Brent Shepherd’s Reviews > The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus > Status Update

And when we stand alone, quivering beneath a sense of awful guilt, which nobody else suspects, which would cause our friends to desert us if they knew about it, then here too Jesus is the neighbor who is not shocked by the dark abyss, because he came down from Heaven and descended into the deepest pits of misery and guilt. Jesus loves us and therefore he finds us. And therefore he also knows us.

Then you must say goodbye to many things to which you cling. If you do not, you will only be a man who has been scathed by Christianity and is constantly chafing his bruises. Then you might better have remained a tough pagan. Jesus wants no half-way Christian. Can we really imagine that he died on his cross for a few such scratches and for the flimflam of respectable Christianity?

Jesus knew all this. There would be something like the end of a world in Jerusalem, but not of this present world; it would be the end of that dreamworld in hearts of the disciples. The disciples would either have to understand the mystery of the Passion or else be shipwrecked up it. So Jesus must now prepare them for this kind of an end of the world, for the catastrophe on Calvary.

If we could only learn to come to the end of our pretensions as the publican had come to his. Then God could make a new beginning with us. If only we could learn not to keep pushing ourselves forward and showing off before God. Then he could finally become our Father. And we—well, we could then be new, free persons.

When he hung upon the Cross, he did not envy the executioners and drunken soldiers standing idle upon Calvary. He was writhing in pain and thirst, hanging from the cruel nails, while these rude fellows walked beneath the Cross free as air. And they were uncomplicated enough to not let it bother them. They were free and full of life. But Jesus did not envy them; rather he prayed for their souls.

If we do not make use of what Christ has done for us, if we do not seize the chance to be bearers of new beginnings, then Christianity becomes a burden and a judgment.

But where Jesus is, the air is clean and clear. Here, dirty hands are called dirty; Houston is called sin and dishonesties called dishonesty. Here the wisdom of the world is not equated with godliness. We Christians can be utterly honest with ourselves because we have nothing to fear, because we don’t need to be so painfully worried about putting up a good front. For we know about forgiveness.

The very reason why Jesus can afford to pray so diligently and give the best hours of the day to this communion with the Father is that he knows that while he rests in eternity it is not that nothing is happening but that in doing this he is rather giving place to God’s Spirit, that then God is working and the seed is growing.

In folded hands, all pious and fleshly zeal is quelled. Still runs the season in which there creeps upon us, the dread question, “Lord, is it I?” Have not I on many a night, sowed poisonous seed in many a heart and become a stumbling block to many? Let him who stands take heed lest he fall; and above all let him not judge when he sees others fall, but reach out for his brother with compassionate hands.