Isaiah 62, A Story of Redemption.

She wakes up to the piercing ray of sunshine coming through the almost closed blinds. As she rolls away from the snoring man on her right she knocks over the empty bottle of absinthe. It hits the rubbish strewn floor with a loud clunk, sending pain through her alcohol drenched brain. Her name is Azubah,[1] and this is a typical morning for her. She quickly puts on her clothes, sneaks out of the room and hurries to catch a taxi home.

            She gets home and heads to the bathroom to rinse the filth of the previous night’s debauchery from her, before getting in the shower she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and sobs in despair at the sight before her eyes. Sunken eyes, matted hair, needle tracks up her arms, bruises across her torso where so many have laid hands on her. The demons in her mind scream their hate-filled lies at her and she takes a shot from a nearby whisky bottle before pulling closed the shower curtain.

            The hot water washes over her but fails to warm the icy cold chill in her heart. Upon getting out she dresses and applies her makeup, bringing a semblance of life to her dead, vacant face. She was beautiful once, but years of poor nutrition, late nights, drunken orgies, and her long addiction to methamphetamine has left her a ruined husk of her former glory.

            It’s midday, Azubah has taken to the streets to try and outrun the demons, if only for a little while. She sees some guys in hoods passing around a bong just off the street in a back alley and suddenly she realizes that she owes them money. She tries to make it past without being seen but is recognized and the stoners give chase. She runs for her life, knowing that if they catch her, she will not survive the beating. The next door she comes across she darts inside, not even looking up to see what kind of building it is. As soon as she enters she realizes that she has entered a small inner-city church/soup kitchen. A young man comes over and asks her what’s wrong. As soon as she tells him, he locks the door, calls over a friend to act as sentinel and phones the cops. Azubah slowly loses consciousness from the strain as he is stroking her hair telling her it will be alright.

            Months later, after some intensive rehab and that initial, unconditional love shown to her by that strange, kind young man at the soup kitchen, Azubah returns. Azubah has been completely transformed, no more is there the zombie-like prostitute-drug-addict. In that persons place is an innocent young girl with a crown of beauty upon her head. No longer is she called Azubah, her friends (yes, she now has friends!) call her Hephzibah. She has found her peace in Christ, and as the bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so God rejoices over her!

            She has returned for one reason, through all the long months of pain and despair that led to her recovery, that young man had been faithful in writing and visiting her, and he had asked her to come by and see him when she was free. She walks in, he rushes over, drops to his knees and asks her to marry him. She says yes and he promises her that never again will she have to work as a sex slave to enjoy the pleasures of food and drink. That day Hephzibah earned a new name, Beulah. The young man says to her, “My God and I have sought you out, and you shall never be Forsaken again).

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[1] Forsaken

You are loved!

The subject of this song begs to be loved, and my heart breaks for her. We all know someone like this, perhaps you are this person. That person who has been hurt time and again by the harsh realities of this wretched world. As I sit here, I just want to tell all who identify with this woman, that you are loved, this Easter season, rejoice in that wonderful truth!

Lost in the Crowd

Holy Week was a time for some pretty serious reflection on my part. As I meditated on the story of the Passion, I found myself more and more identifying with the crowds in Jerusalem. Often, in my church at least, we are subtly encouraged to identify with the disciples because of course, we're Christians, so it is only fitting that we should identify with such as Peter or Mary. This year however, I couldn't do that, my role in the story is one of anonymity, but yet, is every bit as important to the flow of the narrative.

The crowd (and by extension myself) serve two functions in the Passion narrative, providing blessing and condemnation.

On Palm Sunday I am there, singing praises of "Hosanna!" to the Messiah that has finally arrived. Finally a Saviour has arrived to make all of my problems disappear. The one the prophets spoke about long ago had finally arrived to fulfill all of my dreams. The resolution of all my life problems was at hand, God had not abandoned me, he was finally answering my prayers.

So I cheered and danced and laid offerings of praise at his feet, confident that now, I would get what I had long waited for.

Days went by, but nothing changed. Everything carried on as it had for hundreds of years. This Jesus was a fraud, he must be, a clever fraud - for he had used the words of the prophets to elicit a powerful response - but a fraud nonetheless. I began to be annoyed as the prayers that I had prayed for so long remained unanswered. In fact the only answer Jesus gave me at all was by entering our Temple and overturning things; who did this charlatan think he was?

When I heard the news, I felt disappointment, which was quickly replaced by vindictive rage. It turns out that this Jesus wasn't the Messiah after all, perhaps my prayers would yet be answered by the real Messiah. I rushed out into the street to join the growing mob of people that were rushing to see condemned, the man who had betrayed all of our hopes.

"CRUCIFY HIM!!" I screamed until I was hoarse, and with perverse pleasure, watched as Pilate handed that  god-forsaken traitor over to the will of the people (about time the Romans listened to us...). I jeered and mocked and spat on him as he walked by me. Laughing with cruel pleasure, I even tossed some debris on his ravaged back just to watch him wince, vindictively inflicting the pain his false promises had caused me, back onto him.

I was pushed along with the crowd out of the city up onto the mountain of Golgotha. I was drunk with hate, giddy with cruel thoughts of revenge. Grinning from ear to ear, my friends and I chortled as the soldiers forced him onto that cross and hoisted him high above the ground. I yelled in protest when I saw that those imbecile Roman guards had named him "King of the Jews", but was ignored. I would never accept him as my king, but not matter, he was only hours away from death.

I thought about leaving a few times, but I was too captivated by the sight of that bloody body hanging there. I determined to see this thing through to the end. Mid-afternoon, the sky darkened and from the lips of that beleaguered victim hanging on the cross rose a cry, "Eli, eli, lema sabachthani!" I thought to myself, "Why has God forsaken you? You forsook us!!" A while later he yelled, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing!" This caught my attention a little bit, but I quickly shrugged it off, believing him to be playing up the part of Messiah, even to his death. Finally he sighed one last time saying loudly enough for all in attendance to hear, "It is finished."

What happened next, I can't explain. At the moment Jesus said these words, he died, and thunder and lightning shook the heavens while earthquakes shattered the land. I was thrown to my hands and knees, and above the din I heard the centurion cry, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" I looked upon that broken body, and I too came to that horrible realization. We had just crucified an innocent man, the innocent man, our one chance for redemption, and I had a hand in his death.

Suddenly, all of my prayers were shown to me for what they were, selfish wishes wrapped in the pious language of "thy will be done". Thinking that I could deceive God into having my will be done by cleverly requesting things as though they were His will.

There, at the foot of the cross, just as the saviour I had missed was broken, I was broken.

I went home that night knowing not what to do. I thought about trying to find Jesus' disciples, but rumour had it that they had all been scattered, or were in hiding after their rabbi was killed. Life went on, every day an agony, knowing that because of me, my one hope of a Messiah was gone. At Pentecost I was wandering the streets aimlessly when I heard a man powerfully proclaiming a message that at first seemed absurd, but then filled me with hope. Jesus, the man whom I had crucified, was somehow, miraculously alive. I jumped for joy and ran towards this man eager to know more...

"...and about three thousand were added to their number that day." Acts 2:41

A Lenten Psalm

Hollow.

Broken inside and beginning to slide.

Emptiness.

That fluttering gut that won’t calm down.

Pain, angst, rage and despair.

Betrayal.

Knowing my foundation was sand – as the waves of panic rush in, my eyes desperately scan the horizon – devoid of hope.

You were my god, but you were no God.

Faith, hope and love?

A mere childish fantasy!

But yet…

Wrapping me tight is some mysterious great love

            I fight against it;

            Refusing to believe that anyone could love… me.

I hold on –

Trying to grasp the infinite fragments of my sanity.

Lost.

Staring blankly through time and space; unmoved by all of creation’s splendour.

“Hosanna!”

With a loud cry, I behold the Messiah

His beautiful eyes warm with love… and hurt?

I turn away, knowing that somehow, I am the cause of that pain.

“Crucify Him”

The words rip my throat raw as my screams blend with those of the throng.

I gloat with malice as those terrible, loving eyes close in agony.

“It is finished”

That foul lover; broken, his ruined eyes devoid at last of that suffocating love.

No sleep.

I go to the tomb,

Where is he?

Collapsing to my knees I am confronted with those piercing, loving eyes.

He picks me up –

            And for the first time, my fury and rage depart.

I gaze back into those wonderfully warm eyes as he softly whispers…

“I… Love… You…”

The Living Word

We humans often ask a simple question of the events or subjects that confront us, "what does this mean?" Recently however, I have been challenged to ask of the world not, "what does this mean" but "what does this do/how does this function?" The idea to shift the question that I was asking originated from my theology prof on the question of tongues, but since then I have been exploring the implications of that question in art, and most recently, scripture reading.

So often we approach Scripture as though it were the object, and we, the subject acting upon it. This has led humanity down both the roads of fundamentalism and higher criticism. The driving force behind both of these movements was an inability to let Scripture act upon us; we had to tame the Scriptures, to understand them, to mine them for scientific knowledge. We treated Scripture as a dead text, something that pointed us towards God, but not a way in which we might actually encounter God.

The gospel of John refers to Jesus as being the Word, the Word become flesh in fact. The incarnation is that messy occasion where we are confronted by God and are forced to majorly deconstruct some of our ideas about the way the world is. An encounter with God shakes us in a way that leaves us forever changed. What would happen, if we read the Scriptures looking to actually encounter the living Word, not just learn about him? Try letting the text do something to you, allow it to transform you instead of obsessing over the insane question, "What does it all mean?" After a couple thousand years, we still don't really know, but we do know that Scripture does something to us, and that, I think, is something to cling to.

Your young men will see visions...

A young man sat daydreaming in the back-row of the chapel. In those days the word of the Lord was rare among men and not many had visions. Suddenly the young man's lazy afternoon thoughts were shattered by a startlingly vivid vision.

A voice said, "Son of man, look upon the world!"

And lo, I looked and rising up above the fields

of the earth was a great and terrible masculine

form, rising up on the edges of the horizon. He

had eyes like coal and a bloody scourge hung from 

his hand. He towered above the masses of screaming 

humanity that groveled at his feet. 

I beheld the name of this behemoth - he was Sin, and 

all are enslaved by him.

The young man awoke from his vision and cried out to the Lord.

"What shall be done?!?!" he cried.

The Lord said unto him "The one whom the Son of Man sets free shall be free indeed. I have set you free, go and do unto others likewise."

At that moment, the young man's mind was filled with a myriad of fleeting pictures and impressions; unlocking chains, pouring water, soothing the distraught, feeding the hungry, tending the sick... On and on it went, the young man being laid low under the intensity of the onslaught. Finally the young man bowed his head and, in a broken voice barely above a whisper prayed, "Your will be done..."

Who am I?

What my guy friends say: "You're a terrible person".
What my girl friends say: "You are a good friend/You're a jerk".

What their actions say: "I trust and count on you"

What my family says: "We love you and miss you"

What their actions say: "Oh, you're around?"

What God says: "I have called you by name, you are mine... I love you."

What his actions say - the same thing.


With all these voices telling me who I am, who do I believe? Or perhaps all of these voices speak some truth about who I am, perhaps I am all these things, maybe I'm none of them. A wise man once told me to "find my identity in Christ", yet, it is undeniable that at least part of our identity is shaped by the social context we are placed in. I don't even know where home is anymore, I have multiple communities telling me different (and sometimes conflicting) things about who I am. The only one who remains constant is the Lord. Perhaps the NT writers new what they were talking about in referring to Christ as the chief cornerstone. It really seems that he is the only constant source to be found.