Worthy?

My blog needs a new look... something...  just... else...
but i digress!

Tonight at KL was good.  We were singing 'worthy is the lamb who was slain' and it got me thinking.  What makes Jesus worthy?  We say it all the time.  Worthy, worthy, worthy!  but what does it actually mean?

I mean i understand he is perfect, with out sin and all that, which is a BIG deal, but is that why he's worthy?  Please understand im not trying to make light of who Jesus is.  I don't doubt his worthiness for a second.  I just think we take this phrase for granted instead of really contemplating what it means.

In john 17:26ish Jesus prays that we would have intimacy with the Father the same way he has intimacy with the Father.  What a prayer!  If Jesus is praying it then you know it's possible!  Yet, how do we know when we have intimacy with the Father?  It's not like we are Jesus, we (most of us) haven't seen the Father in person.  Can the Father hug us?  What would a hug from the Father look like? feel like?  i can't imagine...

Jesus said, he is the river of life.  When you drink from him you will thirst no more.  Here's another puzzler.  Relationship with Jesus means complete satisfaction.  No more thirst, no anxiety, no other desire...  What does being completely content look like?  Feel like?  I wonder if i would perceive this as contentment rather than the lack of need...  Like ive spent so much of my life needing and needing and needing that if all of a sudden i didn't need i would feel 'not need' instead of contentment.  Or perhaps i would keep working to generate needs simply because that is what i am used to.  See, i am comparing the Lrd to myself instead of comparing myself the the Lrd.  How hopelessly in need of Him we are!

And now we come to the crux of it or should i say cross of it.  We have needs.  We are created that way.  If we are going to survive we need food and water.  If we are going to be emotionally healthy we need friends we can trust.  So, it is particularly strange that Jesus isn't literally handing out magic water bottles that never run out of water.  Problem of world thirst solved, but instead of handing out water bottles he dies!  Even with the resurrection i dont really understand the death part.  Why deliberately loose before you win?  It seems like JESUS LOST ON PURPOSE.

Wouldn't worthiness be bestowed on the guy who could win before loosing first?  Unless, dying wasn't loosing...  But the only way that is possible is if Jesus wasn't just concerned with himself.  Why wouldn't he be thinking about himself?  He is a man just like any other.  He experienced hunger, he probably bled some working with his father, im sure he even used the restroom once or twice.

Whatever the answer to these questions is they probably have to do with why he is worthy.  Jesus was fully in physical earth.  Yet, he was fully connected to the Father.  His connection with the Father was so great that he didn't see suffering as something to be protected from.  But it's not like his connection with the Father kept him from actually experiencing the suffering.  Jesus felt pain, physical and emotional.  The Man of Sorrows.

Sunday morning at the Tikkun conference Dan Juster said the only god that makes sense in this world of pain and suffering is a god who suffers too.  Jesus is no stranger to rejection.  He did not cover up the sorrow with artificial joy, or run from physical pain, or ignore it, or smolder in anger but bared it, kept it, held it and forgave.

So, all this to say that i believe part of his worthiness is his not being afraid to share the sorrow of the Father. Can you imagine the joy of creating a whole world with hundreds of civilizations?  When you were done you see it is good and you take delight in it.  But then your creation rejects your advances daily?  Jesus then would be a work of art by Gd, displaying in a language we can understand, the pain the Father already had.

I wonder what its like to not fear pain and feel the clean peaceful embrace of the Father.  Jesus must have felt something like this...
Don't you want to feel that?  Are you willing to embrace it?