Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Stooping is the New Standing



 The following is an excerpt from my personal journal dated July 4, 2015.


“…but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.” (Luke 4:11-12, ESV)


     The resurrection of Jesus Christ still seems like an “idle tale” to many “...and they did not believe.” In our cynical, reality-obsessed culture, we gravitate towards the gritty. We are suspicious of happy endings. Real life isn’t tied up neatly with pretty ribbons and bows. The resurrection seems to us like a fairy-tale finish to an otherwise powerful and poignant tragedy. It’s too good to be true, so we dismiss it as false.

     The disciples apparently felt the same way. Jesus was dead. That was real. They saw it. They knew it to be true. It must have seemed a cruel joke in poor taste for these women to come barging in with wild, “idle tales” of a risen Jesus. Yet there was one man among them who dared hope their words were true, enough to get up and go see for himself. 

     Peter’s last encounter with Jesus ended badly. Betrayal. Vehement denial that he even knew Jesus. Cowardly self-protection at the expense of His Lord. Worst of all, Jesus had known him better than he knew himself. He told Peter he would do this.

     But He also said, “When you return…” He knew Peter would deny Him, yet offered him hope that there was a way back. So when Jesus was killed on the cross, that hope had died. Jesus was gone and Peter never got the chance to make it right again before He was killed.

     Until today. If He was alive, then maybe… He got up and literally ran to the tomb. And here’s the part I personally love in the text, the specific word picture Luke uses: “stooping and looking in.” To stoop means to bow down, to get low. It means to make yourself smaller so you can enter. It’s a humbling of self. Had Peter refused to make himself lower, all he would have seen was the stony outside of a garden tomb. But “stooping and looking in, he saw…” There is a whole different perspective awaiting the one who will stoop and look in. You have to want it bad enough. Peter did.

     Ordinarily, it would be nothing special for a person to bend down in order to see into a small, low space. But there was more going on inside Peter. The action was pregnant with spiritual implication. Peter, whose pride and self-preserving instincts wouldn’t let him risk his own safety to identify with Jesus just a few nights earlier, now had to lower himself to peer into a tomb to know if there was any hope for him beyond his own death.

     Did he see Jesus? No, and that’s a good thing. If Jesus had been in the tomb, then all hope for redemption was lost – for Peter and for us. Instead, he saw the shell of empty grave clothes laying there, no body to fill them, as if to shout, “I couldn’t hold Him! He is too strong! I was no match for Jesus!”

     Maybe the reason the story seems like an “idle tale” to so many is because they will not stop to look in for themselves. Maybe they are afraid of what they will see if they do. If they dare get low in front of all their peers and take a hard, honest look inside that tomb, it might really be empty. And if it really is empty, then Jesus might actually be alive. And if Jesus rose from the dead, then He has claims on their lives that they cannot shake. No, it’s too risky. Better to stay home with the scoffers. It’s safer that way.

     Safer. At least until the sky cracks wide, and that Risen Jesus returns in triumph to claim His place as rightful King over all. The those who rejected Him, who refused to stoop and lower themselves, who dared not look inside for fear of what they would – or would not  -- find there, they will cry out for the mountains to fall on them and for the rocks to cover them. Anything to escape the penetrating gaze of that “Idle Tale” turned “True Story.” For them there will be nothing left but the wrath of a Holy God who did everything in His power to save them except force them to love Him.

     For the Christ follower, stooping is the new standing. It is a permanent position of humility before a glorious Savior. Jesus stooped far lower than He asks any of us to do. Yet stoop we must. Lower ourselves we must. If we want to see for ourselves what is true and live a life of freedom, hope, and victory, then we must do it from the stooping position.


Friday, March 11, 2016

Feeling all "misty" this morning...

 
 
Reading in James this morning...
"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." (James 4:13-17, ESV)

There are two important facts about being a human on planet earth that James reminds us of:
  1. Our days are numbered. Literally.
  2. We have no idea what that number is.

I have no idea if this is my last day on earth or not. The coffee I sip now could be the last cup I ever taste. The good-morning kiss I just gave my wife a few moments ago could be the last kiss we ever enjoy. The sentence I am hastily scribbling across the page of my journal may be the last thing I ever write. I simply do not know the number of my days.

So to live as if I did know, or as if it didn't matter, or even worse, as if God did not have a say in how I spent my numbered days is actually evil, arrogant, and sinful. James calls it "arrogant boasting" because we do not stop to ask God what He wants to do with our lives. Planning our futures -- even in the short term -- without seeking the Lord's will is actually "evil." It actually works against what is good and right and true.

That's why James says, "Hey, if you know you are a mist, and if you know you are subject to the sovereignty of God, and if you know you ought to ask Him what He wants to do with the number of your days -- and yet you spend it pursuing your own plans without a thought to His plans or purposes, then you are sinning against God." We are basically giving Him the middle finger as we run off to do whatever for a few years before launching out into eternity. And then we get to stand before Him and explain why our plans were somehow better. (Cue Dust in the Wind by Kansas...)

Father, what do you have for me this day? If it is my last day, let me live it purposefully for Your glory. Use me to tell someone the good news of the love of Christ. All my plans and hopes and dreams I yield to Your gracious, sovereign will. I am a mist, here for a little while, then gone and eventually forgotten even by my own great-grandchildren. I am only two generations away from being forgotten entirely by my own family!

God, help me to live in light of the glorious reality that this mist may only last a little while, but in Your hands it can accomplish something eternally significant in Your Kingdom. I am Your, Father. Live through me today, in Jesus' name.