All of grace

The other day a group of us were talking about the grace of our Lord.   The question came up as we had been looking at Luke 24 - which you may recall occurs entirely after Jesus has been raised from the dead.   So here is the account of Jesus as He interacts with friends who abandoned Him during His arrest and crucifixion just a few days prior.

Two of them are walking away from Jerusalem.  No doubt despondent that the one they hoped in had died.  Perhaps disappointed in God, they discussed the events of the past week with each other.   They were not seeking God in prayer about it, they were not turning to him in their hurt.   Yet still we read; "As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept from recognizing him."

How often Jesus surprises us by coming alongside us, even when we haven't the spiritual maturity to seek Him, even when we are walking away from the very place where He had earlier led us, even when we cannot see (perhaps because of our own spiritual blindness) His great work already done.  The miracle of what He is doing is yet hidden from our eyes.

"He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”   The Lord ever speaks to us, even when we are not aware of who is speaking.  Often He asks us simple questions, but as simple as they are, they are also very profound.  For His questions are always leading - they cause us to use the capacity He gave us to think things through.  "They stood still, their faces downcast."  Our innate tendency is to want to dismiss them out of hand, as though He was the ignorant one and we were the wise!  "One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

At this point the two disciples go through a short but detailed account of the past events.
“What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.  The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;  but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.  In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning  but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.”

To Christ I imagine this was only a revelation of exactly how ignorant the disciples are.  "He was a prophet..."  Of course, Jesus was not just a prophet, but God incarnate.  After all He's taught them, after all He's gone through with them, they have taken human  circumstances and used them to draw a conclusion about the supernatural - doing so always leaves us short of God's best.

Still, through they are fully ignorant of His true character, though they ought to have known about His planned death from the Scriptures if not His own teaching, He does not give up on them but rather continues to show them grace.  "He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself."  The Lord is yet patient with them (as He is with us) and shows them Himself through the Scriptures.  One wonders what He would say to us today who likewise fail to search the Word to understand our times in light of His plan and His purposes.

"As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther.  But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them."  Even with a full understanding of the Scriptures, disciples of Christ still do not have a full grasp of who Jesus is.  They do not ask where He is going, or if they can accompany Him, or how they might come alongside Him in His purposes.  No, they focus instead on what they see physically (the approaching of nightfall) and ask that He stay with them instead.  If it were not for what follows, this would be one of the saddest passages in the Bible.

"When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together  and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”  Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread."

How often it is that God must use circumstance to reveal His presence to us instead of His written Word or His spoken Word!   Recognizing Him from the way He breaks the bread and hands it to them (perhaps from their time with Him at the feeding of the multitude) they finally grasp that Christ is risen, alive and right there with them.   How gracious He is to allow us such an intimacy of relationship with Him that we can break bread with the King of Kings!

Though we walk away, yet He comes alongside us.
Though we talk to each other, yet He speaks to us.
Though we don't grasp His Word, yet He explains it to us.
Though we allow circumstantial events to keep us from following Him, yet He stays with us.
Though we are so hard of perceiving Him, yet He reveals Himself to us.

Grace.  All of grace.

The inevitable slide.

Steve Moore recently pointed out that. “…while power is not going away, it is decaying. And the power elite in every sphere must face up to increasingly greater limits on their power.”[1]   That’s a powerful observation (pun intended), all the more so because of its apparent truth.  After all, haven’t we just seen the President of the USA (arguably the most powerful man on the planet) FAIL to get basic gun ownership rules in place (and that even though his nation recently experienced the horrific tragedy of the school shootings at Sandy Hook)?  Over the last few years we've watched as the dictators of Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen got uprooted, in spite of their iron grip on power.  Further, the authority of those in power and ability to control the population in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti has been eroded by the public demonstrations of the Arab Spring.

This is not a principle that only works at the national level.  Just in the last month we've just seen public apologies from the heads of RBC, Apple, Volkswagen, JC Penny and Lululemon and the forced reconsideration of executive salaries at Barrick.  Just google “company mea culpa” and you’ll see what I mean.  Indeed, even the Pope knows that the he can no longer wield authority the way his predecessor could.  Moore calls this “power inflation” – the inescapable reality that the same position brings with it less and less power each day.  He quotes Moises Naim, “In the twenty-first century, power is easier to get, harder to use—and easier to lose.”

We shouldn’t be surprised at that.  Long ago the prophet Daniel prophesized that the kingdoms of man would degenerate, and that is exactly what we’ve seen happen.  From the ‘golden’ kingdom of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to the ‘silver’ kingdoms of the Media-Persian Empire, to the ‘bronze’ kingdom of Greece and the ‘iron’ of the Romans and Byzantines to the feet of iron mixed with clay (the additional kingdoms that have ruled the world in varying degrees since then[2]).  The closer we get to the clay (mud) the more ‘the people’ rule, and the less a king rules (for “we the people” are the clay – the dust of the earth). 

Do not mistake this as a trend toward democracy.  It is not.  Rather, it is a principle driven by the inherent want of every human being to ‘rule’ his or herself.  More properly, it is closer to the principle of entropy than the principle of democracy.  It is this principle that Steve Moore is observing.   It is the implication of this principle that has wide and far-reaching consequences for all of us. 

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[1] “Power Inflation – Why the Same Position Brings Less Influence” by Steve Moore :http://www.missionexus.org/category/speed-of-life/

[2] American, German, British, Spanish- Portuguese, Ottoman, Mongol, Islamic, etc