final break that renders our perfect God unfixable, and thus our ability to cope with the world impossible.

Before you rush off to grab your glue, let the perfect God lay.  Maybe some of those pieces don’t belong.

Like omnipotence.  If there’s ever a time to reconsider the power of God it’s right now, after Newtown and during the Advent.

This from Greg Boyd via Twitter: God becomes a baby, demonstrating that his way of conquering evil is not through force, but through the power of humble, innocent love.

The power of the advent story is the utter weakness of God.

The power of the advent story is that God isn’t who we thought he was.

The power of the advent story is that God is susceptible to mankind.

God as child.

God as weak.

God as suffering.

God experiencing death.  Awful death.

Let the perfect God break to pieces today.  Let it shatter.  God in a manger has replaced God omnipotent.

Psychological Studies

Older couples that have been married for many years suffer intense grief when their spouse suddenly dies.  Some times the husband and wife are so close that when the one dies, the other will end up dying soon after because of pain of being separated from their loved one.

People have studied the psychosomatic effects of rejection and separation.  Dr. James Lynch wrote a book called, The Broken Heart, in which he states:

“stress, pain, anxiety, fear and rage sometimes appear in indexes of textbooks on the heart but never love.  In surprising number of cases of premature coronary heart disease and premature death, interpersonal unhappiness, the lack of love and human loneliness, seem to appear as root causes of the physical problems.

We have learned that human beings have varied and at times profound effects on the cardiac systems of other human beings.  Loneliness and grief often overwhelm bereaved individuals and the toll taken on the heart can be clearly seen.  As the mortality statistics indicate this is not myth or romantic fairy tale.  All available evidence suggests that people do indeed die of broken hearts”

Dr. Arthur Brown has been acknowledged by over sixty medical journals and publications for his findings.  His findings also suggest a major relationship between heart disease and emotional stress.

Dr. David Jenkins states in the New England Journal of Medicine, “that a broad array of recent studies point with ever increasing certainty to the position that certain psychological, social and behavioral conditions do put persons at a higher risk of clinically manifest coronary disease”.

Dr. George Ingle from Rochester University Medical School, did a careful study for six years that explored the backgrounds of 170 sudden heart attack deaths.  His studies showed that a great majority of sudden death cases had a close personal lose precede their death.

Grief is proportional to intimacy.

The more you love somebody, the more you are hurt when that person dies or rejects you.  Can you be so close to somebody that their rejection can literally break your heart?

The Biblical Evidence

Jesus had a great amount of rejection and grief.  Let’s look first at what the Bible says about Jesus’ rejection.

“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hid their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem Him” Isaiah 53:3.

“Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone (the stone refers to Jesus) which the builders (teachers of Israel) rejected, this became the chief corner stone;” Matthew 21:42.

“But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and seize his inheritance.’ And they took him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him” Matthew 22:38-39.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” Matthew 23:37.

“But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation” Luke 17:25.

“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and world did not know Him.  He came to His own and those who were his own did not receive Him” John 1:10-11.

“And you are unwilling to come to me that you might have life” John 5:40.

“’They hated Me without cause’” John 15:25b.

These are a few passages that talk about Jesus’ rejection.  There are others that state or imply His rejection by the world that He “so loved.”  Several of the parables are about how the multitudes rejected Jesus.  The parable of the landowner (Matt. 21:33-42), and the parable of the wedding feast (Matt.22:2-10) both depict the rejection of Jesus.

The scripture makes it clear that our Lord and Savior was rejected by the majority of those He loved.

Since love suffers when it cannot give

and intimacy is proportional to grief

we would assume that Jesus must have had an overwhelming grief.

The Bible states clearly that Jesus did indeed have great amounts of grief.

In Matthew chapter 26 verses 37 through 38, Matthew writes,

“And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed.  Then He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death (italics added); remain here and keep watch with Me.’”

The entire chapter of Isaiah 53 describes Jesus’ grief.  Here are the excerpts: “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”; “surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows he carried”; “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief”; and “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied”.

Sweating Blood:

The gospel of Luke (22:44) states, “And being in agony he was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.”

C. Truman Davis, M.D. writes in his book, The Crucifixion of Jesus,

“Though very rare, the phenomenon of Hematidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented.  Under great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat”.

Jesus bloody sweat is evidence of great grief.

Historical Evidence

The crucifixion was a horrible means of putting somebody to death.  The criminal was nailed onto the cross in such a way that his legs would be bent at the knees.  The bend in the knees placed all the criminals weight on his arms.  This, of course, hurt the hands, but it did more than hurt the hands.  The position that the cross placed the criminal in would cause muscle cramps throughout his body.

C. Truman Davis states (speaking of Jesus), “Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are unable to act.  Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled”  This disabled the criminal to let out his breath.  In order to prevent suffocation, the criminal would have to push up with his legs to change position.  After spasmodically pushing up with his legs, the criminal would take a quick breath of air before letting himself back down again.

A picture of a left ventricle experiencing stress-induced cardiomyopathy.

The criminal would eventually die of asphyxiation, or suffocation.  It was said that a strong man could hang on the cross, some say, up to ten days before their bodies were so tired that they could not continue the process to get breath.  Jesus, who was most likely a healthy man (he was a carpenter) was on the cross for only six hours before He died (Mark 15:25, 33).  Pilate, himself was astonished that Jesus died so quickly (Mark 15: 42-44).

The Roman soldiers were surprised Jesus died so quickly.  The Jews did not want the bodies of the criminals to remain on the cross over the Sabbath, so they

“asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.  The soldiers therefore came, and broke the legs of the first man, and of the other man who was crucified with Him; (breaking the legs disabled the criminals to push up so that they could exhale the carbon dioxide; thus, the criminal would suffocate to death) but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs” John 19:31-33.

Jesus was in his early to middle thirties and was most likely a strong man since He was a carpenter and walked most everywhere He went.  If Jesus did die the normal crucifixion death, why did He die so quickly?  Couldn’t he have lived longer on the cross?

We read in John’s gospel (John 19:34) that “one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.” C. Truman Davis writes concerning the medical significance of the blood and water, “We, therefore, have rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Our Lord died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure…” (8).  Heart failure that began to develop in the garden when Jesus was sweating blood, continued to build when he was rejected by many of his disciples and came to utter fruition when his people nailed him to a cross.

Let me suggest that Jesus died from stress-induced cardiomyopathy as a result of the rejection and grief he experienced as he walked the world.

Final thoughts from theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff:

God is love.  That is why he suffers.  To love our suffering, sinful world is to suffer.  God so suffered for the world that he gave up his only Son to suffer.  The one who does not see God’s suffering does not see his love.  God is suffering love.  Suffering is down at the center of things, deep down where the meaning is.  Suffering is the meaning of our world.  The tears of God are the meaning of history.

The Vulnerable God

William Placher writes,

Love involves a willingness to put oneself at risk, and God is in fact vulnerable in love, vulnerable even to great suffering.  God’s self-revelation is Jesus Christ, and, as readers encounter him in the biblical stories, he wanders with nowhere to lay his head, washes the feet of his disciples like a servant, and suffers and dies on a cross — condemned by the authorities of his time, undergoing great pain, “despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity”

This week we reflect on the pinnacle of the vulnerably of God … the death of Jesus.

Pulled Into the Narrative of Suffering

In Matthew 20: 20 – 23, the mother of disciples James and John asks Jesus this question, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”

Jesus’ response turns the whole conversation on it’s head.  James and John’s mother assumes that Jesus is coming into Jerusalem to set up his Kingdom, whereby Jesus will claim the thrown of David and push the Romans and their rule out of the land of Israel.

The disciples see Jesus’ entering Jerusalem as a power play and they want a piece of the power.

It was evident that James and John, their mother and the disciples had yet to understand the nature of the Kingdom: freedom, vulnerability, love and often suffering.

Jesus responds, “You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”  In the Old Testament “the cup” was a metaphor for suffering … the very opposite of power.  In fact, power is the human response to suffering.  Power is the human response to vulnerability.  Suffering is the divine response to vulnerability.

Jesus then states, “You will indeed drink from my cup ….”

And although they didn’t understand it, the disciples eventually would understand the brokenness of God over the world.  They would eventually re-narrate the vulnerability of God in their own suffering … a re-narration that God invites all of his followers to embrace. As we’ve prayed so often, “Lord, break my heart with the things that break yours.”

Simon of Cyrene

Perhaps that re-narration is nowhere more visually clear than in Simon of Cyrene.  It seems that Simon is actually forced into helping Jesus carry the cross to Golgotha.  Mel Gibson portrayed Simon in “The Passion of the Christ” as being unwilling to carry the cross.

And I think most of us respond in the same way.  When God asks us to help him carry his burdens and we realize that his burdens are the weak, the poor and the sinful, we all turn our heads in disgust.

“You mean you’re calling me to weakness?”, we ask.   “I thought you saved me in order to give me strength?” we snark.

And we find ourselves like Simon of Cyrene being forced to carry a cross that isn’t ours.

“But, you’re God … why can’t you carry this on your own?” we retort.  ”Aren’t you all-powerful?  Aren’t you the one who created the world?”

The truth sets in.

God  needs  our  help.

HE  CAN’T  CARRY  THE  BURDEN  ALONE.

Some final thoughts from William Placher,

If God becomes human in just this way, moreover, then that tells us something about how we might seek our own fullest humanity — not in quests of power and wealth and fame but in service, solidarity with the despised and rejected, and the willingness to be vulnerable in love.

We become human when we become Simon of Cyrene and embrace the vulnerability of God by carrying his cross with Him.

*****

It was a terrible tragedy – unspeakable – and it was making the rounds on Facebook:  a local two-year-old boy killed in a house fire.  As the details came out, there were a number of families in town sharing in the grief of this boy’s death.  A little boy, lost to his father, his stepfather, his mother (sedated and in the hospital still days later), and all types of extended and blended families and relationships.  A number of them in the church where I am an associate pastor.

The weird thing about death for me is that it was so present in my early life, that even the worst of tragedies now require me to step way outside of myself to feel them for others.  It’s like a scar with no nerve endings.  By the time I was ten, I had lost all of my grandparents, two uncles, a number of family friends, and my father.  Death shaped me.  I knew it was shaping these people, too.  It was carving out new chasms of pain.  They were becoming more human.

Because one of the boy’s cousins was in my youth group, I was asked to lead the graveside service, as the Catholic priest who was presiding at the funeral mass could not be there because of a prior commitment.  Whenever you get asked to preside over death, something happens.  You sense a seriousness come over you.  It’s involuntary.  You will have the final say in people’s interaction with their loved one.  Perhaps more than that, you will have the outrageous privilege and responsibility of helping them bridge this world and the next.  In this case, it was connecting the infinite with a little boy in a tiny casket suspended over a gaping hole in the ground.

I was raised Catholic.  When I step inside a Catholic Church building, unlike most other ex-Catholics I know who went over to the protestant dark side, I have a sense of coming home.  My uncle, a priest himself, was one of the finest men I ever knew.  He was the constant in my family when death reigned during my early years.  The smells, the sounds, the liturgy, the bad music – it’s like putting on your favorite pair of comfortable, but woefully out of fashion shoes.  You would never wear them in public, but in private, you miss them and occasionally slip them on to knock around the house in.

What struck me this day as I entered the narthex of the church was the open grieving already taking place.  That was familiar, too.  I can clearly hear my Aunt Peggy crying and screaming over the open casket of my uncle, her brother, Billy, dead in his early 40’s.  I was five.  It was surreal, but very emotionally honest.  We button down Protestants need some of that in our emotional mix – honesty.  This little boy’s family was grieving like that, and strangely, it gave me a sense of hope for them.  It certainly gave me love for them.

During the funeral mass, from my vantage point in the back row, I viewed a room full of people full of sorrow, hopelessness, pain, and anger, with no outlet but flowing tears.  My friend Sue was next to me in the pew.  When she saw the tiny casket, she wept.  “That’s not right!”  The father and the stepfather carried their little boy up to the front of the church.  Impossible to fathom.

At the graveside we stood at that intersection, the visible and invisible, and tried to make sense of what we could.  I told them that little Zack was safe in Jesus’ arms.  I told them that Jesus hated death; that it frustrated and angered him. I told them Jesus knows.  He knows.  He knows.

About their anger.  I told them to take it to God in full force, that he was big enough to handle it from them, that is was real and needed to be voiced.  God is such a pragmatist.  He uses what’s at hand to grab hold of us.  He uses pain and suffering to draw us to him.  He uses joy and pleasure.  Anything, really – whatever is in the emotional cupboard at the time.  And that’s when it struck me.

Death is a spiritual ear opener.  It unplugs the hard, waxy buildup of mundane, self-consumed life and lets us hear eternity calling.  And in that moment, standing by that tiny casket over a gaping hole in the ground, it happened.  There, in the cold, listening to the weeping and sniffling and occasional outbursts of tears, heaven spoke.  It was Jesus saying, “Come to me, and bring your suffering.  Bring your sorrow – I know.  Bring your anger – I know.  Bring your hopelessness – I know that, too.  I’ve got what you need.  Me”

Jesus was there, in Zach’s most frightening hour.  He was there to comfort and take Zach home.

And I pray that Jesus — as Zach’s family grieves in the months and years to comes — takes this broken and beautiful family in His arms and ravages them the only way a good God can.  They, and we, can live in the love of a God who wants nothing more than for us to simply “Come.”

Last night a group of five of us gave a first-time chapel service to about 50 juvenile sex offenders. They were a crew of 14 to 19 year olds from all over the East Coast who had been charged with a serious sex crime.

For teens, a “serious sex crime” is often limited to:

child molestation,

sexual assault of a child or minor, and

rape.

I was given the opportunity to share with them for about 15 minutes.  And although I knew going into this chapel service that I was going to be the main speaker, I didn’t want to prepare a message full of statements.  Being that it was a smaller group that could respond to me while I spoke, I instead prepared a message full of questions.

The first question I asked was this: “How many of you have been seriously hurt by others in your lives?” They all raised their hands.

The assumption with children and teenagers … especially these kids … is that they were first victims. Victims who became victimizers. Most of us follow the same process. When we are hurt, we react in retaliation.

Then I asked them, “How many of you have wanted to hurt others in the same way that you’ve been hurt?” Same response. Some of them blurted out, “I want to hurt them worse.”

Most of us react proportionally to the seriousness of our pain. If someone cuts us off while we’re driving, we might flip a finger, or shout something out. On a more serious level, if somebody abuses us physically we may try to abuse others or, possibly, abuse ourselves through substances.

The sad thing for these kids that we visited last night was that many of them were in juvie for the sins of somebody else. Yes, they’re still guilty of their crimes, but they were first victims.

They had been raped.

They had been sexually molested.

They had been sexual assaulted.

They had been the victim of a crime they didn’t have the power to stop.  They had been overpowered and exploited.

As I was closing, I asked them, “If you had the power to hurt those who hurt you, what would you do?”

They all replied they’d inflict all the pain they could.  And their story is the story of the world.  A story of abuse, exploitation, reaction and retaliation.  A story of war, of hatred, of tribalism, of divorce of revenge.  Speaking to these 50 juvenile sex offenders, I was speaking to the story of humanity.

A story that has been slowly changing towards redemption through the introduction of a new narrative.

Jesus came to this earth with all the potential power that He wanted. He healed the sick, raised the death, touched the untouchable and healed the souls of the broken. He never used His might for evil.  Even His enemies said He was innocent. Yet, He was outcast, beaten, spit on, possibly raped (if was acceptable for soldiers to rape criminals) and eventually killed at the request of those he loved.

He could of … maybe even should have … destroyed His enemies … He had the power to, but He didn’t. I explained to them that the only innocent person who EVER walked the earth was abused to the point of death, but instead of reacting in retaliation, He forgave and redeemed.

These kids where fixated on the message. It wasn’t my message; it was a new perspective, a new story, a different option that began to melt the coldness of their hearts, just like it has millions of others throughout history, including my own.

Sin is cyclic … but so is love. With one act of grace, a new narrative has been born … again and again.

Lady Gaga’s states, “Mother Monster.”

Queer theorist Michael Warner writes,

“Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative.”

Lady Gaga is the embodiment of Queer Theory, not necessarily in her sexuality, but by her identification and normalization of “whatever is at odds with the normal.“

A quick scroll through her nearly 14 million twitter followers shows that most of them are “weird”, they are “the rejected” and the “monsters.”  The kind of people that would walk through the doors of a church and be sneered at by the onlookers.

Granted, some of her followers flock to her because of her (ambiguous) sexuality. But many flock to her as their “mother monster” … because she accepts, even normalizes the weirdness … the queerness… she embraces those who feel that they’re not apart of the “normal” … that are broken … not whole … not legitimate … that are, in some ways, monsters.

Most churches would hate her.  Most churches would hate her followers.  They either couldn’t see past the lifestyle, couldn’t see past the way they dress or couldn’t see past the philosophy.

But not Jesus.  In fact, a quick look at Jesus’ tribe and we soon realize that he too was the “Mother Monster” … the One who made a mosaic out of broken pieces.

Mary Magdalene the Harlot.

John the Baptist.

Matthew the Tax Collector.

Peter the Zealot.

Philip the Doubter.

Paul the Persecutor

Monsters.  Rejected.  All.

Lady Gaga’s tribe is strong.  They’re strong because they’re united by their brokenness … by their “queerness.”

Like Jesus, Gaga has found one of the strongest bonds for community: not primarily sin, but rejection.

The difference between Gaga and Jesus?  She lives off her tribe.  Jesus inaugurated his through death.

But, if Jesus was walking in America today, and if He was afforded the opportunity, I’d love to see his conversation with the “Mother Monster.”

And I hope – just maybe – one of Jesus’ people can share of His rejection, of how He was despised, how nobody looked at Him, a man that had nowhere to lay His head … and maybe, if she’d join His tribe, she’d finally find her home.

But, I wonder if Jesus’ people have become too normal to embrace the rejects of the world?  If we see Lady Gaga and her followers as the ones Jesus WOULDN’T want, maybe we’ve lost touch with the real Jesus and become too comfortable with a Jesus that doesn’t exist.

Do you look for Jesus in Church?

Do you look for Jesus in the Word?

In your quiet times?

In prayer?

We’ve all looked for Jesus in these places.  And we’ve found Him there, once or twice.  And we (I) have thought, “Jesus dwells in the Word … so I will wait here until He comes back to show Himself to me again.”  And I wait.  And we wait.

Martin Buber has said that community is the place of theophany, so we go to church and except that “where two or three are gather” there He is. And I wait.  And we wait to find him in this place.

Quiet times alone in prayer, worship and the Bible are the place where our personal relationship with Jesus is built.  And it’s true … to an extent.  He speaks to us and then silence.  Silence.  And we wait.

Where is Jesus?  Why is it that He’s so silent, so often, despite the fact that we are genuinely seeking His presence?  Why does He so often remain so distant while our faith so languishes in the desert?

****

God is rarely present in a place, or a set aside time.  But, “He dwells with the broken and the contrite.”

The hungry.

The naked.

The stranger.

The imprisoned.

The sick.

Jesus says, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

But, it is not us giving to the have not’s. It’s not those of us with a spiritually induced Messiah complex swooping in to help the broken.  No, those aren’t the one’s meeting Jesus either.

Jean Vanier, a former naval officer, former professor who received his Ph.D. in moral philosophy in Paris, and eventual founder of “L’Arche”, (a movement of communities that seeks to create a family environment for those who’ve been rejected because of their mental disability), has this to say:

“Jesus came to bring the good news to the poor, not to those who serve the poor! I think we can only truly experience the presence of God, meet Jesus, received the good news, in and through our own poverty, because the kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the poor in spirit, the poor who are crying out for love … God is present in the poverty and wounds of their heart.”

So that the one “place” we might always find God is in brokenness.  I’ve seen people who have tried to “break themselves” so as to spur the presence of God in their lives.  And that’s not what I’m talking about here.

*****

Buber was right.  Jesus was right.  Theophany is in the community, AND he dwells with the broken! But it’s not always in individual brokenness, but in the broken community.

God calls himself the “Paraclete” which means “the one who answers the cry.”

We will find Jesus at the funeral.

We will find Jesus around the death bed.

We will find Jesus in the prisons.

In the hurting families.

With the fatherless.  With the widow.

And we will find Him, not as outsiders of the broken community, but as ones who find ourselves apart of it.

And I think we will soon realize that He himself is not dwelling with the broken and the contrite as just the “Paraclete”, but because He too is most like … most comfortable with the broken.  It’s not that he’s there just because he’s saving us … it’s that He’s with the broken because He’s most like us.

I hope we all find that Jesus dwells with the broken communities.

Editor’s Note: This week, we’re revisiting the most popular webcontent on RELEVANTmagazine.com in 2011—and this one caught us by surprise. People don’t want to read about being sad, right?  Yet, a great number of readers passed along this article about the theology of sorrow. Many Christians see God as an emotionless deity, and tend to view their feelings, especially negative ones, as being unlike Him.

But Caleb (a funeral director who knows a thing or two about the heights of emotion) reveals a God who has known the ache of loss, who empathizes with His children and can even turn suffering into something sacred. Could it be that our sorrow is a form of worship? Where should believers draw the line with emotions? If you haven’t before, join this much-needed discussion.

*****

Van Gogh’s “Old Man in Sorrow.” It’s interesting that the posture of sorrow is similar to a posture of worship.

Few Christians are familiar with the term “orthopathos.”

We’re familiar with orthodoxy, which is “thinking like Jesus”.  And many of us hope to be “orthodox.”

Some of us have heard of the term orthopraxy, which is “acting like Jesus”.

But orthopathos, which means “feeling the feelings of Jesus” is an idea that few of us are familiar with because so few of us believe He actually feels.

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It’s said that we become like the object/person we worship. And when you worship God, you become like who or what you think He is.

Do you worship God as patient?

Do you worship God as just?

Do you worship God as love?

You will eventually become all these things if you believe they are apart of God’s character.

What happens when you see God as immutable … as unchangeable?

What happens when you see God as impassible … as emotionless?

So many Christian traditions believe that God is utterly unable to change and utterly unaffected by emotion. Should it be a surprise that so many of us become unmoved and emotionally repressed?

So, when we say “orthopathos” most Christians think that the “proper way to feel like God” is to feel nothing at all.  To never grieve, to never have joy, to never get angry … because the One they worship, the One they are trying to reflect has no emotion Himself.

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The ultimate example of orthopathos is found on the cross. The prophet Isaiah, in what is perhaps one of the more powerful prophetic utterances of the Old Testament writes,

“He was despised and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering,

and familiar with pain. …

Surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities ….

This laying on of the iniquity, bearing of our suffering, this taking of our pain, this familiarity with pain, this man of suffering who took so much of the world’s grief into his heart that it’s recorded in Mark 13:34:

“”My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”.

Overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death!

This wasn’t Jesus being punished by the Father per se, but Jesus taking the heart of the Father in human form by seeing what God sees, acting as God would act and ultimately feeling like God feels. It was the ultimate act of representing the Father in human form!

And then, I believe, Jesus died, not from the wounds of the cross, but from the wounds of the heart.

Sure, we can begin to understand right thinking, we can begin to understand right action, but who can feel the heart of God and live?

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Why don’t Christians feel sorrow?  There’s a couple reasons: 1.) our theology doesn’t allow for it and so 2.), we think it’s unlike our God if we do so.

Wendell Berry’s famed literature character “Jayber Crow” states this:

I prayed to know in my heart His love for the world, and this was my most prideful, foolish, and dangerous prayer. It was my step into the abyss.  As soon as I prayed it, I knew that I would die.  I knew the old wrong and the death that lay in the world.  Just a good man would not coerce the love of his wife, God does not coerce the love of His human creatures, not for Himself or for the world or for one another.  To allow that love to exist fully and freely, He must allow it not to exist at all. His love is suffering.  It is our freedom and His sorrow. ….  And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart.

Some of us will feel God’s missional love for the world, but all of us will feel the sorrow of death.  And it’s high time that we as Christians believe it’s okay to sorrow.  It’s high time we believe it’s okay to weep, for when we do so we aren’t becoming unlike our God; we are, in fact, worshiping.

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The AIDS Virus

Last summer I was reminded—rather dramatically—of both the goodness and joy of life and also its fragility. In July I experienced the joy of being joined in marriage to my wife April and the blessings of beginning a life together. Pronouncing my vow to love and cherish April until we are parted by death was particularly sobering to me that day, because as joyful and exuberant as our wedding was, the shadow of death also loomed ominously in my heart.

My oldest brother Tom, who was to be one of my groomsmen, could not attend because he was lying in a hospital bed ravished by AIDS. It was only a little more than a month before the wedding that our family learned Tom had AIDS, and it was only about a month after the wedding that we stood around his bedside holding his hand, praying, and reading him scripture as the flickering flame of his life was finally extinguished.

Although my brother was much older than me, we were very close, and I loved him dearly. I had experienced death before, but never face to face, never someone so close to me and so young. The result was not only grief, but a powerful reminder of mortality and the urgency of knowing God and his son Jesus Christ.

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When asked, most people say that the ideal death would be one that happens quietly and unexpected, preferably during sleep.  It is confronting our own mortality and coming to terms with death, however, that really teaches us the weight and importance of our life now. I don’t know how my brother contracted HIV, and even he was unaware of his infection until it was too late. I feel pretty certain that, had he known earlier that he was carrying a deadly virus, he would have lived his life much differently.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that the same event happens to everyone who comes into the world, whether we are righteous or wicked, Christian or non-Christian – all of us die. All our accomplishments, all our possessions, all our enjoyment of life’s blessings, come to an end with death. Death is a great leveler. Anything we seek to stand on in this life will be taken away. We should keep this before our mind always.

Although life at times seems like vanity, full of confusion, injustice, and toil, we instinctively feel it is an evil when it is taken away.  We know in our bones that we were created for something more and we long for it in our hearts. What we long for is a greater and more enduring life, a life that isn’t futile and failing. Life, even in the midst of hardship, is preferable to death and so we resist death’s encroaching shadow. It is not life that hurts so much but its absence.

AIDS is the invasion of death into life, making even life like death, and finally taking life itself away. A person who is dying from AIDS becomes emaciated; they are rendered immobile, and often cannot even speak. The ties that join them to all the living are severed one by one. We must not sentimentalize death. Despite much pious rhetoric that proclaims death to be a friend and a mere transition, the Bible insists to the contrary. Death is the enemy, a negation of life and all that God created us for. I do not say that as a counsel of despair. I believe we have hope in the face of death that I wish to share with you.

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Jesus Christ came to conquer death and to bring a more abundant life. Christ is the antidote for vanity. If AIDS is the invasion of death into life, than Christ is the invasion of life into a dying world. In his book The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard gives a wonderful paraphrase of John 3:16, “God’s care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God Himself” (Willard, 1.)

If you are suffering from disease, even AIDS, Jesus can give you life even in the midst of your affliction. He is near to you in a way that no one else could ever be. When Tom was dying I was able to hold his hand, I was able to encourage him and tell him that I loved him, and I was able to pray with him, but it was Christ who suffered with him. It was Christ who bore his sins and even his sickness on the hard wood of the cross. It was Christ who with him was considered cursed and afflicted by God. It was Christ who shared in his sorrows and it was Christ who was able to give him hope and a life that is stronger than dying. Christ defeated death.

Those of us in Christ share in his death, which is in fact the death of death. All who are in Christ also share in the power of his resurrection beginning now but being consummated in the last day when our corruption is swallowed up in incorruption.

People who are afflicted with the AIDS virus know the vanity of this present age. They know what it means to experience the unraveling of God’s good creation and the waxing of life, because they carry it in their own bodies. In fact, we all do, but victims of AIDS and other diseases make that dissolution particularly present to us. May they also carry God’s restoration within them. May they receive the eternal life that Christ offers us in the midst of this futile and failing existence, and may we see the hope of the gospel played out in them. It was a great consolation for me to know that Tom faced death knowing Christ and his victory. His life was not lived in vain.