Your Provision

Lord,
Reading Luke 5 this morning. You tell your friends to push out into deep water, and to let down their nets.

They have let their nets down before. They have toiled all night. The deep has been closed to them, and their efforts fruitless.

You say, go back. Return to what has never born fruit. Set yourself once more into vulnerability, and wait. See what I will do.

Lord Jesus, I have weighed these nets. I have measured them, and repaired their tears from every misadventure and every declination. If I have recovered at all, it has only been very recently. Lord, how should I feel? How should I trust? All has ended in vanity, all in futility. I am tired, and weighed down with fears and doubts.

The sea is very large, Lord.  I cannot comprehend it. And it grows deeper; I cannot fathom it.

Tell me Jesus. Have you felt these tears? Have you felt this despair? Tell me Jesus. Do you know the depths of shame and horror and fear? The disgust and self-loathing and hopelessness and dread of wrongs so wrong done by us and wrongs so wrong done to us. Jesus! Do you know the rage and the vanity and the hopelessness and the tears? Tell me Jesus. Tell me.

I want to throw up. I want to vomit, to release the sickness in my gut but there is insufficient bile to drive it from my stomach and there is no bile of the soul. There no pressure than can expel what can only be known as brokenness, as not-joy. It has settled into the deep, like a net weighed down.

Row out into the deep. Gentle, now.

There are too many layers to count, too many to peel back, to measure or understand. I have no control, whether I stay or go. I am in the deep regardless. And I can sit in the bottom of the boat wrapped in nets and floats and weights, safe from sharp pain and safe from the striving which cannot answer the pain that remains, adrift on the open sea without water, food or beauty. Or I can let my nets down once more. They will be filled with tears again and perhaps for nothing. They will be filled again with the bitter salt-water that holds both life and death and every possibility and every eventuality, and every fear, and every secret hope.

I will let them down because you ask me to, Jesus. Because your scars are greater than mine, surround and envelope mine. My scars remain, but seem part of yours now, somehow. Moving the nets feels like pulling out long stitches, half-healing threads woven into my heart that can only now be extricated by a slow, gentle pulling and lowering of that thread into the sea.

Trusting you this morning feels less like rising and filling, and feels more like emptying and lowering. I am pressed out, thinner than before- perhaps now you can see the altar through me.

The Repentance of a Wee Little Man

The story of Zacchaeus is a story that many of us will find familiar. Jesus, on His way to Jerusalem passes through Jericho, and stops beneath the very tree in which Zacchaeus sits.

Zacchaeus was a wealthy tax collector, a collaborator with the Roman oppressors and therefore a benefactor of the oppression of the Jews, the sons and daughters of Abraham. He was loathed by the populace. Many in Israel would have hoped and prayed for his murder, and believed it a holy and necessary deed in the restoration of the kingdom of God.

Zacchaeus was also short and curious, and so he climbed a tree to better see Jesus as He passed. Perhaps there smoldered some desperation in his wee little heart, for climbing a tree was surely not a dignified act. But, he had no dignity to lose in the eyes of the crowd. Perhaps he was unconcerned. It is hard to know his motivations here.

But when Jesus stops beneath his tree and invites Himself over for dinner, Zacchaeus's response is plainly told. He hurries with great joy to receive Him. And so Jesus enters into Zacchaeus' opulence, into his sin-gained wealth and comfort. Jesus enters into his home, and is fed and perhaps even housed from the man's sinful purse. There is little wonder that the crowds murmur against Jesus. He is benefiting from their oppression. He is the guest of a man who had never welcomed anyone into his home before, and had made a living taking money out of theirs.  Is Jesus, the wise teacher, simply unaware of the nature of him with whom He dines? Is Jesus unconcerned with the oppression of Abraham's children? Is Jesus giving tacit approval to all that Zacchaeus had done?

No, not at all. For look at what the presence of Christ in the midst of the trappings of sin accomplishes. As Jesus initiates relationship, and so is welcomed into a home conceived and built in sin, the home is transformed. The wee little man is made smaller, humbled by the presence of so righteous a Man at his table. But so is the little man made great, for God has deigned to dine with him. In the presence of Christ he finds himself both utterly worthless by nature, and immeasurably worthy by the nature of the One who has condescended to be his Guest. This humbling and concurrent lifting of Zacchaeus so transforms his heart that Zacchaeus renounces every wrong he has ever committed, and moves to right them, as best he can. He will repay with heavy interest, and give to those in need.

And so Jesus declares, "Today, salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham."

Jesus is deeply concerned with the oppression of His people, of all of His people, perpetrator and victim alike. And yet look how He breaks this oppression: not by force, but by love. Not by demands, but by the transformation of the very nature of man. There is a preexistent, greater and deeper oppression than that of the Romans and their traitorous allies- the oppression of sin, the oppression of selfish desire and of pride, of treason against almighty God. And remarkably, as almighty God enters his home, as Jesus addresses this fundamental, primary oppression in Zacchaeus, all secondary oppressions fall away.

Salvation has come to this house indeed. It came as a Jewish rabbi entered its front door, and it came as a wee little tax collector responded in joyful, exuberant repentance.

How sweet is the word that tells us that God will meet us even in our oppressions and greed and pride and treason, but will not leave us so bound! His love will enter in, and His love will set us free, unto a joyful and exuberant repentance.