trying to control
is to be controlled, and worse.
just let go and smile.
Tuesday, 29 April 2025
Monday, 28 April 2025
"Was It Not Necessary?" (Luke 24:13-35)
A Broken Messiah
The two disciples who are walking the road to Emmaus are broken down. When the stranger approaches them, Luke tells us that “they [are standing] still, looking sad” (Luke 24:17). What has broken them? They share with the stranger that their expectations have met a bitter end. Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had hoped was the messiah, the one who would “redeem Israel,” the one who would make Israel great again, had been crucified (24:19-21). In their mind, the crucifixion settled the matter. No messiah of God would suffer such a fate. The messiah would be a victor, not a victim.
But the stranger has the strangest of responses. “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, was it not necessary that the messiah be the victim rather than the victor?
This one question turns the entire scriptures upside down for the two disciples. In their mind, Yahweh is a conquering God, the one who had defeated the Egyptians and the Canaanites and all who opposed the faithful of Israel. A broken messiah makes no sense. Yet, for this stranger, a broken messiah makes sense of everything. It is the interpretive key. Luke says that this stranger goes on to show how a broken messiah breaks open “all the scriptures” (24:27).
A Different Kind of God
According to the stranger, the God of the Old Testament is no different than the God of the New Testament. They are one and the same: a crucified God. That may be hard to imagine. It certainly was for the disciples on the road. But it is a curious thought-experiment with surprising results. When I read the Old Testament looking for a crucified God, I begin to see him everywhere. In the suffering of the ancestral family, who must live for generations as sojourners in a foreign land. In the suffering of the Hebrews under Pharaoh in Egypt. In the suffering of the poor Israelites in the land, who are enslaved by their own kings (like King Solomon) and exploited by the rich (as the prophets richly detail). I see the crucified God in the suffering of the psalmist, whose prayers regularly recount trouble. And in the suffering of the exiled Israelites, who lose their temple and their family and their friends and must live in a foreign land. The Old Testament is a history of Israel’s deliverance, but it also a history of their suffering. Yes, God is a deliverer, but God is also a sufferer. Those two things are not contradictions, but counterparts of a single reality. A God who loves is a God who suffers, because love does not get its own way through force. It forgives, it is patient, it declares peace, it welcomes, it heals. Love does all the things Jesus did, and with the same results. Suffering.
“Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” the stranger asks. From his point of view, God has been suffering from the start, because God has been loving humanity from the start. It is only natural this would happen to God’s messiah.
“Broken Down” or “Broken Open”?
The stranger’s interpretation of God is indeed strange in a world that idolizes power and control. But what also strikes me as strange is that the stranger (who is Jesus, of course) bears no grievance toward the people who put him on the cross, toward the temple leaders or the Roman authorities. He breathes no resentments or threats against them. It is natural to feel owed something when you are wronged. (Just think about the last time your insurance didn’t pay for something under its coverage.) Yet this man was wronged in an extraordinary way, and his response is basically, “This is the way it had to happen.” “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things…?”
On the one hand, we could hear the man saying this with a sigh of resignation, as though love always loses. To love is to suffer, and that is the end of it.
On the other hand, the stranger does not seem to see suffering as the miserable end point of love. His full question is, “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, to bear the suffering of love is somehow connected with entering into a glorious new reality. Which is consistent with the message of the messiah Jesus himself, who said to bear the cross daily is somehow to save your life (cf. Luke 9:23-24).
As Leonard Cohen put it, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” What Jesus shows the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is not only that the God of love suffers, but also that this suffering is not a dead end or a cul-de-sac but precisely the crack through which the light—the love of God—gets in. If the messiah came with force, throwing his weight around, he might command fear and respect and a groveling sort of gratitude. But his strong-arming would preclude love, which “does not insist on its own way,” which “bears…and endures all things” (1 Cor 13:5, 7). His coercion would rob us of our humanity, our freedom to choose and to create. Instead, the messiah suffers, and his suffering reveals just how much he loves us, how deep and how wide is his love—as far as the heavens are above the earth (a metaphor that comes from the Old Testament, for anyone who’s interested; cf. Ps 103:11). His suffering reveals that there is no end to his love, that it is indeed stronger than death and endures forever.
To some, the idea of a crucified messiah or a weak God seems like utter foolishness. But for me, it is honest-to-goodness good news. It means not only that God’s love knows no bounds, that there’s no suffering God won’t bear just to be with us, but also that God’s love is indeed stronger than any force and can redeem any wrong or wound. And that because of his love, what seems “broken down” is in fact “broken open” with possibilities for new life.
Prayer
The scars you bear
Show us the depth of your love for us
…
May the good news
Of your broken messiah
Change the way we see our world
And the way we live in it.
May it kindle within our hearts—
As it did for those travelers on the road to Emmaus—
A burning hope.
In Christ, whose cross is how the light gets in: Amen.
Sunday, 20 April 2025
"The Way Is Through" (Luke 24:1-12)
The Women Do Not Avoid the Cross
Today’s scripture gives no introduction to its characters. “They” came to the tomb (24:1). Who are “they”?
Of course, we find out soon enough. But the initial anonymity of this “they” reminds us that we are actually in the middle of a story. We have to retrace our steps back to the cross first to understand the story more fully. So, let’s return a moment to the cross.
“When all the crowds who had gathered there [at the cross]
for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they returned home, beating their
breasts,” Luke tells us (23:48). In other words, most of the people who
witnessed the crucifixion, leave immediately afterward in disappointment.
Perhaps some of these people had been at the entrance to Jerusalem earlier in
the week, celebrating Jesus’ arrival with palm branches and shouts of praise.
They had anticipated that Jesus would initiate a divine revolution and would
help them to break free from the shackles of Rome. So when they see him hanging
on a cross, they see only their broken dreams and can stand it no longer. They go
home to avoid further disappointment. We might say they take the path of
avoidance.
We know that many of Jesus’ followers took this path of avoidance, either
leaving town or locking themselves away. A little later in Luke, we find two of
Jesus’ followers leaving Jerusalem to go to Emmaus. We don’t know why they’re
leaving, but we can imagine it is because they don’t want any further reminder
of their disappointment. As they share mournfully with a stranger on the road,
“We had hoped that he [Jesus] was the one to redeem Israel” (24:21). In John,
we find the eleven disciples shutting themselves up in a locked house (John
20:19). They are avoiding their painful reality out of “fear.” They worry that
they might be next in line to suffer.
But none of these characters are the “they” whom we find in our scripture this morning. The “they” in our scripture this morning are found still at the cross when the others have left. Luke tells us that they are “the women who had followed him from Galilee” and who “stood at a distance [at the crucifixion], watching these things” (23:49). While others leave or lock themselves away, whether in disappointment or denial or dread, this group of women stay with Jesus unto the end and even beyond the end. They hold the suffering. They affirm the goodness they have known.
A little later, when a sympathetic Jewish council member, Joseph, retrieves the body and finds a tomb in which to bury it, they follow him. They see the tomb and how Jesus’ body is laid there (23:55). They return home to prepare burial spices and anointments for the body (23:56).
The First to Receive the Good News
Which brings us finally back to today’s scripture. The “they” are the women who are coming back to the tomb with their burial spices. While everyone else has long fled the scene, avoiding their disappointment, the women return to be with Jesus.
There is something about their silent faithfulness to Jesus. Just as their spices are meant to cover over the odor of the death, the women’s presence with Jesus itself defies death. It is as if they are saying, “Nothing can take away from us what Jesus has already given. Disappointment cannot rob us of the gift. Fear cannot rob us of the gift. We know the way now.”
Of course, we all know what happens next. The empty tomb, the two dazzling messengers, the women proclaiming the impossible news.
Why are the women the first to receive the good news? Elsewhere in scripture we learn that God’s goodness is unconditional and given to everyone. Jesus compares it to rain and sunshine, which fall indiscriminately on everyone alike (Matt 5:45). And indeed, other disciples and followers will soon hear the good news too. But as we will see, while God’s grace is unconditional, our reception of it depends on our condition. To some disciples, the women’s report is nothing more than an “idle tale.” They are not in a condition to receive the good news. But the women are.
I can’t help but see a connection here. The first people to receive the good news of resurrection are the people who have fully walked the way of the cross. The women do not avoid the cross, whether out of disappointment or denial or dread. They hold the suffering.
A simpler way of putting it would be this. The way is not around; the way is through. There is no resurrection without the cross, no transformation without first holding the suffering.
The Surprise of the Resurrection
In the ancient Jewish imagination, resurrection is not an individual phenomenon, but a universal event, not a solitary experience, but a worldwide occurence. We see, for example, that characters in the gospel speak about “the resurrection,” as when Mary says, “I know that [my brother Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). This universal event is imagined as a time when the dead will be raised and wrongs will be redeemed and wounds will be healed and tears will be wiped away and God’s love will finally reign over all.
The surprising news that the women receive at the tomb is not that there is such a thing as resurrection, but that this universal event—the resurrection—has begun. The surprise is that it has started. It is now, not just “on the last day.” In Christ, wrongs are being redeemed and wounds are being healed and tears are being wiped away and God’s love is breaking into our world.
To be clear, the good news of Easter is not immortality. Immortality is the small, fearful dream of the ego, which wants to live forever and ever, unchanged and invincible. But the resurrection, which comes through the cross, is all about transformation and the loss of ego for the sake of all creation. It is as Jesus had said earlier: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Luke 9:23). For “those who want to save their life”—want immortality—“will lose [their life],” but “those who lose their life”—let go of their ego—“for the sake of the good news will save it” (Mark 8:35).
“In Christ, the World Has Risen”
I’m mindful that this might not sound like the most exultant Easter sermon. It might sound burdened with suffering and difficulty. But that is precisely where I find hope in the Easter story. All of the followers of Jesus have fallen into despair after the crucifixion. In a sense, they all have a cross to bear, but only some of them are bearing it. And it is the precisely these characters who bear the cross of their love and suffering, who do not avoid the cross out of disappointment or denial or dread—it is precisely these characters, the women, who are first to receive the good news of the resurrection.
These women model for me the way of the cross, which is also the way of the resurrection. Whatever the difficulty in life—whether the grief of a deep loss, or the unknown of a tough diagnosis, or conflict in a relationship, or problematic habits or addiction—whatever the difficulty, the way is through. It is not avoiding the matter, choosing instead the fantasies of an ego that can fix or control or manage things, that can live forever. Avoiding the difficulty will always rob the experience of its transformative power. It will allow old patterns to remain unchanged. Untouched by resurrection.
The way is through. It is holding the suffering with appropriate lament and also with the same tender love and affirmation that the women show to Jesus. And then, just as the kingdom of God grows from an invisible seed, the farmer knows not how (cf. Mark 4:27), so the suffering and the struggle will become the seed of transformation, the gateway of resurrection.
Ambrose of Milan, a church leader in the fourth century, celebrated Easter with the proclamation, “In Christ, the world has risen, heaven has risen, the earth has risen.” How striking—he does not simply say, “Christ is risen,” he sees the resurrection in all the world. In other words, the resurrection is here, now, transforming all things. We might just as well add, “In Christ, the grieving are risen, the wounded are risen, the addicted are risen, the lonely are risen,” and so on.
And if that doesn’t feel real or right to you, that is okay. It doesn’t always feel real or right to me. But if the example of the women shows us anything, it is that entering into the resurrection is a process. Being raised is a process. (It takes my biscuits about twelve minutes. It might take some of us a little bit longer.) The pain cannot be avoided. It must be held tenderly, with tears, with care, with patience.
Until one day we discover, with the women, that in Christ, the suffering has been transformed. The resurrection is here.
Prayer
God of the cross,God of the resurrection,
Who enters into our suffering
That it might be transformed
…
Where we have experienced the resurrection,
We rejoice and give you thanks!
Where we still suffer or struggle,
Grant us the courage of the women
To hold our suffering
Tenderly, patiently,
Trusting in the goodness of your love.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.
Friday, 18 April 2025
A Poem for Good Friday: Mary Oliver's "Of the Empire"
© 2008 by Mary Oliver
From Red Bird (Boston: Beacon, 2008), 46.
Thursday, 17 April 2025
"Not So with You" (Luke 22:7-27)
What a Waiter Does
In our culture, someone who serves at the table is sometimes called “a waiter” or “waitress.” The title captures a fundamental attribute of service: waiting. A waiter does not exercise force. He waits for you to make a decision. You are the one calling the shots, not him. You have the freedom to make your own choices.
In a restaurant, being a waiter or waitress is a paid role. People are paid to be patient, to wait, to serve. But we have all seen this role also assumed freely out of love. A parent waits patiently on a messy toddler. Or a grown daughter or son waits patiently on their aging parent.
In Greco-Roman antiquity, patience (and waiting) was not a virtue—at least, not among the rich and powerful. If you had money and power, there was no reason to be patient. You could get what you wanted right away. Frankly, I’m not sure our world has evolved much since then. In any case, in ancient Rome, patience was an attribute that defined the weak and the poor. They had to wait, to work, to put others first.
Is the Cross a Means to an End?
The temptation for us Christians in Holy Week is to look at the crucifixion as a divine trick or trap, as though Christ submits to Satan with a card up his sleeve, with a power play that the devil never saw coming. (There are plenty of theologians who have depicted events in precisely this way.)
But on the night before his death, the rabbi Jesus teaches his students a lesson that suggests the cross is no trick, no trap, no divine ruse. The cross is not a means to an end, the means being a temporary defeat and the end being eternal victory. No, the cross is just the means. It is just the way. What matters most to Jesus is not the results, but the way.
Tomorrow, the disciples will see a world that flexes its muscles. They will see a power that gets results. They will witness the power of the Jewish council, who can condemn a man to death with a word. They will witness the power of Rome, who puts its enemies to death with torturous brutality. They will see raw, unfiltered power. And they will see it completely directed against their teacher.
Jesus’ Last Lesson
But in the last lesson that Jesus gives his students, he turns upside down the world’s fantasy of power. The rulers of this world, he says, throw their weight around. They stand over and dominate their subjects. They get results. They get what they want when they want it.
“Not so with you!” he insists. Greatness in God’s kingdom is not about getting results. It is not standing over but standing under. It is not overpowering but empowering. It is not exercising force but exercising patience. It is serving others. It is waiting on them.
The cross is a terrible result. But, if Jesus is to be believed, it is also an example of a better way.
It is a horrible end. But, if Jesus is to be believed, it is also a demonstration of God’s means, of how God lives in the world.
I don’t know about you, but a god who is all about results, a god who is in control and who finely calculates events to get exactly what he wants…does not seem any different than a human dictator or authoritarian. That kind of god looks like humanity writ large, humanity supersized. I’ve seen how all that plays out, and it’s not pretty. So many lives are sacrificed on the altar of power.
I want a God that gives me hope for something different. I want a God whose divine way is not our way. And that…is what I see in Jesus. Jesus is not about the bottom line. He’s not about results. He’s about living in a good way, regardless of the results.
Whatever happens later as a result, is a matter for later.
What matters to Jesus is the way. Now.
Which is loving and forgiving others. Serving others. Waiting on others.
Waiting on the world. A world that clings to power.
“But not so with you!”
Prayer
Dear Christ,
Your example sometimes looks like weakness, like losing,
Like humiliation,
Yet you are unashamed.
…
Ground us in the same divine care
In which you are grounded,
That we might love and serve others,
That we might bless and build up,
No matter the results.
Amen.
Sunday, 13 April 2025
A Tearful Entry (Luke 19:29-44)
David and Goliath: The Sequel?
Imagine for a moment that you are a bird flying above Jerusalem on the day that Jesus makes his entry. Below you a rag-tag crowd of Judean peasants is gathering around a man riding a lowly colt. People are taking off their coats and spreading them before the man on the colt. You have heard from other birds that this is an ancient tradition of the Judeans. In centuries past, their coronation ceremonies to welcome new kings featured the spreading of outer garments before the king’s entourage (e.g., 2 Kgs 9:13). Sure enough, the people throwing their coats on the ground are proclaiming this man to be king with loud shouts: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). The parade has the feel of a party, a festival.
Now imagine you rise higher into the sky, and the parade below becomes smaller. And a southeasterly wind blows hard across you, and you open your wings and let it carry you to the northwest of the city. When you look below, you notice another procession. Immediately the air feels cooler. This procession is quieter, dampened by fear. There are plenty of Judean onlookers, but they are not shouting. They are watching in silent apprehension. A big chariot carries a man whom you recognize to be the governor of the region, Pontius Pilate. He is surrounded by a fearsome entourage of heavily armed foot soldiers and troops mounted on horses. There is a rhythmic clanking, as their armor and weapons jangle in militant unison. From your bird’s eye view, you estimate that this procession is at least four times the size of the raggedy parade you saw earlier. You remember seeing this procession from years past at the same time of year, the Jewish Passover. Apparently the Romans think that Jerusalem needs extra attention at the Passover, perhaps because there are so many pilgrims and therefore the potential for riots. Or perhaps because there is the potential for something greater—revolution. After all, that is what the Passover commemorates: the revolutionary liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian captivity. The last thing the Romans need is these backwater upstarts thinking the same thing could happen again in their lifetime.
But this year, that is exactly what is happening. Imagine now that you are no longer that bird flying above the city. Now you are an ant wandering along the wall inside a home in Jerusalem. You hear a little boy asking his mother about the parade he has just seen and the man on the colt and the coats being thrown on the road. And the mother says something about a prophet named Zechariah, who had envisioned just such an event: “Zechariah said, ‘Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey’” (Zech 9:9). But the little boy is perplexed: “How can a man on a colt with no weapons overcome the big Romans?” The mother pauses and then says, “Do you remember the story of David and Goliath?” The boy’s eyes suddenly grow large with an excitement. He remembers! Yes, little David killed big Goliath with God’s help.
Maybe the man on the colt will do the same.
Jesus Sees Things Differently
Today’s scripture is commonly referred to the “Triumphal Entry,” and with good reason. It is “triumphal”—for the crowd that receives Jesus as its new king with shouts and praise. They are all hoping that this Passover is not just a remembrance but a reenactment. They are hoping that this messiah will deliver them from the yoke of Rome, just as Moses delivered the Hebrews from the Egyptians and as little David delivered the Israelites from big Goliath and the Philistines.
But the conclusion to today’s scripture shows us a different side to the entry. While the people are celebrating their imminent triumph, Jesus has tears in his eyes. Indeed, Luke tells us that “as he came near and saw this city”—that is, before he even entered Jerusalem—his eyes were filled with tears (19:41).
What he sees is profoundly different than what Jerusalem sees. Jerusalem sees a military victory. It sees winning its way through force. It sees David triumphing over Goliath. But Jesus laments this way of seeing: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (19:42). Jesus then shares his vision of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, a vision that will come to fulfilment in about forty years.[1]
The tears of Jesus raise a big question for me. Namely, has God changed God’s ways? The people remember the mighty Pharaoh and his army drowning in the sea. They remember the mighty Goliath floored by David’s sling. They teach these stories to their children with smiles on their faces and hope in their hearts. Is it not logical to expect that God will do the same thing once more to the Romans?
A Parting of the Ways
Here is a great parting of the ways in the matter of interpretation. I will tell you the way that I choose. But you must choose for yourself.
Many Christians continue to read the Old Testament stories
of conquest as revelation of God’s will and God’s way in the world. Violence is
how God gets things done sometimes. It’s not pretty, and it’s not ideal, but it
works. It’s what worked in Egypt. It’s what worked against the Philistines. For
this reason, many Christians have justified the conquests of their various
empires. As one 16th century Spanish conquistador said, “Who can
deny that the use of gunpowder against pagans is the burning of incense to our
Lord?”[2] If
God accomplished God’s will by military force at one point in time (e.g., in
the Old Testament), then surely God does not change. Surely God might do the
same at another point in time.
But other Christ-followers have taken seriously the claim of Paul that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). They have taken seriously the claim of John that in Jesus, the Word of God “became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14), and that the God whom no one has seen has been “made…known” through Jesus (John 1:18). All of this to say, if you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. And when I look at Jesus, who said things like, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,” who showed what it actually looked like to do these things, who never once returned force with force, but rather with forgiveness and longsuffering—when I look at Jesus and see the tears in his eyes, as he hears the people proclaiming him king, as he sees in their eyes dreams of an imminent conquest, it dawns on me.
This man with tears in his eyes is who God is. God is crying for our world.
This is the God who refuses to fight back. This is the God who chooses the cross instead of combat. This is the God who looks weak and foolish in the world’s eyes (cf. 1 Cor 1). This is the God whose steadfast love suffers and endures—forever. This God never intended the cross to become a standard of conquest, as Constantine made it. This God never intended the cross to be married to the flag of one nation or another. This God renounced the ways of our world to show us a different way, to show us “the things that make for peace”—things like mercy, forgiveness, patience, things like love, gentleness, humility.
This interpretation is not to say that the stories of the exodus and David and Goliath are wrong or mistaken, but rather to say that their truth is partial rather than complete. They show us the truth of God’s care for the oppressed and also the truth that those who wield power over others (like the Egyptians, like the Philistines) will inevitably find themselves on the wrong side of their own weapon—for as Jesus would say himself, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” (Matt 25:62). But as for God’s role in the downfall of Pharaoh and Goliath, perhaps it is not the direct violent intervention that the original Hebrew authors depict. Rather, perhaps God is ruefully watching the Egyptians and Philistines as they employ destructive force against others and as they eventually self-destruct. (Indeed, one ancient rabbi imagines God with tears in his eyes as the Hebrews escape Egypt. He imagines that when the Egyptians drowned in the sea, the angels in heaven began to sing, but then God replied: “The work of my hands, the Egyptians, are drowning, and you wish to [sing] songs before me?”[3])
The Invitation of Jesus’ Tears
Jesus’ tears tell me that he sees the world differently than many of his followers do. His followers who dream of Pharaoh drowning in the sea, who dream of Goliath getting his due, are living lives powered by fear and resentment and anger. But that energy will not transform the pain of the world. It will only transmit it to the next generation. It dreams only of power changing hands. But the energy of domination remains. (We see this in Israel’s history. When Israel finally finds freedom and gets kings of its own, the kings and their associates end up mistreating the poor and the vulnerable as they seek more power and wealth for themselves. They even enslave some of their own people, just as Pharaoh had done.)
Jesus’ tears tell me that he sees the world not with fear and anger, but with sadness and longing. He does not want a revolution in the traditional sense. (If you think about the word revolution, it just means you end up where you started; you make a full circle.) He wants to stop the cycle of hurt and violence, of destruction and self-destruction.
Oscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador who was murdered for his support of the poor, killed in the middle of communion by a paramilitary death squad, once said: “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.” I’m guessing the kingdom of God is one of those things. I’m guessing that’s what Jesus saw through his tears. And I’m guessing one of the truths that he saw is that there’s only one way to stop the cycle of hurt and violence, only one way to heal the world’s wounds.
It is love. A love that does not get its way, but is the way itself, vulnerable, patient, enduring. And this week, we see just what this love looks like in the flesh.
Prayer
Loving God,Whose heart breaks
For the woundedness of our world—
When fear animates us unto fight or flight,
To join one side against another;
When resentment lures us
With thoughts of revenge or revolution
Or getting our due:
Help us to see the tears in your eyes
…
And to follow the different way
That you have chosen.
In Christ, who rides humbly into the center of our hearts: Amen.
[1] In fact, the gospel of Luke
is written down after the destruction of Jerusalem, so its readers will know
exactly what Jesus is talking about.
[2] The Anabaptist Mennonite
Network, “After Christendom: Following Jesus on the Margins,” 62.
[3] Megillah 10b.26.
Sunday, 6 April 2025
Shouting and Running (Luke 18:31-19:10)
A Desperate Dash
As the plane neared its destination, Carey felt an unsettling churn in his stomach. As a queasy feeling creeped up on him, he took a few deep breaths and tried to push it away. The flight was nearly over. If he could just hang on a few more minutes, he’d be alright.
A few minutes later, however, as he retrieved his carry-on items and exited the plane, the feeling did not go away. It intensified. Apparently this was no case of flight sickness, because the plane had landed, but this feeling of nausea was just taking off.
Still, he pressed on, walking down the interminably long hallway to Customs. By the time he reached the Customs line, he realized he’d made a grave mistake. He had walked right by the restrooms. Now he knew he needed one, but it was too far away. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with despair.
Then he saw it out of the corner of his eye. A trash can. Sure, it was right by the line and just yards away from a Customs agent, but at this point his desperation dispelled every other concern. So off he ran, a sharply dressed professional in his business suit, making a shameless dash to the trash can, where his nausea exited him with a violent force. And not just once or twice, but…well, you probably don’t want any more details.
Have you ever felt so desperate? Perhaps it was not nausea that overwhelmed you, but a job situation. Or a relationship. Or financial troubles. Perhaps you lived for a while in denial about whatever it was, thinking you had it under control and could manage the situation. Perhaps the fear of losing face or losing status, or just the fear of change and the unknown held you at bay, and you hoped that eventually the problem would solve itself. But the problem did not solve itself. Perhaps it became even worse. And eventually you became desperate—so desperate that you threw your denial and your pride and your fear and everything else to the side, and you made that figurative dash for the trash can.
“Your Desperation Has Saved You”?
The blind man sitting on the side of the road had been begging before Jesus came along. For him, begging was business as usual. He was always begging. But when he heard that Jesus was passing, his begging intensified. His begging became shouting. “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” (Luke 18:38). “Son of David” is a messianic title and reveals the reason the blind man is shouting. He believes the messiah, the one whom God has anointed to come and heal the world, is within hearing distance. And he is desperate to be heard.
Apparently he is making quite a scene, because a group of men, likely the disciples, sternly order him to be quiet. But the man’s desperation pushes all concerns aside, and he shouts even louder (Luke 18:39). Jesus hears his shouting and stops. Whatever plans Jesus had can wait. He always stops when a desperate person is seeking him.
When the blind man unabashedly makes his request, “Lord, let me see again” (18:41), Jesus says what he often does to those who seek him, “Your faith has saved you” (18:42). I wonder, though, about the character of the blind man’s faith. It was not a faith that was willing to wait for the afterlife. It was not a faith that calmly accepted its lot and serenely folded its hands. It was a faith that went beyond “business as usual,” a faith that was willing to go to any lengths to get help. It was a desperate faith. Perhaps Jesus could just as well have said, “Your desperation has saved you” (18:42).
With that in mind, I am primed to see the very familiar story of Zacchaeus in a new light, not only as a feel-good tale of Jesus restoring a lost son of Israel to his Jewish family, but also as the story of a desperate man who is willing to go to any lengths to be saved. Just to refresh our memory, Luke introduces Zacchaeus as “a chief tax collector” and as “rich” (18:42). Which means he would have been a supremely hated figure among most Jews, viewed as a collaborator with the oppressing empire of Rome, treated as a traitor who took their money for the enemy and for himself. He’s like the prodigal son, except he’s doing well for himself. And from an outsider’s standpoint, it may seem like there’s no reason for him to return home. He’s not feeding filthy pigs. On the contrary, he’s filthy rich.
But what we see on the outside does not match Zacchaeus’ insides. His story is filled with action and extremes, with running and climbing and hurrying and surrendering eye-watering sums of money, all of this reflective of Zacchaeus’ desperation. To begin, he is so desperate just to see Jesus, he runs ahead of the crowd and climbs unceremoniously into a sycamore tree. As before with the blind man, Jesus stops and sees him. Jesus always stops when a desperate person is seeking him.
Jesus invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ for dinner, where Zacchaeus’ desperation takes him even further than he has run and climbed so far, to an even greater length. He effectively renounces everything he has gained as a tax collector, promising to give half of his possessions to the poor and to reimburse anyone he has defrauded four times over. Jesus concludes, undoubtedly with a smile on his face, “Today salvation has come to this house” (19:9). But here we might read between the lines of Zacchaeus’ and the blind man’s stories a similar message: “Your desperation has saved you.” While Zacchaeus’ salvation is different than the blind man’s, it is no less immediate. It pertains to this world, not just an afterlife. Whereas the blind man receives sight, Zacchaeus receives connection and community. He has traded his riches for relationship. “He too is a son of Abraham,” Jesus declares, meaning, “He’s home, he’s a part of the family again!”
The Gift of Desperation
In Twelve-Step recovery circles, a person will sometimes talk about hitting “rock bottom” as paradoxically the worst day and the best day of their lives. They will talk about it as God’s grace. They will say that in their “rock bottom” experience, God gave them “the gift of desperation.” It is the gift of having nothing left to lose, the gift of not caring anymore about what others think, the gift of being willing to go to any length to get help. It is the gift that pushes us past denial, past fear, past pride. It is the gift that enables us to say two magic words, “I can’t.” It is the gift we receive when our need for help becomes greater than our desire for control.
I think the blind man and Zacchaeus had both received the gift of desperation. Their shouting and climbing and running, their disregard for the people who are telling them to shush or grumbling about them, their need to see Jesus and for Jesus to see them, all suggest that they are acting out of desperation. Just like Carey making that desperate dash to the trash can, not caring what the crowd around him or the Customs agents thought, not thinking about anything else but “Just get there!”
It is logical to think of “rock bottom” as a one-time event,
or to think of “the gift of desperation” as being received only in extreme
moments. But in recovery circles, the experience of “rock bottom”—the admission
of powerlessness and the surrender to a higher power of care—is actually
understood to be not just the first step, but the most fundamental step, the
step that we repeat again and again, day after day, if we want to remain well.
It is the way we walk.
“I Can’t”
I am reminded of Jesus himself, who says things like, “I do
nothing on my own” (John 8:28) and “The Son can do nothing on his own” (5:19).
In other words, even Jesus says those two little words that the desperate
rock-bottomers are saying: “I can’t” (5:19). Perhaps this is why we see
Jesus frequently in prayer. Perhaps this is why Paul advises us, “Pray in the
Spirit at all times” (Eph 6:18). Constant prayer need not be seen as an endless
mental exercise, but rather could be a spirit of honesty and openness and
willingness, in which we know our need and are ever attentive and desirous to
hear what God might be saying. By this spirit, we are connected with God. In
this spirit is salvation. Or as Jesus implied when he encountered the blind man
and Zacchaeus, “Your desperation has saved you.”
I wouldn’t wish nausea or any other malady on anyone. But those two little words, “I can’t”? I hope I carry them with me in my heart the rest of my life, and I hope the same for you.
Response
Before concluding, I would like to invite your response—only if you feel so inclined. There are grey slips of paper and pencils in the pews, and if you do write a response, you may decide for yourself whether you’d like to include your name or remain anonymous. (If you write your name, please know that I would still check with you before ever sharing your response with others.)
The question I’d like to ask is this: In what ways are you desperate today? Where would it be helpful for you to say, “I can’t”? (This could be an extremely personal thing, and you might not wish to write it down. I would affirm discretion. But if you write nothing down, I would also invite you to consider sharing your confession with a trusted friend or loved one, maybe even this week. “I can’t [whatever it is].”)
Prayer
Who welcomes interruption
Because you care for us all—
Quiet our thinking,
The restless chatter of desire,
The endless planning,
That we might hear the cry of our heart
And know our need for help
…
May our need for help
Make us like the blind man and Zacchaeus,
Pushing past denial and fear and pride,
To draw near to you.
In Christ, who came to seek out and save the lost: Amen.
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