a savior who has time

When the wine ran out, Jesus’s mother told him, “They don’t have any wine.”
“What has this concern of yours to do with me, woman? ” Jesus asked. “My hour has not yet come.”

John 2:3,4

[5 minutes]

For Jesus, His “Hour” was the thing He held most sacred. It could not be trifled with; it couldn’t be waved off or pushed aside; he refused to be distracted from it. It was most expedient. His Hour was the work of His Heavenly Father through him to accomplish God’s will from the beginning. His Hour was His appointment with the Cross for the redemption of lost humanity.

At the wedding celebration in Cana Jesus wasn’t caught in a moment of fleshly irritation. No. There was no sin in his response to his mother no matter how much we try to run cover for Him. “Well, Jesus wasn’t really being disrespectful, there’s technical nuance in the original language that we don’t see in ours, etc.” While true, Jesus showed no ambiguity in exposing his inner motivation to His mom. For our Savior, the Hour of His death was everything. No surrender; no capitulation.

I was honored to share at my dad’s funeral seven years ago. Sharing from John 12:23 (And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”), I remembered something my dad said a day before he died. He had been rushed to the hospital with a heart episode and we thought his hour had come. But no. Dad rallied and recovered quickly and, only a few hours later, was resting comfortably in his hospital bed. Crisis averted.

“You had us all scared Dad,” I said. He flashed his signature boyish smile at me. All of 88 years old, he still looked like a much younger man.

“Did you feel ready if, you know, it was your time?” I asked haltingly, yet knowing the answer.

His soft blue eyes were shiny. “Every day I look up at the sky and spot a cloud. I wonder if my Savior will step out on that cloud and come for me. And I always tell him, I’m ready, Lord.”

A few hours later, Jesus stepped out on a cloud and said, “Let’s go, Tom.”

That last conversation with my dad means everything to me. Knowing my dad could have died before I got to him, yet given those extra hours with him, is a precious gift I hold dear.

Death comes for us all. We all have an Hour. That Hour is sacred, binding. There’s no avoiding it. For the believer in Jesus, we leave it in God’s hands and celebrate the days we have until then.

Jesus may have been at a wedding party, but he saw the Cross standing ominously in the background. Still, He was present and merciful and gracious and cared enough to keep a good party going. Isn’t He wonderful?

Tim Keller thoughtfully addressed the inner tension Christ must have felt in that moment:

When Jesus makes his enigmatic statement it’s as if he were looking far away, past his mother and past the bride and groom, and past the whole wedding scene. He’s seeing something else. He’s thinking, ‘Yes, I can bring festival joy to this world; I can cleanse humankind from its guilt and shame. I have come into the world to bring joy, but, oh, Mother. I’m going to have to die to do it.’

– Tim Keller, Encounters With Jesus

Even so, Jesus performs the miracle. How amazing! Yes, he faces a Cross, but he’s also in the company of people who are sad, worried, and frantic. The Gospel of Mark tells of a time Jesus healed a paralyzed man. When he encountered the pitiful man, he dealt with the worst problem in his life: his sin. “Your sins are forgiven you,” Jesus told the man. And then, because of the man’s physical condition, he showed compassion and said, “Rise from your mat and walk!”

In the upper room, following his resurrection, Jesus encountered Thomas. Thomas needed to feel the wounds in Jesus in order to see that he was really alive and not just some ghost or figment or hallucination. When Jesus entered the room, he knew immediately. This is really Jesus, my Savior, my Master! Even still, Jesus invited Thomas to touch him.

Jesus has time for us.

He takes time for us.

He makes time for us.

Jesus sat amidst all the joy of the wedding feast sipping the coming sorrow so that today you and I who believe in him can sit amidst all this world’s sorrow sipping the coming joy.

– Dr. Edmund Clowney

Don’t miss it. The “Hour” Jesus spoke of was His biggest assignment. Bigger than our life events or schedules or plans. And yet he kept the party going.

Master, carest Thou not that we perish? He stills the waves because of course He does. Not because we demand He do it, but because He wills it for us.

How can I pay my bills, Lord? He points out the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Don’t you see, Child? You think I don’t have time for you, too?

Put yourself in the Savior’s sandals. Facing a Cross of execution as the Substitute for all humanity for all time, bearing all sin and its curse, and then someone — his mother! — tugs at His sleeve and says “We need more wine.”

And Jesus is liable to say, “You see those stone water jars? Bring them to Me.”

Selah, beloved.

it had to be john

[5 minutes]

Hey y’all, I want to share some thoughts with you I’ve been mulling over about the naming of John the Baptist in Luke 1…and what that means for us, the grace-endowed people of God.

When Zechariah and Elizabeth presented their miracle baby for circumcision, Elizabeth insisted her baby be named John. Insisted. Others thought Zechariah would be more appropriate, but Elizabeth stood her ground.

“No,” she said staunchly. “His name will be John. Period. End of discussion.”

We know why she was so adamant from a verse earlier in the chapter:

But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.”

Luke 1:13

I mean, the angel Gabriel said so, come on. Who’s going to defy God’s main messenger angel? John it was prophesied, and John it shall be.

When Elizabeth told those closest to her about the naming, they balked. When has there been a ‘John’ in our history? Give him the name of a notable priest or prophet! This is a miracle! It deserves a BIG name! But John?!

“John” means ‘Yah (the LORD) is gracious’ in Hebrew. “God has graced us” is a beautiful rendering also. Zechariah and Elizabeth were graced with a son in their olden years.

Remember, Elizabeth and Zechariah were well past childbearing years. The name infers “special grace“ for a privileged couple. All of John’s days he would have the reminder of his name to know that he was a grace-gift.

May I just insert here – [it is my thesis after all!] – you and I have been blessed to carry the name of Christ Jesus. This should remind us all day, every day that we are stewards of special grace and are to extend that same grace everywhere we go.]

They could have gotten really clever and named their baby Zechariah John. That’s catchy, right? Got a nice ring to it? It’s good compromise after all. But no. His name was John. No other name would do.

So from here on are the thoughts I’ve been mulling over about this scene in the third gospel, Luke 1:59-80 in particular.

John’s birth and calling worked in tandem with the Advent of Jesus who is the Christ. So close were they on the timeline of salvation’s grand history you can’t be witness to Jesus’s arrival without hearing John’s announcement.

The Baptist was born into the world to do one thing: prepare people’s hearts for the Advent of Messiah (Luke 1:17). His coming illustrates the Church’s mission since her birth in the Acts.

We believers should take joy in being part of something so special, birthed by God, indwelt by His Holy Spirit, and called out among all the peoples of the earth to announce and proclaim the Coming of Christ Jesus to the world. The Church is meant to be a blessing for all!

forerunner of Messiah

Enter John. It had to be “John.” We have been wonderfully, gloriously graced to meet Jesus. It became official when his Dad, Zechariah, (finally) said the name out loud, much as the Father spoke over Jesus: This is My Beloved Son.

John was a peculiar name just as we are a peculiar people. We are peculiarized (my word) in our naming and identity. We are Christians (belonging to the realm of Christ) and called-out ones, called to wilderness life this side of heaven to prepare us and make us ready for the Day of our Revealing as the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:19; 1 John 3:2).

And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.

— Luke 1:80

John grew and “became strong in spirit” (v80). The tense of the verb is that he kept growing and he kept getting stronger in spirit through his lifetime. We won’t mention John’s briefly questioning Jesus’s creds when he was in prison facing execution. I think he gets a pass for that, considering he was faithful unto death.

Maybe as you have read along, trying to follow the flow of my thinking, you’re slowly beginning to pick up on it too. The trajectory of John’s life, beginning to end, is the same testimony of the Church.

Enter the Church. We were conceived in grace, birthed in promise, named intentionally, living as nomads and exiles on earth, all the while announcing the Glorious Arrival of the Christ of Heaven.

The Apostle Paul said it has to be us, too. God doesn’t have a Plan B. Weak, foolish, low, and despised though we may be, we’re it. If you got to play God for a day, would you choose us?

the church as forerunners, too

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we know there’s a lot of “not the Church” “inside the Church.” That’s pretty obvious to us (and to the world). Don’t fret it and sweat it. God knows it too. He graced us with a calling and mission. (By Christ) we’ll get it done.

God’s graced us with fiery prophets and prayer warriors and preachers and wilderness voices and faithful husbands and devoted wives and surrendered singles and poets and artists, as well as Spirit-filled children …with more yet to be birthed into the Kingdom!

God stands over it all, steady and unflinching. He named us. And because He promised a faithful Bride for His Son, we will see unparalleled growth by the Spirit — along with increasing hardship — as we draw ever closer to the Day.

‘God is gracious.’

He has graced us.

Let us give thanks.

And you, child (Church), will be called the prophet (people) of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

— Zechariah’s blessing over John, with slight edits to include us

That’s what I’ve been chewing on lately. What are you thinking about these days?

Until next time,

Selah, beloved.

going out weeping, coming home rejoicing

[4 minutes]

They weep as they go to plant their seed,
but they sing as they return with the harvest.

Psalm 126:6

The Bible isn’t a guidebook, it is a life book. It’s not a collection of principles to live by, but life-giving truth to rest in.

With refreshing transparency, Andrée Seu Peterson confessed her once weak-kneed approach to scripture during a particularly painful season of grief. While “grousing” she read from another writer who leaned hard into the Word of God in her own similar season of trial.

In her book Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, Andrée Seu said she was more prone to “pursue minimum Christianity: saved by the blood, but entitled to grouse.” Patti McCarthy Broderick, however, believed when the Bible said ‘suffering produces character and character hope,’ it means that suffering produces character and character, hope.’*

Andrée Seu:

I, on the other hand, have interposed a baroque system of hermeneutics between the Bible and my life. I have seminary training. Unlike simple people who obey the Bible because they don’t realize how complicated it is, I find ambiguity in every verse. I don’t obey scripture, I discuss it.

She and Broderick had both heard the same statistics and psychological findings regarding the ‘natural’ course of grief and the amount of time needed to ‘process’ it. “I went with the statistics and gave myself permission to be as bad as I wanted to be. She, more simple-minded, files the following report: ‘So I chose instead to bank my life on scripture being true, and I was not going to let even well-meaning Christians talk me out of it’… 

Of Broderick, Andrée Seu said, “She took the Bible as practical…She made a conscious choice to trust in God, to take his word as truth, to see opportunity, and to wear his praises publicly on her lips. And she did not find him disappointing.”

It’s necessary to draw a distinction here between distrustful whining and trusting God even as we grieve. Some sorrows run so deep they may take years to heal. But at the heart of Psalm 126 is a promise that will never disappoint.

jerald

I still recall my friend Jerald’s beautiful exposition of this verse. Jerald served as my right hand man for several years when I was pastor in Douglasville, Georgia. I remember his teaching as if it was yesterday.

Picture it: God directs a farmer to take the precious seed, the last seed in the barn, and plant it in the dry soil of his field. It hasn’t rained for weeks.

What? Waste my seed? Why would I do that? How will my family survive?

See him as he kneels in the dust, taking the last of the seed and putting it into the dry ground. He’s risking everything on God’s coming through for his starving family. Tears fill his eyes as he surrenders to the soil, praying with uncertainty. He looks up at the sky. No clouds. He writes his sweaty brow. The seed does no good in his hands, so he presses it into the hard-packed earth.

The next week he hears thunder. He rushes outside and sees dark clouds filling the sky! Torrents of rain wash down on the farmer’s fields. The ground is suddenly bathed in precious streams of living water, as valuable to him as if he discovered gold.

He had wept when he planted the last of the seed but now he rejoices because he knows the Almighty has heard his cries and has seen his sacrifice. The farmer now laughs as he stands under the showers with arms raised to the sky…

I sat by Jerald’s hospice bed one Sunday morning when he quietly slipped off into eternity. Marie, his wife (and one of my regular readers!), joined me in singing as many verses as we could remember of Leaning On The Everlasting Arms as we kept vigil. Somewhere in the middle of the hymn, Jerald left this earthen sod.

In in his lifetime Jerald wept much because of cancer, but Marie and I were witnesses to the exact moment when her husband heard God’s gentle thunder inviting him Home. He took flight from his sick bed to where the fields of grace are always green, always growing, always lush with crops. I believe Jerald was laughing when he saw Jesus.

those who dream

Beloved, one day your soul’s deepest cries will be heard and you will be as one of those who dream about reaching the crest of the last hill after a long wilderness journey. Every thorn and desert, each and every stream of bitter water, and all the giants who towered over you and made you feel weak and unprotected, they will all be behind you, drowned in a sea of forgetfulness.

Oh, but beloved, it’s not a dream. It’s a promise for us too, not just for an ancient people who were just like us. Trust the Almighty Tear-Wiper. You will not find Him disappointing.

Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!

Psalm 126:5

One final word: this promise is not merely for those who cry in this life, but for those who are willing to sow their seed — trusting, believing, hoping — in the midst of their tears. They will be the ones dancing in the rain.

Selah, beloved.

*from her book He Said, “Press”: Hearing God Through Grief by Patti McCarthy Broderick