But he looked away. No, no…he must not. He could not.
He did not.
So the enticer vanished. He would call again at an appropriate time. He had a perfect occasion in mind.
This was how the Rescue began, the most unexpected, set-on-its-head campaign a king ever launched. Very unlike Xerxes. For as long as sovereigns have reigned, citizens have been asked to sacrifice for king and country—their lands, their money, their children. But this king stepped from the merriment of his palace, abandoned the cheery fireplace and the spread table, resigned his luxuries and lands, and set out to perish for his citizens.
The people at first found him delightful, the way New Englanders welcome winter’s first snow before it becomes inconvenient and stays too long. They flocked so enthusiastically that merely getting around soon became cumbersome. “See that no one knows about this,” he strictly urged two men who had been blind until just minutes ago. “But they went out and spread the news about him over all that region” (Matthew 9:30-31). “See that you don’t tell anyone,” he ordered a leper with brand new baby skin. “Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere” (Mark 1:45).
They poured out of Galilee’s highlands and Judea’s nooks and crannies to enjoy the free medical services, eat his spectacular lunches, and watch him make fools of the Pharisees. “How that fellow does put a sanctimonious nose out of joint!” people remarked. It seemed that every day a different poor stooge from the temple elite would stand in the crowds and yell out questions, trying to trip him up. But they always went away with egg on their faces. Sometimes the big brass themselves would come, icily cordial, armed with quotes and cross-references. But they too crashed and burned, their faces glowing hues of red that no one had ever seen before.
Back at the high priest’s mansion they would gather for hushed discussions. What should they do with this Galilean embarrassment? They kept coming back to one rather extreme suggestion. The public would have been horrified to know of it, but Jesus knew, and the knowledge accompanied him everywhere.
The first adult casualty of the Rescue happened in one of King Herod’s dungeons. No one saw it coming, not even the elite, not even Herod. But at a black-tie affair in the palace, Herod’s step-daughter took to the floor and began catching the rhythm of the music. The girl’s body became liquid, and the king was seized by the eyes. He found himself showing off for her in front of his guests—gushing words the way a man does when his brains not calling the shots. “And is there anything I can do for you?” Her eyes questioned him. “Really,” he said, “anything.” An almost feral look came over her face. Time to score big-time with her mother, her mother who hated a certain outdoor preacher. “Yes,” said the girl with a toss of her hair. “There is something.” Before the evening was over the baptizer’s head was presented to the party on a platter. The forerunner was gone; now the full weight of public attention fell on his Master.
Meanwhile Jesus preached. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
“Repent” had a quaint tone to it. It smacked of Amos and Isaiah and other national heroes of yesteryear. Many listeners thought, “I know some people who should take this to heart.” But sometimes the Preacher got to implying that they themselves—good, tax-paying, Torah-reading citizens—needed repentance as well, thus missing the target with his wit and hurting innocent bystanders.
His hometown was the first to lose confidence in him. Sometimes folks who know a person when he’s young, before he becomes famous and things go to his head, later have the best read on his character. “Many who heard him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked.’…Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him” (Mark 6:2-3).
The eyebrow-raisers included his own brothers. One time when he entered the room they quickly became all seriousness; suppressing grins they winked at one another and urged him “go more public with his important message.” Such skepticism led Jesus to heal fewer people in his old neighborhood than anywhere—naturally confirming the neighbors’ doubts—and the gossip began. No doubt even without this attitude in Nazareth, popular opinion would have begun dividing. “Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, ‘He is a good man.’ Others replied, ‘No, he deceives the people’” (John 7:12).
His goodness actually scared people. One village asked him to move on just after he had healed their town’s most notorious psychotic. Some whom he greatly helped didn’t even turn to thank him. It became common to hear people wonder out loud why Jesus attended parties when the baptist had contented himself with wild honey and fried locusts. His rich and well-connected admirers found themselves in a catch—22. They loved him, but anyone following him could count on getting ejected from the synagogue—and “they loved praise from men more than praise from God” (John 12:42-43). A few ugly incidents increased their fears—times when his sermon insights got an audience so incensed that the congregation started fingering large stones. But Jesus never backed down. He kept to the furrow he was plowing.
Because his work meant steady travel, plodding the serpentine paths between towns, and since he tried to avoid autograph seekers, he often slept in odd places—a boat, an olive grove. As he traveled—preaching, debating, healing, and listening—the entire universe leaned every hour on his divinity. The North American brown bear took his Creator’s cue to begin hibernation. The Arctic tern awaited signal to leave its breeding grounds eight degrees latitude south of the North Pole and go winter in the Antarctic. A female water spider listened to his echoes in her brain tell how to trap air bubbles and house her eggs in silk at the pond’s bottom. But the teacher himself, God now-become-human, often went without shelter. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).
No place to lay his head? The Jewish High Council had come to definite opinions about where the man’s head might best be laid. For them, it was no longer a question of “if” but of “when.” No one could deny that this fellow pulled off miracles. But his power clearly came from the dark side. How could anyone with a decent feel for Moses advise some panhandler to run around waving his mat on the Sabbath? What would possess him to eat from the same plate as undesirables? If he were any sort of prophet he’d know what kind of vermin were always hanging on to him. Who did he think he was? Oh yes, his “Father” sent him. Ugh! He wouldn’t know the Holy One if he saw him. Why should we let this twisted genius upset the population? Why jeopardize our tenuous relationship with the Roman governor? If we’re not careful, this self-appointed world-fixer will have us cleaning our teeth on Italian spear tips.
Then again…the Roman presence wasn’t an altogether bad thing. True, the Gentiles had final say regarding punishment in capital cases. But if the authorities could be convinced to act, this trouble-maker’s last few hours at the hands of Roman justice could be satisfactorily unpleasant. Just as bad as a good stoning, really, and last far longer.
How best to make it happen?
By the flicker of oil lamps he looked up from dinner and studied the faces around the room. Twelve familiar expressions. They were his friends, all but one. The miles they had walked together! Yet how could they fathom his thoughts tonight? Can the child ever really understand his father? Solomon was right: “Each heart knows its own bitterness.” These were the ones he had come for—natives of this sad planet who had never tasted what had delighted him in that other Place—so slow to learn—so dull in the most urgent of matters—always scrapping about who deserved top honors in a coming world they couldn’t possibly grasp. But he loved them.
Very deliberately he broke the loaf, keeping his composure as he watched the crumbs fall. The wine ran down his throat as the tr
ue wine began to run cold in his veins. Divinity in a human body ate and drank with his friends. He sensed that familiar presence he had met in the wilderness—the time was close. Judas stood to leave; their eyes met. Do it quickly. The presence that had awaited outside in the dark now stole invisibly into Judas’s very essence. For the next few hours, the most distilled evil in the universe would personally operate through the body of a disciple of Jesus.
The Master spoke quietly to them a final time, they sang a psalm, and it was time to go. Out into the darkness they slipped. Through a city gate, down the steep ravine, up into the hill of olive trees. Eleven lambs and a shepherd in the night. What would become of these friends, his only earthly support in this hour? Satan already had the twelfth one, the absent one, by the throat—soon he’d be swinging under a tree limb, gasping and white, facing much worse after his breathing stopped. One of the eleven would soon race terrified into the shadows, stark naked in his haste, scraping his shins, bloodying his soul. All of them would turn tail, near-wetting themselves with fear, shrinking into corners. The loud, friendly fisherman was being invisibly outwitted even now—being set up for a special roughing-up tonight. Clueless, he had just bragged of the noble deeds he would surely rise to. But before morning he would slice off a man’s ear, intending far more—he would say unerasable things to a servant girl by an open fire, he would shiver at a rooster’s call, and would consider, through his sobbing, whether to find a tree like Judas did. Prophecy fulfilled was at the doorstep: “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7).
They reached the olive press. Would his three closest friends mind coming just a little further to pray a stone’s throw away? Three of the gospel writers would later tell of Jesus’ foreboding just then—about his warning the disciples to pray for inward strength against the tempter—prayers for their sakes. But Matthew noticed and would one day record a particular phrase that the others didn’t. “My soul is ready to die with sorrow,” the Shepherd had said. “Wait here and stay awake with me” (Matthew 26:38).5
Stay awake “with me.”
For the only time in his life the Shepherd was asking for something from them. He wanted human comfort that night. But somebody’s yawn tipped the first domino, and in no time everyone’s prayers had degenerated into dreams.
Now, the Son of God dropped to the dirt in an olive grove and vomited in his soul at the prospect before him. Eleven men who would later change world history—some, accustomed to working all night on their fishing boats—could not keep awake for the scene. Yet sixty feet away their eternal destinies were being fought over. Except for the heaving of those shoulders that bore the weight of the world, nothing could be seen in that shadowy spot where the Son of God groaned. But the bleachers of heaven filled to capacity that night—and hell strained its neck to see how the spectacle in that lonely acre would end. The Father gazed down and gave his sober nod. The Son stared back, and bowed his acceptance. A fine of men and torches snaked down from the city, through the blackness, toward the garden. God in the flesh saw them coming through tear-blurred eyes that refused to blink.
“It’s time to get up,” he quietly told the eleven.
The torches arrived. The sheep fled. The shepherd stood. The hurricane struck.
Who can describe the whirlwind of the succeeding hours? Could so many lies really be told at a single trial? Could so much sin be poured into one court room? The drowning ones he had come to rescue screamed that he be thrown from the lifeboat. God had claimed to be God—what could be worse! God had kept his sworn promise to send a Messiah—how ridiculous! In the wee hours of that morning, Sodom and Gomorrah came to look virginal next to Jerusalem. Later, in the brighter light of day and to the background of a pressing crowd screaming insanities, Pilate washed away centuries of Roman justice in his finger bowl.
The Savior was now thrown to men quite different from the eleven. The face that Moses had begged to see—was forbidden to see—was slapped bloody (Exodus 33:19-20).The thorns that God had sent to curse the earth’s rebellion now twisted around his own brow. His back, buttocks, and the rear of his legs felt the whip—soon they looked like the plowed Judean fields outside the city. “On with the blindfold!” someone shouts. “That’s it—now spin him. Who hit you? Heh, heh.” By the time the spitting is through, more saliva is on him than in him. No longer can he be recognized. “Cut him down from the post! Send him toting his crossbar to the playground.” Up Skull Hill to the welcome of other poorly paid legionnaires enjoying themselves.
“On your back with you!” One raises a mallet to sink in the spike. But the soldier’s heart must continue pumping as he readies the prisoner’s wrist. Someone must sustain the soldier’s life minute by minute, for no man has this power on his own. Who supplies breath to his lungs? Who gives energy to his cells? Who holds his molecules together? Only by the Son do “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). The victim wills that the soldier live on—he grants the warrior’s continued existence. The man swings.
As the man swings, the Son recalls how he and the Father first designed the medial nerve of the human forearm—the sensations it would be capable of. The design proves flawless—the nerve performs exquisitely. “Up you go!” They lift the cross. God is on display in his underwear, and can scarcely breathe.
But these pains are a mere warm-up to his other and growing dread. He begins to feel a foreign sensation. Somewhere during this day an unearthly foul odor began to waft, not around his nose, but his heart. He feels dirty. Human wickedness starts to crawl upon his spotless being—the living excrement from our souls. The apple of his Father’s eye turns brown with rot.
His Father! He must face his Father like this!
From heaven the Father now rouses himself like a Hon disturbed, shakes his mane, and roars against the shriveling remnant of a man hanging on a cross. Never has the Son seen the Father look at him so, never felt even the least of his hot breath. But the roar shakes the unseen world and darkens the visible sky. The Son does not recognize these eyes.
“Son of Man! Why have you behaved so? You have cheated, lusted, stolen, gossiped—murdered, envied, hated, bed. You have cursed, robbed, overspent, overeaten—fornicated, disobeyed, embezzled, and blasphemed. Oh, the duties you have shirked, the children you have abandoned! Who has ever so ignored the poor, so played the coward, so belittled my name? Have you ever held your razor tongue? What a self-righteous, pitiful drunk—you, who molest young boys, peddle killer drugs, travel in cliques, and mock your parents. Who gave you the boldness to rig elections, foment revolutions, torture animals, and worship demons? Does the list never end! Splitting families, raping virgins, acting smugly, playing the pimp—buying politicians, practicing extortion, filming pornography, accepting bribes. You have burned down buildings, perfected terrorist tactics, founded false religions, traded in slaves—relishing each morsel and bragging about it all. I hate, I loathe these things in you! Disgust for everything about you consumes me! Can you not feel my wrath?”
Of course the Son is innocent. He is blamelessness itself. The Father knows this. But the divine pair have an agreement, and the unthinkable must now take place. Jesus will be treated as if personally responsible for every sin ever committed.6
The Father watches as his heart’s treasure, the mirror-image of himself, sinks drowning into raw, liquid sin. Jehovah’s stored rage against humankind from every century explodes in a single direction.
“Father! Father! Why have you forsaken me?!”
But heaven stops its ears. The Son stares up at the One who cannot, who will not, reach down or reply.
The Trinity had planned it. The Son endured it. The Spirit enabled him. The Father rejected the Son whom he loved. Jesus, the God-man from Nazareth, perished. The Father accepted his sacrifice for sin and was satisfied. The Rescue was accomplished.
God set down his saw.
This is who asks us to trust him when he calls on us to suffer.
Four
DOES HE REALLY EXPECT ME TO SUFFER?
No doubt some believers will say:
Precisely! Thank you for reminding us that Christ suffered immeasurably for us. But his whole reason was so that we wouldn’t have to suffer. The Trinity is blissful in heaven and wants us to be joyful too. Jesus’ compassion drove him to open blind eyes and rouse lifeless limbs—he never glorified illness or eulogized pain and sorrow. Since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” it’s ludicrous to think he has now changed his mind. Why would Christ ask us to buy with our tears what he has already paid for? Isaiah 53 says: “He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,” and that “by his wounds we are healed.” Suffering is the work of the Devil—Jesus came to destroy the work of the Devil. Satan is totally bad—God is totally good. God doesn’t stoop to using Satan’s tools. Although he can turn our trials into good, he doesn’t wish hard times on us, let alone send them. What he really wants is to bless us. He wants us to believe his good promises—and free him to shatter the prison of misery that Satan builds around us and thus glorify himself.
All over the world you meet with this view. Russia, Romania, Budapest, Baltimore, Africa, Appalachia, London, Little Rock. Many Christians who hold it are of sterling character. They study their Bibles, volunteer in their churches, nurture their families, donate their money, help hurting neighbors, reach out to the poor, care about non-Christians, and show love for Christ and his kingdom everywhere they go. So it’s not lightly or mean-spiritedly that these next words come. But the following two chapters are to convince you that the above is a hopeless mixture of truth and error, and misses the core of why Jesus came. Here’s the terrain we’ll cross.
When God Weeps Page 5
