Words of love, soft and tender
Wednesday of Holy Week, March 28, 2018
“Surely, it is not I, Rabbi!” But Jesus only answered, “You have said so.”
– From Matthew 26
Wednesday of Holy Week dawns early and bright. Sunrise pours through our windows, birds sing and fly around our feeder, two purple crocuses bloom in our front yard and down the street Japanese cherry trees are fixing to blossom. On Sunday I took a hundred pictures of our very first robin, who sat patiently for me on a branch of our old, bedraggled but soon-to-be-blooming redbud tree.
The words of Isaiah and other prophets rest on my mind these last days before Easter, precious words on the final fasting days before the feast. These words are my food. They work their way into my body and my soul.
Do you recognize these words: “Hand in hand we come to lay this book in your lap. Say you’re surprised? Say you like it? Say it’s just what you wanted? Because it’s yours – because we love you.”
I imagine not Christopher Robin and his dad, but Isaiah and Moses and Hosea and Luke and Mark and Paul and all the rest, coming together to write those words, and then they come to me, with their crooked smiles that have seen so much, to lay their book in my lap. In their waiting way, they let me know it’s time to sit and read. They sit too, all around the study, and they smile as I get to that place that speaks clearly of all their lives: “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue.”
But in this visitation what I’m most surprised to see is that Judas hangs out in my study too. Why is there no animosity between our Old Heroes and the New Betrayer? Then I remember the words of Paul, a statement Fleming Rutledge calls “as radically ‘inclusive’ a statement as the Bible contains” (Crucifixion, p. 609). “For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy on us all” (Romans 11:32). This is not pop theology; it is the most true thing we can know about God.
The line of righteous and unrighteous, good and evil, does not run between us, but down the middle of every human one of us. And so Elijah and Peter and Paul and Judas can sit in my easy chairs. They can take a break together in the afternoon and watch me read. As for my part I can join their fraternity of sinners, receiving my own forgiveness as they have theirs. While they watch over my shoulder, I can read and rest, read and laugh, read and repent, weeping now and then to know how much I’m loved.
Do not be afraid. God is not mocked. The stories of God’s violence are always in the context and cause of the larger story of God’s mercy. There will be no pocket of unredeemed evil in the Kingdom of God. There cannot be. There will not be. Do not be afraid.
Jesus walks to the corner of my study, dark now as the sun goes down. He takes off his T-shirt. He finds a bucket and fills it with water. Oh, I get it. He’s going to wash our feet, with no warning, and my feet are not prepared. I’m a little embarrassed.
But I have a few minutes to get over it. Because Jesus, over there in the corner, turns on a light and smiles. With the lightest touch you can imagine, he starts with Judas.
Feels like feathers on my feet, Jesus, your touch that bathes my soft new skin. Sweet silk, breath of heaven. My foot is in your hands, held with your kisses, flower petals, drops of living water here and now.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2018/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1696
