Jesus and El Capitan

During the Lenten season this year I realized something in my heart shifted. Not suddenly, but slowly, subtly.

Photo by Matt Cramblett on Unsplash

For most of my life, I confess, I have not really believed God loved me in the way scripture seems to express. Not because I was a skeptic or didn't want to believe; I just couldn't. I could never seem to believe in God's extraordinary love, his agape love, his hesed, or everlasting and steadfast love. My heart seemed to do what most human hearts do, and that is equate God's love to human love:

I will if you will.

Love with conditions.

Granted, human love often persists through the worst and lowest of circumstances: a mother loving a wayward child, a spouse loving an unfaithful partner, a friendship that perseveres through betrayal.

But the kind of love that shouts, "I will even if you won't," that covenant hesed love we find throughout the Psalms? That was beyond my reach.

I had trouble believing in the love of God and aligning it with the heartache and empty places in my life. Where was the evidence of God's love in all of that? I am not sure if it was how I was taught, or how it was caught. Either way, this was the impasse, the El Capitan I could never scale. The only thing I could do was sit in the dirt with my back up against the rock and sigh.

From head to heart:

A few days ago, on Maundy Thursday, I read Matthew 26-27 In Eugene Peterson's The Message. At this point in Holy Week, Christ's crucifixion looms large, and I wanted to contemplate these events anew. I was so struck by Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, his longing for companionship from his disciples.

My brow furrowed as I read Matthew 27. If ever the depth of our sinfulness was on full display, it was in those moments:

They mocked Jesus.

Struck him.

Taunted him.

Laughed and watched him die in slow agony.

Offered only sour wine to quench his thirst.

These things were done to the most loving heart that would ever beat.

The hearts of the people who cried out in anger and judgment against Jesus that day were blinded - both willingly and unwittingly. I felt as though I was reading it for the first time, seeing for the first time the deceit, the lies, the conniving, the fear. I wanted to cry out, "STOP!"

And suddenly it was clear.

It struck me for the first time in my life, like a flash of lightning, moving from head to heart and back again:

Only love could do this.

Even now as I write, my eyes fill with tears as I contemplate that moment. Perhaps most miraculous of all is that the heartache remains, the empty places still ache.

El Capitan still stands.

But it is eclipsed, or perhaps illuminated with the love of one who went to greater lengths to prove his love than any person I have known or will ever know.

What is it about this realization? The moment when heart and head align?

I usually chide my students when they say something is "indescribable," but I'm afraid I'll have to use that very word here. It is the only word I can assign to this revelation.

Friends, heartache is real. Loss rips us apart. Broken dreams leave us on hands and knees in the dirt trying to pick up the jagged pieces. But Jesus' love is more real. It mends. It gets down in the dirt with us and gently takes the broken shards that cut our hands and make them bleed. Does it guarantee bliss? No. Absolutely no. Rather it guarantees presence, the presence of one who scaled the impassable places for us. One who came to us, gave to us, gives to us the priceless promise of his presence. He will never leave us.

This love speaks to us what the angel spoke to the women at the tomb: "There is nothing to fear here."

Perhaps the El Capitans of our lives still stand. But the meaning of Easter infuses us with hope grounded in love, that great gift of the resurrection. It stands steadfastly and resolutely beside the heartaches. May this love - this hope - call us ever forward, straining towards the time when we will never be separated from his presence, never have to long for him or cry out to him.

Until then may we press forward in his hope and love.