Bryan Richardson

Experience

Re:Verse passage – Genesis 22:1-18 (day three)

“God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

Isaac’s spiritual formation occurred in a family who interacted with heaven regularly. Therefore, whether he was a child, an adolescent, or a young man at the time of these events (the Bible doesn’t specify his age), Isaac understood sacrifice, and he would notice anything amiss. But Abraham’s reply to Isaac’s question was not a diversionary tactic employed to keep Isaac in the dark. Abraham meant what he said. Life with God over the better part of a century had taught Abraham that with God, things were always better than he had imagined. By this time in his life, Abraham knew he could go where he did not know because he had come to know intimately the one calling him to go. That faith experience further formed Isaac that day.

Savior

Re:Verse passage – Genesis 6:5-22 (day three)

“The end of all flesh has come before me.”

God’s magnificent creature, the human being, was hurtling towards extinction. This was not clear to man, but it was clear to God. God allows evil; indeed, a sound philosophical argument can be made that if evil were not possible, the universe as we know it would not be possible. If the human creature is to have a will, evil is always an option. But God does not allow all evil; he has set a limit. Scripture reveals this limit in passages such as Matthew 24, where Jesus, speaking of Jerusalem’s destruction and last things, declares, “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive.” God will not allow the destruction of the human race. He saw destruction coming in Noah’s day, and he acted to save.

Stakes

Re:Verse passage – John 21:15-25 (day three)

“He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’”

Everyone longs to know the answer to this question. You’ve asked it all your life in various ways. “Do I matter to you?” “Do you treasure what I’ve accomplished?” “Will my presence make a difference to you?” You wanted your family to see your game or your recital. You feel joy when a friend celebrates your birthday. The question is a vulnerable one, and the stakes for your inner life are high. The answer isn’t always yes, even when the words would claim otherwise. You feel love when it’s really there, and you can tell when it’s not, though admitting its absence is sometimes more painful than you can bear. Jesus longed for Peter’s love, and he longs for yours. He’s really asking in all vulnerability.

Recognize

Re:Verse passage – John 21:1-14 (day three)

“None of the disciples ventured to question him, ‘Who are You?’ knowing that it was the Lord.”

Several passages in the gospels’ post-resurrection accounts deal with the question of recognition: Who is this person? Luke says the travelers on the road “were kept from recognizing him.” (Some say recognition was divinely prevented, but their experience was that dead people stayed dead.) Mary thought he was the gardener. And here, it took the disciples some time before it began to dawn on them that this was their Lord. In each of these passages, Jesus encounters them with measured demeanor, never breathlessly declaring his identity and pressing them to recognize him. This is the way friendship proceeds. When Lord and disciple love each other, the disciple will know, even if it takes some time. Jesus was patient with them, as he is with you.

Longing

Re:Verse passage – John 20:24-29 (day three)

“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

It’s not hard to read Jesus’s words as, “Those who will believe without physically having seen me occupy a place of greater favor than those who have seen me with their eyes.” But Jesus pronounces a blessing on generations of people yet to be born without taking anything away from Thomas’s experience. Thomas was a man grappling with a sense of grief and loss. His initial disbelief might well have served as a buffer against further suffering – his way of saying, “I can’t let myself long for something like that to be true, lest I become even more bitterly grieved when it turns out to have been wishful thinking.” What Jesus does do here is announce to future disciples that he longs for them as deeply as he does these eleven dear friends.

Words

Re:Verse passage – John 20:19-23 (day three)

“Peace be with you.”

You might from time to time encounter a self-proclaimed “straight shooter” who will “tell it like it is.” That kind of bluster will ride roughshod over a person’s soul. Jesus, by contrast, used words not to establish a reputation, but to move in close to a person’s heart. Sometimes the person rejected that move. Other times, the person welcomed it. In either case, Jesus always spoke words that perfectly fit the circumstance. His words served people. This instance is no exception. A “straight shooter” would have shamed the disciples for their terror and scolded them for their confusion about resurrection. Jesus, deeply moved by their fear and pain, knew they needed peace, not a pep talk. Their courage to love the whole world arose from their experience of the one who spoke words of compassion into their weakness.

Possibilities

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day three)

“Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping.”

The disciples of Jesus were going to believe in this miracle at the speed of their lifelong experience, which is to say, belief was slow in coming. All their lives, these men and women had seen only a limited number of possible outcomes for any given circumstance. It’s just the way things were. When you can see no possibility for resolution to suffering but a darker future, despair makes sense. In fact, to hope is foolhardy. And when evidence points to something other than that bleak future, you’ll dismiss the evidence. The resurrection reveals, though, that despair is only a habit of thought. God has opened up new possibilities for the human race. If the dead are raised, no other seemingly impossible thing is off the table, no matter what it is.

Fellowship

Re:Verse passage – John 19:38-42 (day three)

“So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.”

Beyond the group of twelve and the group of women who looked after Jesus, this partnership of Joseph and Nicodemus seems to be one of the earliest expressions of what would become a company of those united in their devotion to serving Christ. In one of the most tender accounts in scripture, these two men – careful, deliberative, and deadly serious in their attention to all that Jesus said and did – acted according to their regard for Jesus as one worthy of their reverence. What did they think about the future of Jesus’s teachings? What did they believe about Messiah? These questions aren’t addressed. What John does show is this somber little fellowship doing all they know to do.

Rejected

Re:Verse passage – John 19:31-37 (day three)

“Not a bone of him shall be broken.”

Loneliness is one of the most horrific circumstances that a human being can experience. It will lead to severe distress, which can manifest as despair, depression, even psychosis. It is agony. To be lonely is to suffer. Jesus knew loneliness. His hometown turned its back on him. A disciple betrayed him. Hoped-for companionship in the garden of anguish did not materialize. Most of the others left him prior to his execution. His Psalm 22 quote on the cross became his cry of utter abandonment. He remained alone until the very end. No one came to hasten his demise by the breaking of his legs to force bodily collapse and suffocation. He went all the way through without solidarity, without fellowship, without the intimacy of God the Father, without even an assist to speed his death.

Human

Re:Verse passage – John 19:28-30 (day three)

“I am thirsty.”

Jesus Christ came in the flesh. That means God the Son was now human for all eternity. He didn’t temporarily cloak himself in a body and then escape it after the cross and resurrection were done. The scriptures make clear that the “man Jesus Christ” is the mediator between God and humans as the writer of Hebrews states. A “temporary human” would be a joke or a ruse or a cringe-inducing attempt at being “one of the gang.” If Jesus were slumming for a little while, you would perhaps perceive him as special – lovely even – but you would know he’s not really part of your experience. On the cross, the simple words Jesus speaks about the state of his bodily dehydration are dear. They show a Lord who doesn’t rage against bodily frailty, but rather embraces his body – and yours.