The Lion and the Lamb: The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus – Brennan Manning

The Lion and the Lamb: The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus – Brennan Manning

An old Hasidic rabbi, Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev in the Ukraine, used to say that he discovered the meaning of love from a drunken peasant. Entering a tavern in the Polish countryside, he saw two peasants at a table, both gloriously in their cups. Each was protesting how much he loved the other, when Ivan said to Peter: “Peter, tell me what hurts me?” Bleary-eyed, Peter looked at Ivan: “How do I know what hurts you?” Ivan’s answer was swift “If you don’t know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?”

The extraordinary perception and exquisite sensitivity of Jesus enabled Him to read the human heart with piercing clarity. “He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man” (John 2:25). Jesus knew what hurt people. He knew then and He knows now. He loves with a depth that escapes human comprehension. Several years ago, when a minister-friend of mine bottomed out, resigned his church and abandoned his family, he fled to a logging camp in New England. One wintry afternoon as he sat shivering in his aluminium trailer, the portable electric heater suddenly quit and died. Cursing this latest evidence of a hostile universe, the minister shouted, “God I hate You!” then sank to his knees weeping. There in the bright darkness of faith, he heard Christ say, “I know; it’s okay.” Then this shattered man heard Jesus weeping within him. The minister stood up and started home.

The Lord is fine-tuned to the hates and loves, disappointments and delights, brokenness and togetherness, fears, joys and sorrows of each of us. That He knows what hurts the human heart shows up all through His earthly ministry: with the broken-hearted Magdalene crying at His feet, the adulterous woman fearing for her life, the Samaritan woman with her history of failed relationships, the women weeping along the road to Calvary. It shows up in the many passages that describe Jesus as “having compassion.” The Greek verb splangchnizomai (splang-chniz-omai) is usually translated “to be moved with compassion.” But its etymological meaning is more profound and powerful. The verb is derived from the noun splangchna, which means intestines, bowels, entrails, that is to say, the inward parts from which the strongest emotions arise. We would call it a gut reaction. That is why English translations resort to active expressions like “He was moved with pity” or His heart went out to them.” But even these verbs do not capture the deep physical flavour of the Greek word for compassion. The compassion that Jesus felt was quite different from superficial and ephemeral emotions of pity or sympathy. His heart was torn, His gut wrenched, the most vulnerable part of His being laid bare.

Henri Nouwen writes:

It (splanchnizomai) is related to the Hebrew word for compassion, rachamin, which refers to the womb of passion is such a deep, central and powerful emotion in Jesus that it can only be described as a movement of the womb of God. There all the divine tenderness and gentleness lies hidden. There, God is father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter. There, all feelings, emotions and passions are one in divine love.

When Jesus wept within the brokenness of my minister-friend, the ground of all being shook, the source of all life trembled, the heart of all love burst open and the unfathomable depth of God’s immense, inexhaustible caring revealed itself.

The numerous physical healings performed by Jesus to alleviate human suffering are only a hint of the anguish in the heart of God’s Son for wounded humanity. His compassion surges from the bowels of His being and operates on a level that escapes human imitation. Jesus resonated with the depth of human sorrow. He became lost with the lost, hungry with the hungry and thirsty with the thirsty. On the cross He journeyed to the far reaches of loneliness, so that he could be lonely with those who are lonely, and rob loneliness of its killing power by sharing it Himself.

He did then, and he does now. Jesus vibrates to the hope and fear, the celebrations and desolations of each of us. He is the incarnation of the compassion of the Father… When we speak of Jesus Christ as Emmanuel, God with us, we are saying that the greatest Lover in history knows what hurts us. Jesus reveals a God who is not indifferent to human agony, a God who fully embraces the human condition and plunges into the thick of our human struggle.

There is nothing that Jesus does not understand about the heartache that hangs like a cloud over the valley of history. In his own being He feels every separation and loss, every heart split open with grief, every cry of mourning down the corridors of time.

This is not pious piffle. The risen Jesus is not The Man Upstairs, a celestial gas or the invisible honorary president of outer space… His breakthrough into new life on Easter morning unfettered Him from the space-time limitations of existence in the flesh and empowered Him to touch not only Nepal but New Orleans, not only Matthew and Magdalene, but me. The Lion of Judah in his present risenness pursues, tracks and stalks us here and now. When we cry out with Jeremiah, “Enough already! Leave me alone in my melancholy,” the Shepherd replies, “I will not leave you alone. You are mine, I know each of My sheep by name. You belong to Me. If you think I am finished with you, if you think I am a small god that you can keep at a safe distance, I will pounce upon you like a roaring lion, tear you to pieces, rip you to shreds and break every bone in your body. Then I will mend you, cradle you in my arms and kiss you tenderly.” (Hosea 6:1-2)

The Lion and the Shepherd are one and the same. Ferocious pursuit and unwavering compassion are dual facts of the tremendous Lover who knows not only what hurts us but also how to heal us. And this savage and soothing God is also the Lamb who suffered the pains of death on our behalf.

This was the experience of an old man who lay dying. When the priest came to anoint him, he noticed an empty chair at the man’s bedside and asked him who had just been visiting. The sick man replied, “I place Jesus on that chair and I talk to Him.” For years, he told the priest, he had found it extremely difficult to pray until a friend explained that prayer was just a matter of talking with Jesus. The friend suggested he imagine Jesus sitting in a chair where he could speak with Him and listen to what He said in reply. “I have had no trouble praying ever since.”

Was the old man sharing his fear of death, knowing that Jesus would feel what he was feeling? Was he agonising over the grief his loved ones would experience, knowing that Jesus had been there? Was he praying for courage in the face of devouring death, knowing that Jesus sweated blood in the night?

Some days later, the daughter of this man came to the parish house to inform the priest that her father had just died. She said, “Because he seemed so content, I left him alone for a couple of hours. When I got back to the room, I found him dead. I noticed a strange thing, though: his head was resting not on the bed but on an empty chair that was beside his bed.”

The Lion who will kill all that separates us from Him; the Lamb who was killed to mend that separation – both are symbols and synonyms for Jesus. Relentlessness and tenderness; indivisible aspects of the Divine Reality.

Why is the “relentless tenderness” of Jesus so absent from our dealings with one another?

Henri Nouwen has remarked: “When we take a critical look at ourselves, we have to recognise that competition, not compassion, is our main motivation in life.” This is a provocative insight. We are caught up in the game of one-upmanship. Our sense of self-worth depends upon how favourably or unfavourably we compare with others. Social climbing, power plays and our need to win rule out the possibility of compassion. Our sense of superiority is enhanced by the singular achievements we have scored. We get possessive and protective of our trophies…

But if the relentless tenderness of Jesus is to lay hold of us, our coherent sense of self must be rooted not in illusory differences but in our shared humanity. Ignatius of Loyola said that one of the greatest graces he had ever received was the grace of the tax collector – the discovery that he was a sinner just like everyone else.

Early in his spiritual journey, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote Seeds of Contemplation, in which he discreetly implied that mystics were a breed apart. Later he was so stunned by the revelation of his solidarity with sinners, his unalloyed inclusion in the human family, that he cried out: “This sense of liberation from the illusory differences was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others. It is a glorious destination to be a member of the human race.”

The relentless tenderness of Jesus challenges us to give up our false faces, our petty conceits, our irritating vanities, our preposterous pretending, and become card-carrying members of the messy human community. Jesus calls us to be tender with each other because He is tender. He invites us into the fellowship of saved sinners wherein our identity and glory lie not in titles, trinkets, honorary degrees and imaginary differences but in our “new self” in Christ irrevocably bonded to our brothers and sisters in the family of God.

Questions for reflection or group discussion:

1.  Why do we instinctively compete with each other? Why must we be different, or better, or superior in some way? What are we afraid of?

2.  In what ways do you personally exhibit this subtly or obviously?

3.  What is the antidote to competitiveness that Scripture reveals to us?

4.  Do we confuse humility or being self-effacing with self-rejection? Why is that applauded in our culture?

5.  Who told you you were ‘not good enough’?

6.  Who has told you you were a delight and a joy?

7.  What would your life be like if you knew in the depths of your being the ‘relentless tenderness’ of Jesus, the intense and unfailing compassion of the Father?