One look. Part I.

Last night the rooster crowed and the Lord looked at me.

That terrible sound rang into the night in my very act of betraying the one I loved most, and he looked at me. He stood on the threshold of his own nightmare, but he looked at me.

Even then, his thoughts were of me. His heart was full of me.

Perhaps my undoing came from knowing that. Here I stood, my filthy words still staining the air around me, my denial of him removing me as far from him as possible, and yet still he saw me.

And even as I denied him, my words proved true.

I do not know him.

I do not know the man who knelt and washed my feet.

I do not know him.

I do not know the man who took me onto a mountain and showed me the glory of God.

I do not know him.

I do not know the man who seized my sword and let them take him away.

I thought I knew him well. I thought he would raise us up and I would help him lead the way to freedom. To hope. To truth. I knew him as my Messiah and my Lord. I thought he was my everything.

I did not know him as my ransom.

Truth be told, I did not think I needed a ransom.

Truth be told, I did not know myself.

In that look he held up a mirror in which I saw myself true for the first time.

Angry.

Prideful.

Selfish.

Afraid.

I could have spoken up for him. I could have testified to all I have seen, shared about the man whose life changed mine forever. Who knows? Maybe they would even have released him if I had been persuasive enough. At the very least, I could have gone with him into death, as I had sworn to do. And now, here I stand, hands empty, utterly alone, and he goes to death with my last words of betrayal as a parting gift.

This is worse than death.

I do not know the man.

Those words sum up everything I am.

When he turned and looked at me, I knew.

His gaze held the knowledge of my suffering and his response of pure love. He saw into the truth of me and did not look away. I am doing this for you.

No. No. No.

Who could look at me like that in such a moment? My agony is not that he knew the moment I betrayed him. It is that he knew and still loved me so much.

Even as I turned from him, he turned to me. Even as my words created a canyon between us, his look of love bridged that gulf and reached me.

It is terrible to know that I never earned the love he gave me. It is terrible to know that I thought I could. The love that hangs there now, bleeding, broken, alone and dying, it is something I will never, ever comprehend. And I know now that through all those days of power and hope and miracles, he saw this moment. When I walked high in my heart thinking he had chosen me because I deserved it, he knew all along that I would be standing here watching him die alone for me because I was too full of pride and fear to own him, to go into death with him.

I never knew him at all. And now that I do, now that I see a glimpse of the man who is God, I see myself too. I see how little I have ever truly believed. And now I am dying a different kind of death, a death far worse than the one I imagined gloriously giving him in my love for him.

This is the death of my belief in myself. This is the realization that I am utterly lost. The same fear that put him on that cross is the fear that drives me. The same anger that drove the whips and the hammers surges in my heart.

I. Denied. Him.   

This darkness cannot hide me from myself. I am broken by my shame and by his look of love.

I never knew him.

And how will I ever know him now?

   

One touch

Luke 8:43-48

 

She slips into the crowd with a desperate push. She shuts her mind to the thought of what might happen if she is found out. No one will notice she is here. No one ever notices.

Unclean.

This is her name now. Her life. Twelve years of the bleeding that won’t stop, twelve years of the hemorrhaging away of her self and everything she once knew. Now she is only this steady flow of suffering. This disease no one can heal has taken all she has. This thing she never sought, never asked for, has made her an outcast. Unclean means unseen. Unfit. Unlovely. Unwanted.

Even touching others will make them unclean too. When was the last time she felt a human touch? She grits her teeth and pushes on as the crowd presses in around her. They will never know. She gasps at the unfamiliar presence of so many people. She trembles as she stumbles forward. Just keep your eyes on him.

She’s heard the stories and seen the evidence of his power. He has touched the unclean, has gone in among them as if he were born to do so, wading right into the suffering and ignoring the shocked faces of the religious leaders. His touch heals.

But how can she stop him with so many people watching? To beg him to touch her? How could she ask such a thing? What will they say when they realize how close they have been to her, she who does not have the right to be there, who has made them all unclean by her presence? And how can her shame bear up under the gaze of such power?

She pushes closer, inching toward the man who holds her only hope. The people crush her in their jostling to see him. They shout his name, scream for his attention, elbowing her in her slow fear. She cannot see him now. She will never be heard.

Through the press she sees only the edge of his robe. She fears him, but she fears more the desperation of this life of shame.

Touch his robe. Only touch him and you will be healed. She believes. She reaches out through the throng, fingertips brushing the fringe of his robe, the barest whisper of connection.

She stops. She falls to the ground. Power courses through her like living light. She feels the healing. Is this what it is to be whole? She weeps with the wonder.

Suddenly she is aware of the stillness, the thick silence. The crowd has stopped. A space has opened around him. They stare at Jesus as his question rings through the air again.

“Who touched me?”

She glances up. He asks the question, but his gaze is fixed on her.

She cannot hide now, but this newness within her gives her courage. Trembling, she kneels at his feet. He stands there, waiting.

“I just want to be clean,” she whispers.

“Daughter.” The word is so tender that she looks up. He is smiling. His eyes are filled with tears.

He takes her hands. The first touch she has felt in all these long years. He gently pulls her to her feet. His gaze, his touch, they fill her with such love and wonder that she forgets everything. This is the healing. Standing here in this moment, looking into that face and knowing she is loved completely.

“Go in peace,” he says, pressing her hands. “Your faith has made you well.”

The moment is broken by urgent voices demanding his attention, and the crowd moves on, some barely pausing to look at her curiously, most hurrying along to see the next big miracle. But his look stays with her, his touch still tingles on her skin.

She didn’t know she needed his love until he gave it to her.

And soon this one whose flow of blood has stopped will hear of his own blood flowing down unstopping, drop by drop, heart breaking for his daughter, heart

stopping for love of her. And he will be unclean. Unseen in cold stone.

But there is One who sees. And his love is a power that raises even the dead. And then she will be truly healed.

You are well. Clean. Whole. Loved.

And one day she will kneel once more at his feet that are scarred with his love, and she will not even dare to touch his robe. But he will touch her again. And this touch will sear her very soul, marking her for all eternity.

“Daughter. Your faith has made you well.”

When hope is a head on a platter

“When it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.’

“But Jesus said to them, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’

“And they said to him, ‘We have here only five loaves and two fish.’

“He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’

“Then he commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And he took the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave to the multitudes.

“So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained.”

Matthew 14:15-20

The people are grieving and confused. A beloved leader, John the Baptist, known to be a friend of Jesus, is dead. Beheaded by the king. John had preached Jesus everywhere he went. The people had flocked to John to hear his words. Jesus is here! Jesus is going to save us! I am his servant. He made them believe. Or he at least made them hope. And now John, the fiery servant of Jesus, is dead.

What’s going on, Jesus? What’s this all about? Why is this happening? Is this all a lie? He loved you. He gave up everything for you. Why didn’t you save HIM? Why didn’t you DO SOMETHING?

But Jesus’ disciples had gone out among the people. They had healed diseases, cast out demons, kept preaching their leader’s message of transformation. And now Jesus’ name was everywhere. So much so that Herod feared this was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Is this Jesus, this healer, indeed the Savior we have been waiting for? Or is he just a hoax?

So now people throng to Jesus even more. They are desperate: for answers, for the lifting of their oppression, for change. They want to know what Jesus is going to do about John. They want to see miracles. They want to hear his voice again and feel the hope that seems to rise on the air with his words. They have nothing, not even food. They want Jesus so much that they go hungry in the wilderness just to be with him.

The disciples are hungry and weary themselves. “When is he going to send them away?” they whisper.

But our God dreams big. While the disciples look at the practicality of the situation, Jesus looks at the hurting hearts of these people. Compassion fills him. They see throngs of thousands of hungry bellies. He sees individual hurting souls. He wants to fill them up with hope.

I can just see him, a little smile on his face, telling the people to sit down and pass the word around. Lifting up the meager lunch and offering it to his Father. Then breaking it, breaking it, and breaking it some more, filling every belly there with food and every heart with laughter. All those chunks of bread passed hand-to-hand like pieces of edible love. Like hope. It must have been fun.

And each doubting disciple gets to clean up his own basketful of hope. A basket heaped with bread from the God who continually calls them to look beyond the ordinary, who keeps challenging their faith to become bigger.

By filling their bellies he fed their hearts, and he showed his disciples that there is always enough for those who believe.

And if it seems there is not enough?

Believe him for what he is going to do.

John’s head on a platter may mean thousands of people finding Christ.

His own death (not yet even a thought in their minds, but surely a looming cloud in his) means the shattering of sin’s hold on all of us. It’s not what they would have wanted or expected. It is far, far better.

And me? My struggle may mean I have to let go of everything I thought I wanted. It may mean my transformation from selfish girl of the world to filled-up follower of Christ. It may mean pointing people to heaven instead of hell. It may mean my knowing his name.

It may mean everything.

Dear world: a letter

Dear

rasping

raging

gasping

grasping

world,

I’m

sorry.

Sorry for trying

to appear

as though I’m not

really sick, helpless, desperate, a

stinking stench of self-pretense.

Sorry for pretending your

nakedness is not

mine too,

for hiding the broken

pieces of myself

within the gloss

that was really a wall

to keep you away.

Dear world,

dear weary, bleary,

wasted, wretched world.

I am

you.

And we are lost,

lonely,

languishing,

longing for something

we do not understand.

If I stand

before you

exposed

will you look

into me

as in a mirror?

Will you see the you

that you run from,

will you let my shame

reflect yours?

Can you see it, world?

If I let you,

will you look on my

need and know

you are the same?

And looking deeper will you

see

as I do

the Image

trapped in death?

Maybe we could

join hands and

confess

our unbelief.

Maybe we really could

un clench

un hide

un hate

un lie

throw it all down

and be undone

Maybe we could

walk together

into the

dark light

of grace,

step toward the

hope

that we shun.

Maybe we could believe.

And then this thing we are

afraid of,

this surrender,

becomes only a sundering

of our already-shattered selves

from the things that cannot

heal.

And then death

is a trail not

a terminus;

it is the way

through

the shadowlands.