Can Lost Reverence Be Found?

Her rival, however, would provoke her bitterly to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb.  It happened year after year, as often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she would provoke her; so she wept and would not eat.  Then Elkanah her husband said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep and why do you not eat and why is your heart sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?"  Then Hannah rose after eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the temple of the LORD.  She, greatly distressed, prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly.  She made a vow and said, "O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head."  (1 Samuel 1:6-11 NASB)

In my youth, I was taught reverence for the One my family worshiped.  It was taught in a thousand different ways, but I still remember it.  We spoke only in whispers in the sanctuary (and called it that).  We wore our best to church, better than we dressed anywhere else; not to impress others but to bring our best to our God.  We didn't miss church.  This tended to spread communicable diseases among the faithful church-goers, but we shared so much anyway, it didn't matter.

There were just things you did.  And there were just things you didn't do.  You did not question a leader, at least not as a child.  But we also did not direct our anger at God.  Ironically, it was understood that, as Master of all things, ultimately whatever bad thing happened to me was His fault.  Yet we were never to blame Him, at least out loud; or so it seemed.  The lesson being taught is actually one that is struggling to emerge again in modern congregations.  The lesson was that nothing bad that happens smudges the goodness and glory of my Master.

This lesson, lost in the rebellion against "organized religion", is one that needs to be renewed.  It's one among many, but it is one for which we pay dearly.  The loss of this lesson has permitted our society to dictate belief and practice to us in the place of Scripture.  This is evident in our disdain for authority.  When we teach that the Scriptural Deity can be yelled at and resented, and He's big enough to handle it, we degrade His holy goodness and glory.  We bring the One we cannot reach into our realm, and make Him one of us.

Jesus became one of us by His choice.  Our Maker reaches out to us.  He is unapproachable, unreachable, incomprehensible, and unknown by our own devices.  We can't reason Him into existence, we can't reliably demonstrate in controlled experiments one element of His character.  The best we can hope to achieve to to look at His handiwork and marvel at such magnificence and power.  Once there, we can then, with awe, approach the Scriptures; His record of His self-revelation to His human creatures.  And from there we can make ourselves available to His Spirit.  That is the best we can do.  Most of us don't even do that.

I believe that when I consider myself free to resent and be angry toward my Master, I deny the very first line of His Scripture, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  If He created it all, what right do I have to resent Him for anything?  That I know of His existence means He has revealed Himself to me.  The blessings I receive from Him could stop right there, and I still have more than I deserve and more of His attention than I warrant.  That He does not stop there multiplies shocking grace until I reach the cross where all my assumptions, presumptions, pride, reasoning, and self-righteousness fail, revealed as the refuse heap they are.  And destroyed as a modern American male, I stand before an empty tomb, myself empty of all that I call my own, where I crumple to the ground in worship.

The truth lost with the lesson of reverence is that my Master has assaulted and utterly destroyed the limits of my imagination, understanding, and comprehension so that I sometimes can't, or won't, see Him as He has revealed Himself.  Like He hid Moses in a rock so he would not die as he saw only a part of His glory, so I am only able to see a part of my Master.  But the part I see is so much more than anything I endure.  How can I resent the One having done so much for me?  How can Jesus, the cross and the empty tomb not be enough?  How is that possible?  Scripture is already more of a gracious gift than I can ever be worthy.  How can the message it contains not reduce the rest of me to mere heap of gratitude, gratitude I can never really express well enough?

From Saturday to Sunday

I believe that the connection between the cross and the empty tomb is sometimes lost.  The power of my Master is not demonstrated on the cross as much as His determination to save His human creatures.  He showed the extent of His love and mercy there, but He showed His power through the empty tomb. 

On the other hand, the empty tomb is not really appreciated until the extent of my Master’s love is explored over and over as demonstrated on the cross.  So, I need both, and I need to appreciate them in order.  I need a focus and meditation on the Cross of Jesus so I can better appreciate the empty tomb.  Yesterday I was crushed by my meditation on the Cross of my Master.  Today I want to pause at the empty tomb.

The shock experienced by creation was then followed by such deep oppressive despair that it seemed there was no recovery.  Hope died with the Master on the cross.  Sure, all the sins of all of humanity were paid in that event, but now there was this gaping wound that is always left by death.  Death is relational, just like life is relational.  The Spirit could have come then and there would have been a revival of sorts, but there would have been this sense of a hollow victory.  Death would still have reigned supreme, even over the Creator.  And there was something about that which would not settle in the hearts of the disciples, and not in creation.

The debate over three days is odd to me.  Any part of a day includes that day.  We do that now.  We don’t measure it down to complete sets of 24 hours until we want to disprove something.  In normal usage, we just go with any part of a day.  So, Friday evening, and through Saturday, a doubly intense Sabbath, there was silence.  I imagine the silence to be dark silence, not bright silence.  I imagine an oppressive air where no one, not even Jesus’ enemies, felt light.  I suspect that there would have been such an air of hopelessness that it would have been as all life had stopped, as if in a moment of silent grief.  A day where silence permeates to the bones, and into the soul, chill and dark; that’s how I imagine that Sabbath day.

Part of this oppressive sense of hopelessness comes from the Creator Himself.  The unthinkable has happened; God has suffered the loss of The Son!  The Creator has lost the Uncreated One.  The Three are somehow Two.  The fundamental truth of the Source of the universe and all that holds it together has fractured and a piece is missing.  It is impossible.  It cannot happen.  It can’t!  How?  The crushing question is why, but now in the aftermath, even that answer seems lost in the echo of the darkness left behind.  Is this love?  Is this mercy?  The hole left in my heart from losing my father is nothing compared to the loss incurred by the Creator and His creation at the loss of the Son.  This Saturday is one of grief from the One and Only God right down to the infinitesimally small sub-atomic particle.  It is grief on a cosmic scale.  It crushes the world and the cosmos.

And then the unthinkable, unimaginable, shattering power of the Creator of the universe and all it contains totally annihilates the enemy that is death itself.  Light overwhelms the darkness, and shatters the grief spreading shards to the uttermost ends of creation.  Each shard carries the sound of the truth: HE IS RISEN!  Life sweeps out from that central point on the spinning blue globe and life stirs once again.  Creation takes a deep breath, not realizing it has been holding its breath, gasping for the life of the Son.  Joy so radiant in the darkness of grief that few dared hope it was true swept through the lives of 200 gathered together, and the ripples of that joy continued into Samaria, Judea, and all the ends of the earth.

Life, real life, returned from the grave of despair.  And this is the eternal life that they might know You the One True God and Whom You sent Jesus Christ.  I can know my Master now, I can speak with Him, listen to Him, seek His face, and worship Him.  But one day I will run with Him in the fields of Heaven!  I will worship before His throne!  I will see Him face to face, serve Him in His presence, and I will be who He truly made me to be.  He will give me a new name, and I will know His.  Then I will run and not be weary, walk and not faint.  I will fly, but only for the joy of my Master.  And all the joy of life will make up the air I breathe and the ground beneath my feet.  And I am not alone in this, but one of an unnumbered crowd all together in worship and joy; the voice of which will shake remaining debris of this life off like dust.  We will stand completely clean and whole before the Conqueror of death, Giver of eternal life.  And we will do so forever.

That is what the empty grave means to me.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 26