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?

   

This rock (Revolution of Jesus, Part 3)

Silent.

After all that has happened, this is the worst. The finality of this silence. The earth has simply swallowed up your hope. Everything you thought you were living for is now sealed in stone. Dead.

And nothing matters now but that look.

After all your bold words about following Jesus to the ends of the earth. You couldn't even own Him to a simple servant girl. You lied. Three times. You denied the one thing that you have ever been sure of. All those years of following Him. All your hopes. You were going to lead the way.

"I don't know Him." The grief of those words crushes your heart. I failed Him. I hurt Him. And I can never take it back.

The world has closed silent around those last words, and you must carry the knowledge of His eyes on you, burning into your heart.

Maybe you thought He couldn't hear you? That He wouldn't know?

But then He turned, and His eyes found you, and they brimmed with the sorrow of your denial. They pierced you with the knowledge of your failure.

But the sorrow in those eyes was all for you. The knowledge was for the burden you now bear.

You can still feel His hands holding your feet, staying your sword. You can hear His voice filled with agony, asking you to pray with Him.

And really, what have you done but fail this Lord again and again, with Your bumbling words, your impulsive zeal? And what did He ever do but gently say, "Not this way. Follow Me."

The truth is that revolutions always ultimately fail. You may rise up and act, you may work for a worthy goal, and you may even succeed for a time in throwing off the old and bringing in the new. But  in the end we cannot escape ourselves. We always wreck everything in spite of our best intentions.

We all stand in the loud silence of our sorrow and sob, "What have I done?"

We all must look aghast at who we really are and stop pretending.

You may even know beyond doubt that Jesus defeated death. You may have heard the angels, seen the grave clothes lying empty. But for you--your revolution has failed.

You failed Him.

You failed yourself.

And so you return to what you know. To life before the revolution. Even though you swore you would never go back. Even though you work all night and catch nothing--another failure. This is what you know. This is who you are.

And then you hear a familiar voice telling you to do something familiarly ridiculous, like, "Throw your net out again." Even though you already threw it hundreds of times and came up empty.

And as you haul in the net that is already breaking under the strain of so many fish, your mind flashes back to another moment exactly like this one, the moment your life truly began. The moment hope was born.

It is the Lord.

And you know it's silly to hope after all you have done, but you cannot help it--you leap into the water and splutter and splash gracelessly to the shore where you fall at His feet.

He raises you up. He feeds you. Just like all the other times, when you think He should be arming you for battle, He feeds you.

He looks into your eyes, and His own are filled with the sorrow of your suffering.

"Do you love Me?"

Three times. Once for every denial.

And  you choke out your love for Him and this time your words are not bold and fiery and confident. They are broken.

This is the rock He will build on. This broken thing, who understands shame. And failure. And regret.

Because really, how can you understand hope unless you have been hopeless? How can you tell the world of the grace He offers unless you have first known despair?

"Feed My sheep."


This is a revolution of hope. A revolution that will save us from ourselves. A revolution that never stops, because we we never stop denying Him, and He never stops restoring.

Because what we really need--what all of us need--is not the overthrow of kings or armies. Not the accumulation of things. Not the success that still leaves us empty.

We are hungry. We need to be fed.

Resurrection Day

Stop, shattered one.

Still the pounding heart

breathe deep.

Unclench fists

drop the hammer

silence your shouting.

Your heart has had its way

hurled its hate

the force of your fear

fixed flesh upon the wooden beam

the scourge of your sin

stuck fast.

The darkness descended

and you shut your hope

in stone

desperately daring it

to defy your rejection.

Kneel, crippled knees.

Look upon your handiwork.

See the splinters of your fortress

stare into the gaping mouth of death

and find it empty.

Breathe deep.

Drink to the dregs

the goblet of your shame.

Then take My hand

and rise.

Wade In

Easter Sunday

Feet Series, Part 4

Sometimes things are not what they seem.

Sometimes the things that plague us, the arrows that wound and bewilder and grieve, sometimes these are the deaths that lead to life.

There is One whose feet knew a better way.

Who looked down on the sobbing, suffering, sorrow of this wreck of humanity, stitched Himself to human feet and waded in.

His feet walked into all the dark places. They wore the dust and grime and weariness of each aching day. They were weighed by the impossible burdens of our brokenness. And the day His feet felt most the fatigue of His calling, that day He washed the feet of His friends.

And then His feet were broken, driven through by hate and hung with all the hopeless misery of all the ages.

His crushed feet held Him up for each agonized breath, until they could bear no more.

And these wretched feet, they are the most beautiful of all.

There are places my feet will never go. Because His already went for me.  

These are the feet at which I long to fall. To wash with my tears. To touch the scars and remember how they walked the pathways of hell so I wouldn’t have to.

And then, remembering that, maybe my feet will be beautiful too—the beautiful, broken feet that bear His name. The feet that are stitched to His grace. The feet that wade in.