God in the Gutter – Journey to the Cross Week #3

Last week we looked at the Cross in light of the brokenness that sin brought into the world and our need for a Saviour. This week as we move closer on our journey to the Cross let’s focus in on the One Who came to rescue us.

EMMANUEL. God with us.

From the beginning, God revealed the heart of Emmanuel, that He wanted to be intimately involved with us. He didn’t speak man into being – as He did with the rest of Creation – He put His hands down into the dirt to tenderly form him from the ground, breathing His own Breath of Life into his clay nostrils. In the same way, He took from Adam’s ribs and crafted woman with His own hands. In every interaction, He showed His love and care – walking with them in the Garden, providing for every need, surrounding them with beauty, giving instruction and purpose.

The day they listened to the serpent’s lies and turned away from Him and He was compelled by Love to send them from Eden, God’s heart broke. As it would again and again when His beloved chose to walk their own path, embrace their own will, and suffer from the poison of sin. When the coming of the Promised One was prolonged and they abandoned Him altogether – deciding that He was distant, detached, and harshly indifferent to their suffering. When they embraced violence and hatred, reveling in their own wickedness and rejecting Him altogether.

His heart broke when He sent waters to cover the earth and cleanse it once more, saving only a remnant of those still faithful. And so, He called out a people for Himself. He sent the Law to help them understand their need for Him and to show them how to live as they waited for the Promised One to come. Through the generations, He would send signs, tangible reminders of His Love and for a time they would remember. But humanity is forgetful.

Yet, God never stopped reaching out. And when the time was right, He sent His Son, to remind us again that the God-Who-Changes-Not is still Emmanuel.

beatrice Giesbrecht

Jesus came as the Promised One, the long awaited Redeemer foretold from the day sin first shattered the perfection of Eden, but the world didn’t recognize Him. Even those who had been watching for Him didn’t know Him because they couldn’t see Him through the lens of their own preconceptions. Jesus didn’t meet their expectations. He didn’t fit into the confines of their definition of a Saviour. They were looking for high and lofty, when He is the God Who is near. They were looking for a conquering King in resplendent robes, and He came as a humble Nazarene wearing homespun. They expected a warrior, but He came as a carpenter.

Jesus came to reveal the Father’s heart – to be God with us. God in the flesh. God born of a woman, a child of clay. God with dusty feet, scarred hands, and dirt under His fingernails. Going places no one expected Him to and doing things that rocked the status quo.

Emmanuel. God, Who would crawl into the gutter, with the refuse and the outcast, whose garments would be mired in the filth of sin-soaked humanity because of His nearness.

beatrice Giesbrecht

God Who would break bread with the undesirables of society, embrace the untouchable lepers, and extend His hands to the diseased. Who would lift the head of the abandoned and unclean, Who would raise the cripple to the their feet, and touch the eyes of the blind. Whose heart would bleed tears over the pain and loss and depravity of this world’s brokenness. Emmanuel. The Word become flesh.

We still fail to see Emmanuel today. We still look for Him through our limited viewpoints and try to fit Him into our carefully crafted contexts. And too easily we forget that He is God with us.

• God with us. We forget that He is God. The Creator. The Master. The Author of all things. And we try to be the masters of our own destinies, the authors of our own stories, creators of our own world and sole curators of our own lives. We live lives in denial of God’s existence and His sovereignty.

• God with us. We forget that He is near. Leaning close to the brokenhearted, the crushed, the distressed, and that we have only to look for Him to find Him; that He is as close as the whisper of His name. We allow our circumstances and our feelings to dictate His nearness, rather than holding fast to the Truth of His Word.

• God with us. That means all of us. No matter what our background or where we have been or what we have done. Us is inclusive of everyone and all are beckoned to the Cross. Because we have all sinned and fallen short of His glory. We are all on the other side of the chasm and in need of the same bridge.

Jesus. The God Who would leave all the splendor of Heaven behind and crawl into the gutters with us, just so that we could know His Love. Whose body was broken for us and blood shed for us. That is Who we worship. The One whose coming changed the world forever.

This week, let’s look at the Cross with eyes to see Emmanuel. Perhaps God has felt distant, or you have felt alone in your struggles. Perhaps you’re hurting and you feel abandoned by God. Or maybe you have been the one to walk away from Him. Wherever you are in your faith journey, ask Jesus to meet you there, to open your eyes to see that He is near, and to show you the heart of God with us.

“The truly good news is that God is not a distant God, a God to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of the human struggle. . . . God is a compassionate God. This means, first of all, that God is a God who has chosen to be God-with-us. . . . As soon as we call God “God-with-us,” we enter into a new relationship of intimacy with him. By calling God Emmanuel, we recognize God’s commitment to live in solidarity with us, to share our joys and pains, to defend and protect us, and to suffer all of life with us. The God-with-us is a close God, a God whom we call our refuge, our stronghold, our wisdom, and even, more intimately, our helper, our shepherd, our love. We will never really know God as a compassionate God if we do not understand with our heart and mind that “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).”

Henri J. M. Nouwen

Until next time…