Good morning Lord Jesus, make my heart break today for the things that break your heart.
“Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.” (John 1:14)
My reflection this morning is a little different. I just finished reading two books by 24/7 prayer founder Pere Grieg, “Red Moon Rising” and “Dirty Glory.” They are amazing books of the power of prayer and movement of God through prayer around the world. I am still wrestling inside with their application in my life. For today’s reflection, I am posting a few paragraphs from Grieg’s book “Dirty Glory.” It is a brief glimpse of God’s Glory covered in the flesh and dirt of Jesus.
“You probably remember the story about Jesus asking a Samaritan woman with a dubious reputation for a drink (as if he didn’t know how that would look). And how he recruited zealots, harlots, fishermen, despised tax-collectors, and Sons of Thunder. And how he enjoyed a perfumed foot-rub at a respectable dinner party. One scholar says of the woman in this particular encounter, “Her actions would have been regarded (at least by men) as erotic. Letting her hair down in this setting would have been on a par with appearing topless in public. It is no wonder that Simon [the host] entertains serious reservations about Jesus’ status as a holy man.”5 Jesus made himself unclean again and again, touching the untouchables: lepers, menstruating women, and even corpses. He got down on his knees and washed between the toes of men who’d been walking dusty roads in sandals behind donkeys.
And while the dirt lingered in the creases of his hands, he accused those whose hands were clean of sin. Did you hear the one about the whitewashed tombs (Matthew 23:27)? Or about the dutiful son who despised the prodigal brother staggering home penniless and covered in pig (Luke 15:30)? Or the story about the dirty low-life tax-collector whose snivelling apologies were heard by God while the precise intercessions of a righteous Pharisee merely bounced off the ceiling (Luke 18:9-14)? The Word told dirty stories, and the stories told the Word.
Offended, they washed their hands of him—Pontius Pilate, the Chief Priest, even Simon Peter—and they hung him out to die, Eventually he was extinguished: Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Glory gone the way of all flesh.
But the dirt could not contain him for long. Three days later the sun rose and the Son rose. And now that he could do anything, go anywhere, what would he do and where would he go? Out of the whole realm of creation, the entire populace of humanity, Jesus chose to appear first to a woman. A woman in a chauvinistic culture that refused to teach women the Torah and discounted their testimony in a court of law. Mary Magdalene was a colorful woman, a woman with a questionable reputation from whom seven demons had been cast. It was the biggest moment of her life. And yet at first, embarrassingly, she mistook the resurrected Jesus for an ordinary gardener, a man with the earth ingrained in the creases of his hands at the start of a working day. Yet he had chosen her quite deliberately, another Mary for another birth, another Eve in another garden, to be his first apostle.6 This, too, is offensive to some to this day.
Yes, we believe in the Word made flesh who dwelt among us as a kind of prayer and sends us out to speak the “Amen” in every dark corner of his creation. He handpicks dim-witted people like us: “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:27). Bewildered by grace we go wherever he sends us, eat whatever is put before us, kneel in the gutter, make the unlikeliest locations places of prayer. We participate fervidly in a morally ambiguous world, carrying the knowledge of his glory “in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
And so, with angels, archangels, and that great company of gnarly old saints, we believe that someday soon this whole dirty world will finally be filled with the knowledge of God’s glory. He will breathe once more into the dust of the earth. And on that day, every knee will bow. Every blaspheming tongue will cry, “Oh my God!” Every hand will be raised in surrender. And he will choose the ones with dirt in the creases of their hands, just as he always did. Flesh will become Word, and dwell with him in glory. “
My family, I pray you may understand that you and I are also the glory of God covered and contained in flesh and dirt. Like Jesus, we were not created to contain the glory of God and to be the hands of Christ in the world, hands kept clean by entering our living rooms and church sanctuaries, shaking hands of our peers and ringing church bells. We were created to contain the glory of God with hands with dirt in in their creases from entering brothel’s and bars, embracing addicts and the homeless, and ringing the door bells of the poor and the lost, In Jesus’ name. Please pray the same for me. God bless you my friends!
Pease share your reflections and prayers with us in the comment box below.
My prayer every morning is, “Please send me the ones no one else wants.”
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