Repair

But Jesus sees right into our hearts Lenten/Easter question #20

John 21:15-19 After breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” …

Normally, Pittsburgh weather is what my grandson Caleb calls “boring.” The main question we have to ask at this time of year while nature is bursting into all its bright colors is whether it will be raining or whether we’ll be blessed with a few coveted hours of sunshine.

Tuesday, though, broke the mold. No, not a hurricane or even a tornado, as I explained to Caleb–I was at their house when the storm hit. But we had wind gusts up to 80 mph that killed three people; according to our local news:

Tuesday evening’s storm left a wake of destruction in the Pittsburgh area. Large oak trees toppled from the strength of the winds and roofs were torn off of buildings. Duquesne Light said restoration across the area could take five to seven days, calling the event “unprecedented.”

Over 400 workers rolled into town yesterday to aid Duquesne Light with restoration efforts. We were without power for only 24 hours. The main thing we have to show for it is this “storm art.” Pretty cool, eh?

For our daughter Rachel’s family, though, the adventure is ongoing. “Fireworks!” my granddaughter Liliana exclaimed looking up at the electric pole by their house as she and her sister arrived home from preschool in a torrent of rain, with downed wires on the sidewalk. We hope some of the emergency workers will make it to their neighborhood today. Unfortunately, everything in their house is electric, including their stove.

Here’s what the electric pole right by their house looks like, with the top section snapped off and lying precariously on other wires:

Photo by Rachel’s husband Brian

Needless to say, they’re not parking by their house right now!

All this pales before the devastation, self-inflicted, Peter experienced after Jesus’s arrest in Gethsemane. Just that evening he had declared, “I’m ready to die for you.” Instead, he buckled at three suggestions that he was associated with Jesus. Luke tells us Peter went out and wept bitterly (22:62).

The time has finally come, in this last chapter of John, for Peter to confront his cowardice. Just as he had denied Jesus three times, Jesus asks him, reverting to his old name, the name used in Luke 5, “Simon, do you love me?”

Interestingly, Jesus asks Peter twice, “Do you agape me?” Agape is supernatural, grace-filled, absolutely dependable love. But Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, you know I phileo you.”

The third time, Jesus accommodates Peter. Apparently, he recognizes phileo (brotherly or family love) is all that Peter is capable of claiming at this moment. Jesus has made his point. He has steadfastly loved Peter with agape love through thick and thin, and this is what he wants Peter to grow into.

Agape is the love Jesus shares with his Father. In his prayer for his disciples recorded in John 17, Jesus says, “I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love (agape) for me will be in them” (John 17:26). Jesus wants all of his followers—you and I included—to experience and practice agape.

In his little book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis delves into the diverse nuances we miss because four different Greek words are all translated into one English word “love.” At the same time this wordplay is going on between Jesus and Simon Peter, though, another dynamic is at play. Jesus has been preparing Peter to lead. What will Peter’s leadership look like, when Jesus is no longer around to be the leader?

Jesus sums it up in two simple phrases: “Feed my lambs,” the Shepherd tells him (can you feel the affection?) and “Take care of my sheep.” “Be like me in this way too,” I hear Jesus speaking into Peter’s brokenness. “Care for others in the same gentle, committed, insightful, sacrificial way I am caring for you right now.” THIS is leadership in the Kingdom (see Matthew 20:25-28), the same servant love Jesus demonstrated in washing the disciples’ feet.

It’s a reprise not just of Luke 5, but of John 13 after Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, just before Jesus warns Peter he will deny Jesus. “I am giving you [all the disciples] a new commandment: Love (agape) each other. Just as I have loved (agape) you, you should love (agape) each other. Your love (agape) for each other will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

How’s that going in your part of the world?

Still watching

But God is the Rock who can hide you

Isaiah 17:10, 18:4, 19:20-25, 24:5, 16 You have turned from the God who can save you. You have forgotten the Rock who can hide you. … For the Lord has told me this: “I will watch quietly from my dwelling place” … The earth suffers for the sins of its people, for they have twisted God’s instructions, violated his laws, and broken his everlasting covenant. My heart is heavy with grief. Deceit still prevails, and treachery is everywhere.

I love this story:

Our family hiked in the Grand Canyon. Dave and Dan (11) had gone on ahead, more ambitious than I was with our three girls, 6, 8, and 10. Suddenly torrential rain poured down on us and the trail became slippery. Should we keep going down or head back up? Not knowing how long this might last, we turned around. Struggling to keep our balance, sliding back as often as we managed progress forward and of course soaked through, we rounded a bend and saw other hikers huddled under a rock overhang. They squeezed together to make room for us. Exhausted and shivering, I watched the grandeur of the tsunami pummeling the valley before us, vaguely aware that one family, with three teenagers, spoke French. Karis focused all her attention on trying to understand what they were saying.

When the storm eased, the mother of the French family, without attempting conversation, took Karis’s and Rachel’s hands and started with them up the trail. This stranger’s kindness freed me to give all my strength to helping little Valerie manage the slick climb. All I knew to say when we reached the top was “Merci. Merci beaucoup.”

Back home in Brazil, Karis started teaching herself French, an interest she pursued through college (adding Spanish and Arabic as well to her Portuguese and English). She was thrilled in high school to be able to visit France, the homeland of that lovingly remembered family.

A cleft in a rock during a storm yielded so much more than just shelter!

As I read Isaiah 17-24 it seemed eerily like today’s news. Syria. Israel. Ethiopia. Egypt. Iraq. Turkey. Jordan. Arabia. Palestine. These places, says Isaiah, are “watched quietly by the Lord” in the hope they will turn to him, away from their greed and selfishness and violence, and be spared anguish and destruction. God’s heart, broken by their betrayal of his covenant of love, is on full display. He longs to be known and for the people to follow his ways of peace and justice.

2,750 years later, we’re no different, are we? God still gives us freedom to decide. He invites us to know and follow him, instead of independently following our own way, suffering the consequences of our foolish choices. He still “watches quietly,” deeply desiring to bless us, wherever we live, whatever language we speak and whatever culture has formed us.

One day, Isaiah 24:14-16 promises:

All who are left will shout and sing for joy.

Those in the west praise the Lord’s majesty.

In eastern lands give glory to the Lord.

In the lands beyond the sea, praise the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.

We hear songs of praise from the ends of the earth,

songs that give glory to the Righteous One!

My song of praise TODAY echoes back through the centuries to gladden God’s heart. I want to remember the place of refuge he offers me in stormy moments. Don’t you? We can hide our souls under the shelter of the Rock of ages as thunder crashes around us.

Here’s a bonus: The Story Behind “Rock of Ages”:

As the young minister traveled through the rugged country near England’s Cheddar Gorge, the clouds burst and torrential sheets of rain pummeled the earth. The weary traveler was able to find shelter standing under a rocky overhang. There, protected from the buffeting wind and rain, Augustus Toplady conceived one of the most popular hymns ever written, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.”

In March 1776 Toplady published the hymn as part of an article in The Gospel Magazine, which he edited. He wrote that just as England could never pay her national debt, so man could never by his own merits satisfy the justice of God. In the middle of the article, he burst into song, printing for the first time the hymn “Rock of Ages”, which so ably describes Christ, the Rock of Ages, as the remedy for all our sin.

Augustus Toplady died of consumption [tuberculosis] at the age of 38. As he neared the end Toplady proclaimed, “My heart beats every day stronger and stronger for glory. Sickness is no affliction, pain no cause, death itself no dissolution…My prayers are now all converted into praise.”

Who is this man?

But Jesus cares

Mark 4:35-41 As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” So they took Jesus in the boat and started out. … But soon a fierce storm came up. … Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?” Jesus rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still! Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”

Mark 8:27-29 Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” “Well,” they replied. “Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other prophets.” Then Jesus asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.”

Teacher … Messiah. What a huge leap from one to the other. Messiah, the Anointed One, the Son of God, the Savior, Redeemer, Rescuer, Lord.

A friend recently told me, “I admire Jesus. I learn a lot from him. But I don’t believe he is God.” I thought but didn’t say, You’re in Mark 4. But Mark 8 is coming!

A lot happened between Mark 4 and Mark 8. The disciples saw Jesus bring peace to a man who had been tortured by a legion of demons, heal a frightened woman sick for twelve years, bring a dead twelve-year-old back to life, suffer rejection in his home town, give them authority to heal, feed five thousand men plus women and children from one boy’s lunch, walk on water, free a Gentile child from a plaguing demon, restore hearing to a deaf man and sight to a blind one, feed four thousand more people …

What do you need to make the jump from “Teacher” to “Messiah”? Can you accept the testimony of those who walked with Jesus day in and day out, who witnessed his power and compassion and listened to his wisdom? Ask the Father. Don’t stop asking, seeking, knocking.

In The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen writes beautifully about Jesus calming the wind and waves in the story told in Mark 6:45-50, when the disciples still didn’t “get” who he really was. Here’s part of what Nouwen says:

… waves cover you and want to sweep you off your feet … feeling rejected, forgotten, misunderstood. Feeling anger, resentment, or even the desire for revenge, self-pity, self-rejection. These waves make you feel powerless. What are you to do? Make the conscious choice to move the attention of your anxious heart away from these waves and direct it to the One who walks on them and says, “It’s me. Don’t be afraid.” … He is very close to you and will put your soul to rest.

Jesus does care.