mercy in the burial

John 19:38–40 “After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.”

Matthew 27:59–60 “And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away.”

when holy God bent down and
stepped inside the flesh of man
He came upon the womb of a poor woman
His fanfare heavenly heralds
heard only by the least of these
dirt of stable cave and manger
strips of linen swaddling Him safe and warm
tended to by His mother’s hands
her adoring eyes looking upon Him
her mother heart bound to His with what had been
the purest of human love

when holy God bent lower and
stepped out of the flesh of man
He left upon the cross of crucifixion
His fanfare the taunts and curses of fallen man
heard from the hidden rooms of scheming to the highest public courts
flogging scourge and splintered cross
victory disguised in loss

at close of work
last breath breathed
last holy words but a mere echo in the minds of those who remained
last spectator of the spectacle of crucifixion homeward bound
last of the taunts of dying men dead with Him

the mangled body of Messiah
punctured the silence
“who will tend to the flesh of the Son of Man?”

and the least of his followers
stepped through the fear of man
brushed past the praise of man
and set their hands upon the broken body of their Messiah
His bloody wounds stained their garments
as they tended as a loved one would their own
strips of linen bound around Him once more
costly spices laid once more at His feet

i know the honor of preparing the dead for burial
is no small thing
a last moment to honor the one you loved
to allow the rawness of the loss to unleash the tears that only come
in the quiet

confronted with what was
and what will no longer be
how these men must have grieved as they were at last near
their lifeless Savior
as they touched His blood shed for them
smelled the reality of His ruin

did their tears fall upon His wounds
mingle with the spices
drip across the linens that soon hid
the cursed flesh from their view?

did they lament their failures to follow well
their bondage to men
their lost opportunity to be by His side
their silence in the face of unjust judgements?

did they wonder why they were allowed to do
what the faithful women standing nearby could not?

but isn’t that just like the Lord
to honor the lowest with such a great honor?
while these men may have been the greatest in the kingdoms of man
they were the failures in the Kingdom of God
the ones who followed Jesus in the shadows
the ones whose flesh crushed out their spiritual flourishing
the ones who, to this point, had counted shame they may feel from man
a more costly thing than shame they carried from sin
but they were still His own
and He received their sacrifices

He chose them to tend to His body
He chose joseph to lay Him down in his own tomb
because He took joseph’s death
and when He would rise on the third day
joseph would feel the reality that He also gave him life
He chose nicodemus to bring Him myrrh
because he could bury in the tomb with Him the wisdom of man
that he would walk away from the stone
a wise man
to teach the jews with the wisdom of God

Zechariah 12:10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on Me, on Him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over Him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”

such is mercy

when we look on Him whom we have pierced
every moment following changes
and some of us need a closer look
some must look into the face of the child in the manger
and some must feel the finality of covering His face with a cloth
that we may know the purest of heavenly love

The Fear of the Lord

Psalm 111:10 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever! 

I taught in children’s church this Sunday, and my meditation and study in preparation for this lesson was SO FRUITFUL that I am going to share it with you.

Every time I approach the passage that I am going to teach, I ask the Lord, “What do You want me to tell the kids?” There are so many lessons to be gleaned from every passage that I need to allow Him to direct me. This past week, I was preparing to teach Joshua 2 where Rahab hides the spies from Israel and then ties a scarlet cord in her window so she will be spared when Jericho falls by the Lord’s hand. I read and reread the passage, waiting for most of the week until finally He said, “Teach them about the fear of the Lord.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever read Joshua 2 specifically looking for what it teaches about the fear of the Lord (I sure hadn't)…but whoa. What a wonderful story to help bring to the surface what the fear of the Lord is and what it looks like lived out. So I am going to share the gist of my lesson for children’s church if you are interested in learning more about the fear of the Lord as it was displayed through the life of Rahab. Go read Joshua 2 before you keep reading (it’s only 24 verses, so it won’t take long).

Scripture says multiple times that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” The word nerd in me requires us to define three of the words in that sentence:

YIR’â: Fear of God, reverence (to regard AND treat with deep respect)

BEGINNING: The point in time or space when something starts

WISDOM: Knowledge and understanding that give you the ability to make good judgements

Wisdom isn’t just knowing things, it is being able to take what you know and use that knowledge to live your life the right way. So consider that: Without the fear of the Lord, we have missed the BEGINNING of how to use what we know to live our life in the goodness that God intends.

THE FEAR OF THE LORD FOLLOWS THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF WHO GOD IS. In Rahab’s statement to the men in verses 8–12, she uses the name Jehovah four times; Jehovah is the formal name of the one true God. I was looking back through scripture, and while I certainly didn’t look on every page, I couldn’t find places where gentiles who weren’t believers used the name Jehovah. Rahab was acknowledging that the God of Israel was the true God. The others in her city were offered the same opportunity to fear God as Rahab was; she describes how they had watched Israel for 40 years—they saw God bring them out of Egypt, through the red sea, conquer kings—and the others in her city were terrified of Israel…but they did not acknowledge or revere Israel's God. But Rahab did, and she called Him by His name.

THE FEAR OF THE LORD DRAWS US TO GOD. Fear as we often think of it tends to send us fleeing and hiding, but the fear of the Lord has a different affect. When Rahah saw who God was, she drew near. She came close and tended to His people and spoke with the hopes that her voice would reach His ears.

THE FEAR OF THE LORD MELTS THE HEART IN BOTH HEALTHY FEAR AND HUMILITY. What happens when something melts? A hard thing becomes soft and movable. Rahab knew the God of Israel had the right to judge her; He had the right to give her city into the hands of His people. Her pride melted away in the face of the Lord, and she, with great humility asked for mercy. You can see her humility here in her plea in verses 12–13; she didn’t even ask for them to spare HER because of her kindness to them (she knew what she deserved), instead she asked them to save her family. All of Rahab’s pride was gone, she recognized that God could rightfully judge her and she humbled herself before Him.

THE FEAR OF THE LORD LEADS TO OBEDIENCE. Rahab obeyed. The men of Israel told her that she should tie a scarlet cord in her window to be spared Jericho’s plight and she did it…right away. They were barely out of sight and the scarlet cord was already being secured in the window. A heart that fears the Lord will look to Him with the posture that says, “I will do whatever You ask.” Rahab didn’t ask why a scarlet cord mattered, she didn’t ask when they would come back, she didn’t wait and see if she should bother doing what they said…she simply obeyed and put her hope in the God she had acknowledged as true. She would have done anything required of her. Her decisions showed that she had faith, and she is mentioned in Hebrews 11, a chapter known for presenting us with heroes of the faith. It says, “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.” Her obedience by faith, and the actions she took because of it, saved both her life and the lives of her family.

Here is the thing: When you fear God, it will change the way you live your life…it is impossible to fear God and keep living however you want because NOONE is more respectable and exalted than Jehovah. Because He is who He says He is, when we acknowledge Him, it will effect everything about us. The fear of the Lord is one of the biggest things missing from the American Church. This deficit allows us to remain apathetic, half-hearted, lukewarm, and polluted. If we really believe the Bible is true and that the God of the Bible is who He says He is, there is a clear path we will find ourselves on…and Rahab the prostitute shows us what that looks like.

Books

I published some books on Amazon if you are interested:

to touch the Father

 the wrestle
©4-4-2024 hannah mclean

He is Jehovah-Rapha, the God who heals
we come to Him again and again
when the broken world breaks us
when the wounded world wounds us
when the fallen nature seeks to fell us  

“be who You say You are,” we plead

and sometimes in our seeking of healing,
the Lord reaches out and touches our body
or our soul
and we are well in a moment

but often times the healing is slow
we must squirm out from under our bondage
feel the pain of the washing of punctured flesh
our deliverance requiring time
the wait warranting a wrestle

and our hearts cry out, “Why?!”

this morning as i looked into the face of the raising sun
and pondered why the wrestle
the Spirit pressed on me
“it is in the wrestle that we get to touch the Father.”

healing in a moment feels the touch of God
but healing through a wrestle
finds the hands clinging to the Father’s arms
beating against the Father’s chest
winding around the Father’s feet

the wrestle is where we draw near:
near enough to feel
the breath of God upon our face;
near enough to feel with our fingers
the finished work of Jesus;
near enough to know not just the Father’s touch
but what it feels like to be with Him

with every reaching hand
and clinging grasp
we learn both the strength
and the gentleness
of the Almighty’s hands and heart

do not despise the wrestle
the wrestle is where we touch the Father

"He loved them to the end."

John 13:1–6 "Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him."

 

“He loved them to the end.”

He knew who He had chosen;
He knew the zeal of Peter,
the rolls of thunder in the sons of Zebedee,
the doubt in the mind of Thomas.
He knew the schemes that had made Matthew rich,
and how the sun glinted off the dagger of Simon.
He knew the eyes that slept while He prayed,
the feet that would scatter in the days ahead,
the lives that would be lost while living out His commission.

And He knew the one who would kiss His face
as He was bound amid the green of Gethsemane.

It was with knowledge of the soft and of the hard,
with the certainty of His enduring, pursuing love,
that Jesus used His final hours
to descend yet again
placing Himself beneath the feet of those who followed Him.

The hands into which the Father had given all things
tied a towel around His waist
and cradled the dirty feet of those He knew and loved;
desiring they would be clean
more than the deity of His own hands.

The One with the right to cast down
bent down
for the sake of love.

He loved them to the end;
the ones with their hearts given over to Him
and the one who opposed Him to death.
His love was not deterred by the hatred of man;
instead, it made provision for the devoted to live
and for the hateful to turn.

Rising from the floor on which He knelt,
His voice flowed into the room made quiet by what had been received.
It rolled across the hearts of those made clean
filling their senses with His holy, holy, holy call,
“Love as I have loved you.”

From Zar to Citizen of Heaven

The Lord woke me up with a dream this week. In this dream I was registering patients at a hospital when a friend I knew from high school walked in with a woman who was having terrible chest pain. I picked up her registration form and my friend looked relieved because she knew I could help. I brought the woman back to my desk; she was uncomfortable and a bit nervous, but overall bright in her attitude and demeanor, confident that she had come to the right place for the help she needed. As I sat her down, I opened up the registration program for the first time (I had worked registration during college, so they didn’t bother training me in, just assumed I could pick it back up). As I got things going, I looked at my paper and noticed on the name line, she had simply written the word “Zar.” During our discussion, she told me that was the name she was called, and because she wasn’t ever called by her given name, she struggled to remember what her legal name was. After some digging, I managed to draw her first and last name out of her, and chose to register her as her legal name with Zar as the middle name.

I first tried to find a medical record that had been previously opened to build from, but she was nervous to give her social security number out loud with people around, so I let her type it in. Finding no record on file, I started a new one and was met with utter random confusion. As I tried to find the places to enter the information, I had to navigate through videos, games, flashing screens—every sort of entertainment was crammed into the program. I frantically tried to find the input areas to give the information needed to create a chart for the dying woman sitting in front of me, but my efforts were slowed and frustrated by the avalanche of unnecessary and distracting visuals.

When I finally made it to the end of the chart, utterly frustrated and overwhelmed, I hit print only to discover that autocorrect had changed the spelling of the legal name. I went out to check on the patient in the lobby, where she was waiting anxiously to be seen, and I desperately tried to figure out how to get her chart to the nurse so they knew she was ready even though I knew everything would have to be restickered because of the error in the legal name (although “Zar,” which I put in the middle name input slot had printed clearly). With my laptop beside her in the lobby, I desperately tried to find the screen with the name input to change it, realized in the fray I had never even found the insurance page and tried to get that information and seek out where input it…pages and pages of animated chaos hiding everything from me. My friend kept looking at me in confusion of why I wasn’t helping. All the while, Zar sat in front of me crying from her pain, dying in the waiting room of the hospital that was suppose to help her simply because they had chosen a registration program—the program that admits you to enter in for help—that was overrun by entertainment.

And in my desperate groveling for what to do, how to get her seen, how to navigate the impossible admission program, I woke up.

And when I woke up and thought about this dream, I cried out to God. Our culture is one of entertainment: It demands instant gratification and won’t venture forward without it; it laments boredom and simplicity (the very things that allow for the cultivating of curious and creative minds); it despises reality, wisdom and practicality (the things that allow for us to build lives well lived); it sucks away our time on meaningless things (social media, gaming, movies and shows); it takes our concentration and focus and availability to do the work God created us for. I did inventory of my own distractions, repenting for myself and the American Church.

I also looked up the woman’s name: Zar. The Hebrew word "Zar" means “alien, foreign, outside.”

This is the meaning of the dream and the exhortation to the body of Christ:
The hospital here is the body of Christ. People are dying outside of Jesus; desperate for help and for the Gospel. But we at the doorway, the ones meant to bring the Gospel to the lost and dying world so that they may know redemption and salvation, are failing. We are overridden with entertainment: flashy facades, video games, movies, TV, sports, activities, our own comforts, social media, anything fun. But people are dying! The lost are waiting to be found, the sick are waiting for the healing touch of Jesus, the broken are waiting to know the One who can put them back together, the confused are waiting for the clarity of Truth, the bound are waiting for their deliverer…and we who are suppose to reach out with the hands and feet of Jesus and draw them in are failing them.

Our heart for the lost must be GREATER THAN our desire for the flesh to be entertained.

Here is the passage the Lord gave me for this dream, please pause and consider:

Ephesians 2:13,17–20 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ…And He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."

A dream from Jehovah Shammah

Last night I had a dream. In this dream, I was standing in a church with a group of friends talking when suddenly one of them said, “Oh no! I forgot I was leading worship today, I need to go set up!” She then turned to me and said, “Come on, we have to go sing.” I was very confused because I didn’t know I was suppose to lead worship and I didn’t remember volunteering because I had recently discovered my voice was really weak, so I wasn’t well suited for it in this season. But I followed her into the sanctuary. We had about 10 minutes before the service started. The church was huge, and we walked up onto a big stage where a woman was playing a piano beside a bunch of microphones and music stands. I asked my friend, “Are you sure that we’re leading today? Someone is already playing.” She stopped to check the schedule and informed me that the woman was our accompanist. Then the next 10 minutes were filled with a bunch of scrambled chaos: The music had to be printed, but there were issues with how it printed and with a slow printer; we had to rearrange the setup, but the cords and stands were a tangled mess and hard to move, at one point I tried to reach for a microphone and it came disconnected from the cord and started hissing; as tech support came to help, people started filing into the room; there was a room divider that was partly lowered over the front of the stage that had to be raised; someone tried to help read something for us and couldn’t read; I didn’t know the songs I was suppose to be helping lead; the accompanist suddenly left because she was sick and the other singers were nowhere to be found…everything we tried to do to help order things or move them along failed, every step forward was met with multiple steps back, all of the pieces of the team and the technology were stripped away and by the time the service was to start it was me and my friend and our small acapella voices. The pastor said to us, “Don’t let this set you back.” And my friend said, “It’s time to lead worship.”

We looked at each other and the people in front of us waiting, and we opened our mouths and we began to worship the Lord. Our voices were small, but after a line or two, we found ourselves suddenly accompanied by the most beautiful heavenly music I had ever heard. It filled the room and wrapped itself around our meager voices giving them strength and drawing from us a deeply renewed and heartfelt sound. The room was soon filled with a resounding song of praise and worship as every voice joined with the heavenly music, each of us singing with all our might, “And He shall reign forevermore, forevermore!”

And then I woke up.

When I woke up the second time, I head this name spoken over me again and again: Jehovah Shammah. I looked up its meaning. Jehovah Shammah means “The Lord is there.”

I’ve been in a hard season. Before I had gone to sleep, I had been on my face before the Lord weeping, repenting, confronting my lack of faith. So emptied of faith am I in one specific area that I finally had to acknowledge to both myself and the Lord that I simply no longer believe a promise He had given me. My hands that had clung and the hope that had held were too weak, the efforts for a different story and a new measure had come up empty too many times, the years had worn me down with discouragement and resign…and though I believe the Lord is who He says He is, my confidence in His promise to me has been lost in the eroding avalanche of my weakness. And I grieved as I declared His worth and offered Him my worship void of expectation of help.

And He gave me this dream and this declaration. 

 

“The Lord is there,” He whispered over me as I slept. He is there when all is stripped away; when efforts fail and time is too short and chaos crushes out peace; when the inadequate measure I walked in is tested and found wanting in new ways as the situation changes before me; when human fortifications are faulty; when every set back has left me certain that there’s no way forward; when in that place, I worship still. He is there. Reigning still, able to provide the missing measure with beauty that draws from deeper wells. Reigning forever, worthy of worship and accepting even the most meager sound that dares fall from the most unseemly mouth.

And I don’t know if you resonate with any of this, but I thought maybe there was someone who needed to be reminded with me that not only is there a God, but He is Jehovah Shammah; very present and full of grace.