Between Rivers

Once upon a time—no, it was more than once. Many times our Father looked down (Psalm 33:13) on the children He had created with infinite agape and marveled at how their independent spirits had corrupted them beyond imagination and impelled them into abysmal degradation and misery. They had perverted the spirit of agape with which He had endowed them in earth’s pristine morning, iniquitously twisting it in upon themselves until they were motivated by only their own depraved instincts. Not an animal, not a bird, not an insect—only a being capable of animated, intelligent conversation with the infinite mind of the Father—could have had the capacity to fall as low as His own children had fallen. So corrupt had they become that their greatest satisfaction was in madness, mayhem, mutilation, and massacre. So low had they fallen that they believed they were above all and answerable to no one.

Then the infinite Creator, looking over the balcony of heaven and down upon His estranged creation, knew that the time had come to intervene in a way that He had never intervened before when, with fire, storm, or drought, He had captured the attentions of a few for a while. This time it would be different. He would get their attention this time! He would go to His own, His own children whom He had crafted and shaped with infinite agape so long ago when the world knew only peace and joy. Beyond human reason, beyond human expectation, beyond human interest or desire, He would become one of them. He would live among them, work and play with them, celebrate and sing with them, weep with them, and suffer with them. He would wrap them securely in His grace.

But they whom He had created—His own dear, obstinate, rebellious children whom He loved more than He loved His own life—oblivious to the Lamb of God in the middle of the flock, would pull the wool over their own eyes to preserve intact their delusive blindness. And He knew from the foundation of the world that this would be. Conservative as death, these obtuse recalcitrants preferred the familiar certainty and darkness of the grave to the Light of Life. They would see in their Creator only a deluded peasant with blistered feet and calloused hands, wrapped in dusty homespun.

As one of them, He would comfort their wounded spirits, challenge their egregious arrogance, feed their emaciated souls, and soothe and heal their wounded bodies. As one of them, He would sweat, bleed, and weep with His self-deluded children. As one of them, He would sweat blood and pour tears for those who would accept His bread, His fish, and His healing benefits—but refuse His agape.

As too many of them, He would experience the scorn, ridicule, and anger of the famous, rich, and powerful with their unwashed, willing accomplices, their egos and revenues threatened by His pure agape. As too many of them, He would be fastened to a wooden stake and suspended above the earth He had created for His own joy and the pleasure of His children. As too many of them, He would expire in agony and exhaustion. But as no one else, He would carry on His back the weight of the world and be crushed for our iniquities, forsaken by His Father and by His own (Isaiah 53).

Looking down from glory, He saw all this in present tense. In eternity, He felt the pain He would feel as one of us. But unlike us—mortals who feel only our own pain and fear—He, as infinite Being, felt ultimate pain: the totality of all human pain and the pain of all sentient and insentient creation for all time. In eternity He saw the life He would live as one of His own. He saw the death He would die, despised and rejected by His own, and He accepted it willingly, without complaint and even with delight in obeying His Father (Psalm 40:8).

So, when the time was just right for His grand purpose, He came to His own, who (shame on them), busy with their getting and spending, were not expecting Him just then or just that way, though the prophets had repeatedly warned them. And He surprised and scandalized them as only a babe out of wedlock can surprise and scandalize the straight and the pure-in-their-own-eyes.

When the time was right, He surprised the scribes and priests in the temple and gave them pause to marvel and ponder His profound understanding of scripture, so pure and elevated that it baffled their atrophied minds. He surprised the dear hearts and gentle people of His hometown with His untarnished and holy life; and they, embarrassed and angry, rejected His overtures and—believe it—tried to kill Him (Luke 4:28–29); but the time was not right for Him to die.

When the time was right, He turned water to wine because His mother asked, and because a brutalized people needed a little sweetness in their troubled lives. When the time was right, He handled lepers, renewing their savaged hopes. He infused dead bodies with life and health, commanded the wind, walked on the water, fed hungry thousands, and opened blind eyes and deaf ears. Still they would not see, nor would they hear.

When the time was right, He commanded the merchant-priests of death, and they hurried to obey. Tripping over one another in their haste, they spilled their loot. It tinkled on the paving stones of the temple and was lost under stamping feet, just as the lesson was lost on their shrunken minds.

All times were right to speak of His kingdoms of grace and glory to anyone who would listen. At all times, He prayed for the shrouds to be torn from the minds of His own. But they clung to their darkness like doomed sailors to the mast of their floundering ship.

At all times, He endured the agony of growing rejection that only a parent can experience—and that only dimly—when a loved child rejects the values and love of parents. Why did He stay on this wretched planet? Why did He set His face to endure the separation of the cross? Would it have been so wrong to give in to the urging of His body, to consign the rebels to the results of their own choosing and go back to where He was loved and appreciated? That’s the human way. He could have done it.

But on the other hand, He could not have. He could not have saved Himself and His brothers and sisters too. To go back, His mission unfinished, would have made His agape and grace a lie. He had come to do His Father’s will; He would stay until it was finished.

So, one ordinary afternoon— remembered forever afterward as priest and people hustled to prepare for the Sabbath, the memorial of His original terrestrial masterwork—He looked down again, not from infinite heaven but from a splinter of His spoiled creation; and seeing the results of His labor of agape, He was satisfied. Below Him, tear-streaked agony distorting their faces, a handful of people who, in their misery, still loved, looked up. And from that splinter of spoiled creation, He too looked up and knew at last that He had finished His work. And having finished, He rested (John 19:30).