Prophets and the Pathos of the Lord Ezek 5:11-17 Hos 11:1-9 John 11:28-44
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU981UN384I
Preamble
Strong inner traumas brought me to Christ, and for a long time afterwards I struggled to understand my own intense emotions. I remember being on retreat about 1989 and reading Abraham Heschel’s volumes on The Prophets, Heschel argues that the prophets were people called to share in the “pathos” of the Lord. “Pathos” being God’s dynamic covenant relationship with Israel, not a mindless passion like humans sometimes experience, but a call to feel what God feels in his intentional acts of judgement and deliverance. The major limitation of many Christian commentators in their understanding of the divine pathos is a failure to start and end with Jesus. Unless we do this, our understanding, participation and enacting the pathos/feeling/affections of the Lord, will never be adequately human.
Introduction
Equating the Lord’s feeling with ours (cf. Ps 50:21; Isa 55:8-9) or denying any similarities at all is the stuff of idolatry. A long theological tradition denies that God has any passion. The great medieval theologian St Anselm prays, “you are compassionate in that you save the wretched…yet you are not compassionate, in that you are affected by no sympathy for wretchedness”. The first of the Anglican Articles of religion states that God is “without body, parts, or passions”. Given this background, one of the major criticisms of the First Great Awakening (18th century England) was excessive emotion. Someone inscribed on a church bell at Cambridge, “Glory to God in the highest, and damnation to the enthusiast.” When Charles Wesley wrote in one of his great hymns, “Love divine, all loves excelling”, “Visit us with Thy salvation, Enter every trembling heart.”, these words were meant to be taken literally. Emotions are so powerful, revered, avoided, and confused that we must see Jesus as the peak, purpose and perfection for which human affections were created by God. The interplay between divine and human affections begins as early as Genesis 6.
Perspective
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” (Gen 6:5-6). The intensity of the anguish of God communicates how important fallen humanity is to him, and that he will do something about the dreadful state of the world. God grieves for us. In the Old Testament we find a God who is moved to pity by human entreaties (Judges 2:18; 2 Chron 33:13, 19), but also to jealousy. When God is “moved” his whole being is moved to action. Immediately before the exodus from Egypt it says, “the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue…came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant… 25 …and God knew.” (Ex 2:23-25). The Lord was somehow truly present in the suffering of the Israelites so that their deliverance was at hand.
Divine omnipotence reveals itself as most moved to relieve human grief in the lowliness of the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14). It is in Jesus that the purpose of emotions, divine and human, is fully revealed. The compassionate God is moved to heal the sick (Mark 1:41), feed the hungry (Matt 15:32), teach the kingdom (Mark 6:34) and raise the dead (John 11:33, 38). Our reading on the raising of Lazarus is profoundly revealing; commentators compare its description of Jesus at the tomb, “he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled”, to the snorting of a war horse entering into battle, a champion going forth into conflict, and the flaming wrath of God against death and the devil. The Greek literally says that Jesus “troubled himself”. The Lord was the master of his own emotions in his movement to break evil’s power. The mingling of righteous anger and weeping manifest by God-in-Christ meant resurrection power would necessarily be released as an inbreaking of the coming kingdom of God. This story is a remarkable unveiling of the heart of Jesus, and of the Father (John 14:9). Many of Christ’s affections and actions were prefigured by the prophets.
Old Testament Prophets
The first two readings tonight demonstrated the span and intensity of the divine affections in the prophets. The key to understanding such intensity, both “dreadful” and “wonderful”, can be found in Ezekiel 6:9, “how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols”. The Lord of the covenant is a broken-hearted God. Consider this parade from the prophets.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Isa 49:15); “Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him, declares the Lord.” (Jer 31:20); “How can I give you up….How can I hand you over, O Israel?…My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9 I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” (Hos 11:8-9); “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.” (Isa 63:9 cf. Ps 103:10, 12-13). So totally immersed is the prophet in God’s heart-Word that it’s often hard to discern whether the anguish of the speaker is that of the prophet or the Lord (cf. Isa 21:2–4; Jer 4:18–19). Some clever people describe this sort of language as anthropomorphism /anthropopathism, making God in our own likeness. The measure of truth in this assertion is that the true likeness of God is seen in the emotions of the human Jesus.
Incarnation
A female friend once remarked that I was sensitive, “for a guy”. A little later I took her aside and asked, “Who was the most sensitive person that ever lived?” She was left speechless! The deviousness of the human heart knows no limits. Faced with the clear biblical testimony that Jesus was “a man of sorrows and familiar with grief” (Isa 53:3) and that “God in all his fullness” (Col 1:29; 2:9) was living in Christ, and his clear announcement, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9), a long theological tradition wanted to restrict the emotions of Christ solely to his human nature. This way of thinking side-steps the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8) as an eternal decision by the Son of God in communion with the Father in the power of the Spirit to be one with the world of our broken emotions. The Son of God really suffered, but never passively or as a victim like us, but as an active and ultimately triumphant agent. As Jesus said, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10:18).
We need to understand Christ’s supreme agonies in the light of his free choice to suffer for us. The Lord’s very human prayer recorded in Gethsemane, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36), opened the door to the Father to share his atoning anguish on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34). It is through giving his will completely to the Father that Jesus was able to offer to God what we should have always offered but against which we have all hardened our hearts. The anguish expressed for us on the cross is nothing less than a complete breakdown in experienced/affective communion between the Father and the Son. By choosing the way of the cross God the Father, not merely the man Jesus, committed himself to a form of suffering in the suffering of the Son. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). Just how the Father suffered we cannot know, but what we do know is that that from the cross onwards all human brokenness has been set apart to him as holy (John 17:19).
Impassioned Body
If this is true, why are there so few demonstrations of holy emotions in the churches, liberal, Catholic or Evangelical? I think this is because we are control freaks who resist Jesus’ claims on us as whole people. Whereas Paul says, “Christ’s love leaves us no choice” (2 Cor 5:14) we want to believe that we can resist the Spirit of God any time we will.
In the New Testament the full range of human emotions, from the most intense resurrection joy, “they…disbelieved for joy and were marvelling” (Luke 24:41; 1 Pet 1:8) to the most sorrowful lamentation, “we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor 1:8) are manifest through the Spirit in the Body of Christ. This is how it should be. Psychiatrist John White recounts a story where a believer from Northern Ireland, during its time of sectarian violence, described the situation there to a congregation in California. Then the leader of the church said, “I believe the Holy Spirit wants to share God’s heart toward Northern Ireland with us.” Surprising himself White began to weep, as did others across the auditorium. What about God’s heart for the COVID19 pandemic [hold up COVID 19 world map], or the state of Indigenous people, or the poor, or the lost across the globe….? We need a new perspective of Christ indwelling every dimension of human existence. We need a new participation in the weeping omnipotence of God revealed in the Gospel ().
I was praying early Tuesday morning and the Lord started to speak with me about the morning before. About how when I became so surprisingly intense in our Monday Learning Christ theology group, he was indwelling me. Such intensities, centred in Christ, reveal to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (Eph 3:10) of people being conformed to the nature of God (Rom 8:29; 2 Pet 1:4). Christ communicates himself through the whole person: ideas, decisions and emotions in constraining a total obedience from us as his disciples.
Love
Complex discussions about God’s pathos come down to this; does God really love us as we feel we need to be loved and understood. We know the Bible says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), but what does that mean exactly? The measure of the reality of love is sacrifice, Paul says, “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8). We are told repeatedly in the New Testament that we “know” God’s love (John 17:23; Eph 3:19; 1 John 3:16; 4:8, 16), not merely believe it in our minds. There is something in sensing the presence of the love of God that goes beyond simply holding on by faith. As I was out praying last Wednesday morning I had a very unusual experience, which I believe is a prophetic message for tonight and all who will later experience this sermon. It was like I was being immersed in a vat of Love. This is surely the state in which we are all accepted in Jesus, “to the praise of God’s glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” (Eph 1:6).
We underestimate the pathos of the Lord. I was in prayer meeting recently where we interceded for some people whose loved ones had recently died overseas, and they were particularly grieving because they couldn’t travel to mourn with relatives. Immediately I sensed how in order to save us the Father could not be with the Son to comfort him in his grief on the cross (Mark 15:34). Then I could “see” how the full range of human emotions exists to illuminate in the Spirit the love of God manifest in Christ crucified and raised, just as all the human experiences of Jesus climaxing in his tortured death and exultant resurrection exist to heal our pains. God gave the whole Christ given to heal the whole world.
Conclusion
An elder in a previous church regularly criticised my ministry by saying, “Passion does not persuade.” He was confused about how God moves himself. The passionate cries of Jesus from the cross surely “persuaded” the Father to raise him from the dead and return him to glory on our behalf (Acts 2:33; Rom 6:4 etc.). When the heart of a man I know from a tough background was softened by the tears of an evangelist, passion did persuade. When a ruffian approach George Whitfield and emptied his pockets of rocks saying, “I came with stones to break your head, but your tears broke my heart.”, the passion of Christ did persuade. The cries, “Give me Scotland/New England/souls …or I die” (Knox, Edwards, Smith http://www.evanwiggs.com/revival/portrait/smith.html) were sincere utterances emerging from the most intimate fellowship with Jesus and brought forth great moves of God. They honoured the sacrifice of the cross and God acted in response. When Jesus is truly Lord of our wills and so our affections, then his saving authority is communicated through praise, prayer, prophecy and proclamation into the lives of others bringing healing and transformation. This is the history of “revivals”.
Everyone wants to feel joy of the Lord, but few seem willing to join in the grief of God (2 Cor11:29; Phil 3:10 etc.). In love for a broken world however Jesus wants to share with us the full spectrum of his emotions, including the painful ones perfected in the cross. No one should try to turn on a set of emotions; but I have already shared the key to such an outpouring of affections in the Spirit through the Church. “Abba Father…not my will but your will.” When the people of God surrender their wills to the Lord, a dynamic sharing in his pathos/affections/emotions will follow. This will release a great turning to the Lord with many crying unashamedly, “This has to be God”.