The Most Loving Brutal Rescue in History
It’s Holy Week. I write this standing not in the desert but on the edge of Niagra Falls. I’m here by the thunderous deluge by accident mostly. I am nervous. My eyes are closed. I have to grip the rails---I am one of those with a half-mind to leap off high places.
I’ve needed rescuing a time or two in my life. I still do. And I’m not usually fancy about it---“Help! Save me!” (the boat is sinking, the baby won’t push out, the carjacker has a gun, the truck is going to hit us, etc.)
Jesus wasn’t fancy either: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”
He does not ask, “My God, have you forsaken me?” ---he knows he has. He only asks why.
Why does the one who proudly announced from the clouds, “this is my son. Listen to him!” ---why does he now not listen to his son—-especially now, on the crux of the cross, his heart like wax, his bones protruding, his tongue glued to his throat, the beasts below circling and attacking, every breath a sword? There is no death worse than this,
except: Father-forsaken.
How can he do this? Isn’t he the fabricator of all flesh, the healer of all wounds, the spinner of galaxies, the raiser of Lazarus? Could he not pluck his arms and feet from the spikes, leap whole and hale from the cross and return to Abba and a holy trinity eternity again?
(But what of us, all of us on the edge of the falls?)
So again he calls---
You, O LORD, my strength,
Deliver my life from the sword,
my only life from the power of these dogs!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!
And it happens. He is heard. In the very next breath he sighs,
You have rescued me
from the horns of the wild oxen!
What kind of rescue is this? Jesus is still on the cross, crushed, breath failing, near death. But he was wrong. For once in his life just before his life ends he had it wrong. He felt abandoned, but his father never left. And he does it.
He has only minutes left but now, through swollen lips, Jesus whispers triumph, victory,
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth will remember
and turn to the Lord.
Their descendants will serve Him;
the next generation will be told about the Lord.
They will come and tell a people yet to be born
about His righteousness—
all He has done.
Ragged breaths end, His head falls.
It is Finished.
The most brutal rescue in the history of Forever:
God gave him the strength to stay on the cross.
The most violent answer in the history of prayer:
God gave him the love to die.
Open your eyes and watch: He took the falls for us.
Blessed Resurrection week, dear friends.
May your hearts live forever!
