Pieta’ 

I’m reading a book by Ken Gire called, The Work of His Hands. The subtitle is, The Agony and Ecstasy of Being Conformed to the Image of Christ. It’s a compelling idea. The agony is the process. The ecstasy is those thrilling moments when we find that we’ve actually done what Jesus would do. Becoming like Jesus is an impossible task for a human to achieve, and the more the Lord, by His grace, allows us to grow in resemblance to Christ, the enemy wants to bust us up! 

Pieta’ is perhaps Michelangelo’s greatest work of sculpture. This is the foundation of Gire’s book. The statue depicts Jesus – held in Mary’s arms after the crucifixion. In the early 70s, a man stood in line and waited to view the masterpiece. When he reached the area where the statue sits, he jumped the barrier, pulled a hammer from his coat and assaulted the Pieta’ striking it almost 20 times before being stopped. The damage was significant. 

The message of the book is that each of us is supposed to be God’s masterpiece. Through the attacks of the enemy and the ravages of sin, our God like image is marred, but it is not gone. The part of any of us that is good is God in us. I’m not unaware (double negative intended) of the horrible corruption that sin has brought into our souls. But I don’t believe that man is a seething helpless bag of depravity (see Romans 2:14-16.) The second point is that God uses a process to restore us to His image that is both agony and ecstasy.  

If you’ve been hammered by the enemy, assaulted by the world, tortured by sin and terrorized by your own selfishness – then take heart. Paul wrote, ”For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).  

When we walk with Christ, He is always in the process of repairing our hearts and restoring our souls. Run to Him for strength, renewal and comfort. Dive into his arms and offer your burden as a sacrifice to Him – whether guilt, shame, remorse or pain. He is the Master and we are the Work of His hands. 

telemicus out

Last week, Brittany and I were watching TV and caught an episode of The Wonder Years I had not seen before. It was the one about choosing teams for basketball. 

In that horrible way that we all experienced, the coach selected certain boys to be captains and they took turns choosing the players they wanted on their teams. Of course the worst players were chosen last – among them Kevin’s friend Paul. 

Kevin, grieved by how this process makes those chosen last feel, goes to the coach privately and expresses his concern that its “unfair.” The coach’s solution is to select Kevin to be a captain and see if he will choose the good players over the bad ones.  

When it came time for Kevin to make his first pick – he argued with himself and then, true to his noble heart, he picked his friend Paul. Everyone laughed! With each opportunity, Kevin goes on to prove his point by selecting all of the worst players to be on his team. In the course of their game, they face how terrible they are with honesty… but they also find again how to have fun simply playing the game. 

What I like about this story is that Kevin doesn’t have any illusion about the bad players. He wants them to have a little dignity and respect. This is a godly attitude. Paul said, “…but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). Defending the cause of the helpless is a part of God’s character and His heart. The Psalmist wrote, “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:3-4).   

The noble heart sees the mistreatment of people, (and even animals) as an assault on God. The neglect of care for the oppressed is the neglect of God as well. We may not change the world by picking the bad player first at basketball – but it might be changed by picking them last. I just read that the young man who killed so many this week was teased and picked on a lot. Where was his Kevin Arnold? 

telemicus out

Many years ago, a co-worker who I had been trying to teach and share the gospel with, called me late in the evening and asked if I would “help” him do something. Although he sounded vague on the phone, I went over to his house to “help”. When I arrived, he took me into his house and opened a closet door and inside, stacked from the floor to the ceiling were magazines. It was the vilest assortment of pornography I’ve ever seen. He wanted my help in getting rid of it. The entire “collection” filled the back of his pickup. 

I was reading Stephen King’s book, On Writing this week and I found it interesting that in the book The Green Mile, he gave the hero the initials J.C. (John Coffey.) He described him as a good and powerful man, falsely accused and convicted of crimes he didn’t commit. Sound familiar? Yes. He gave him the initials of J.C. after Jesus Christ. (Prejudice once again struck down.) 

John Coffey had the miraculous gift of taking the pain, illness, wounds and even evil from a person and restoring them to wholeness. Sound familiar? Coffey, convicted to die, used an expression for his miraculous gift; he would say, “I tried to take it back.” He didn’t use the expression the way we use it today, “I take back what I said.” It was more the idea of taking back something in others that didn’t belong.  

Coming to Christ involves a surrender of our self-rule and self-will, but it also requires giving up those things in is and our lives that are unholy. My dad is banging the drum pretty hard these days for the message of the new birth. We are not born again to bondage of the corruption of this world. The purity of Christ’s soul and life allows him to “take back” those things from us that don’t belong.  

He takes back our sin, our weakness, our failings and our self-reliance. He doesn’t take these things to himself, but takes them back from us in order to dispose of them. I suppose in the same way that I took back the magazines from my coworker. They were not mine, I didn’t give them to him, but I helped remove what clearly didn’t belong there. When Jesus died, he took back our sins, and when he arose, he took back sins power over us. Oh yeah, and he took back a couple of other things… He said, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18).  

Happy Easter!  

telemicus out