Stubborn Love

It is the middle of Holy Week.  The week began with Palm Sunday, the celebration of the Palms remembering when Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem. . .and now we wait for Good Friday when Jesus made the tortured climb up to Calvary and the cross where he was crucified at the end of the week. We feel the stark contrast.  We feel the weight of the tragedy of this week 2000 years ago.  We see ourselves reflected before us in the mirror of the crowd when in one breath we praise Jesus as the long awaited King and sing “Hosanna in the highest!” and in the next we shout, “Let him be crucified!”  There is no wiggle room.  It is a painfully descriptive diagnosis on we humans. 

It reminds me of lyrics from the Waterdeep song entitled You Knew: “In a crazy haze, In a purple robe, I walk amazed, King of the strobe; Flashing and unfaithful, I'm hardly light at all, Tripping and ungraceful, I was born into the fall.”  Such a perfect picture of us.  At our best we are like strobe lights, flashing and unfaithful, hardly light at all.  One minute depending on Jesus and his grace and the next saying, “I don’t need your help Jesus.  I’m fine on my own.  No thanks.”  We see how fast we flip, how quickly we betray.  We see how very changeable we are in these passages today.  If you think I am jumping the gun here and too quickly lumping you in with all of the people in the mixed crowds in Jerusalem, if you think that you would have somehow behaved differently from everyone including Jesus’ closest friends and family, let me just say, you’re wrong.  You’d be in the same boat as everybody else.  Our devotion is similar to that of a fish…we’re just swimming along until we see something shiny and boom our allegiance, focus, and devotion is to chasing the shiny thing.  Or we’re like the dogs in Pixar’s movie UP.  Faithful to the task until they think they see a “Squirrel!”  Totally distracted. 

Flashing and unfaithful.  We change.  We change all of the time. 

And against this backdrop of human behavior writ large we see our opposite.  We see steadiness, faithfulness, determination, unchanging love and devotion.  We see Jesus, and I want to focus primarily on Him now.  In Matthew 21 we read about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus knows full well what is coming.  He knows what the week will bring.  He knows that this action of riding into Jerusalem this day would mark the beginning of the most lonely and painful time anyone has ever known on earth, and at the same time he knows that this is exactly what he came for.  He takes every step necessary to fulfill God’s plan for us.  This is the amazing thing about this week, we see the love of God in Jesus Christ clearer than anywhere else.  He rides into Jerusalem with the crowds praising him and laying palm branches at his feet, honoring him and singing about him.  He rides in seeing all of these people, knowing that they will not be with him in just a matter of days. 

This is made most clear to us a couple days later on Thursday (Maundy Thursday) the night of the Lord’s Supper (the first communion) when Jesus tells his disciples, his beloved friends, that they would all fall away, they would all betray him.  Peter says, “I’ll never betray you, Lord,” and Jesus tells him the exact details of how he would deny him three times.  Jesus knew full well what he was riding into on Palm Sunday.  Never do we hear of any bitterness or harshness towards the disciples, the crowds, or even his judges.  No, he has compassion on all of them.  These are the people he came for.  These are the people he loves.   

Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper

If we are described by Waterdeep’s strobe light, if our love changes in a flash, then Jesus is described by the Lumineer’s song Stubborn Love. 

She'll lie and steal, and cheat, and beg you from her knees;

Make you think she means it this time;

She'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair;

But I still love her, I don't really care. 

So keep your head up, keep your love;

Keep your head up, my love;

Keep your head up, keep your love.

Jesus has that stubborn love that never changes, never gives up.  It is what drives him, his wild and unconditional love for us.   

On Good Friday when the echoes of the Hosanna praises have all faded away, when after one of his best friends betrayed him for some silver, when he had been hauled before the authorities falsely accused, when no one came to his defense, when no one stood with him, His love and compassion for us compelled him to stand silent before it all.  He just took it.  Blow after blow, he took it.  He never objected.  He never resisted; he took the worst we could dish out and remained the same.  He did not change, nor did his love for us change.  Instead it was the thing that dragged him, beaten and bleeding up the mountain and laid him on the cross with his arms outstretched.  His radical, never-giving up love. 

We hear it explicitly from the cross.  While he is being berated and mocked as he hangs from the cross, Luke records Jesus saying the most amazing thing.  He says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  He gives words to his actions.  He asks for our forgiveness.  I spent that time at the beginning talking about our changing and unfaithful devotion and love because I wanted it to be so clear that we do nothing to deserve what we get from God in Jesus.  He didn’t say forgive them while we were really trying hard to be good.  He didn’t say, “I’m happy to go to the cross for you guys because I can tell you are all really sorry for what you’re doing and for all of the times you’ve done wrong.”  “Father, forgive them because they have good hearts.  They’re really great people deep down inside.”  NO.  Jesus goes to the cross in the face of the complete rejection of humanity.  He goes to the cross while we happily push him there.  It is in the face of us calling him our enemy and worth less than a known scumbag criminal, it’s in the face of all of that that he gives up himself for us.  And he defends us in that moment.  He says, “I still love you.  I don’t really care.”  I don’t care what you do to me.  I came for you, I love you, and I am going to save you. 

As I said before we do not see a clearer picture of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ anywhere else.  This is his stubborn love, his unchanging love.  And it is exactly the same today.  His love for you, for us, still has not changed and will not change.  He still stands in for you, no matter what you are doing, no matter what!  He still intercedes for you all of the time.  Paul and John make that very clear.  1 John 2 says, “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”  Paul says in Romans 8, “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”  His love for us stands unchanged, unconditional, eternal.  There is nothing about you that he doesn’t know.  There is nothing so big, so dark, so bad about you that he hasn’t already forgiven.  He loves you, and that will never change.  As Paul says, “There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8).  Nothing.  And he says to you, “So keep your head up, my love.”

Recommended Reading