Tears Falling on Beautiful Feet

A friend told me about a brief conversation she had recently had with her Brother-in-Law. He (I’ll call him Jack) was a man who had a church family upbringing, yet this conversation can only be described as a terrible tragedy. For the man was on his death bed, and he knew it. As he lay dying he asked her a question, actually his last words, ‘What has it all been for?’ The tragedy is that, what seems like, his ‘religious’ upbringing had not prepared him for his inevitable death.

I wonder how many people you know like that. Could it even be even you?

I am writing this on Easter Saturday, that pregnant space between Friday’s ‘Love Wrapped in Tragedy’ and Sunday’s ‘Love Springing Out’ to fragrance the Earth.

Easter is a time to remember that ‘greatest story ever told, about the greatest Man who ever lived, who made the greatest offer ever made’, the offer of a freely given gift, that of unmerited forgiveness and eternity in God’s presence. A gift purchased in Love’s currency, God’s Love in the exquisite agony of Friday’s Cross.

I am today reminded of Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, and the ‘A time for everything’ poem, particularly verses 4 and 5?

                        ‘There is a time to weep and a time to laugh,

A time to mourn and a time to dance’

For those who know they have received God’s eternal gift through faith in Christ, Easter is indeed a time to laugh with joy, to celebrate, even to party!

But it is also a time to weep, as Jesus did over His own people in Jerusalem because of their rejection of Him which He foresaw would result in disaster.

‘As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.’ Luke 19:41-44

So what do we see this Easter. In Australia (the West) we see the same thing as Jesus saw, a people who, despite having been being blessed with the (now fading) fragrance of a Gospel-shaped civilization, no longer ‘recognize the time of God’s coming’ to them.

We see the crowds driving to the beach, to the football, to Easter family gatherings replete with chocolate eggs, rabbits and egg hunts. But we also see, those same crowds driving in fateful ignorance past Cross-crowned church buildings in which celebrations are being held for the Jesus they have rejected.

What then should our response be? Should it not be more than tears? Paul gives the answer-

‘How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.’ Romans 10:4-15

Easter is a certainly is a time to laugh and dance with joy in what Jesus did for us, but it is also a time to weep Jesus’ tears for people like Jack, our family, friends, colleagues who have rejected Him. However, our tears should not be empty but be tears falling on (our) beautiful feet’ as we earnestly and passionately go and seek to be agents of the great offer of that-

‘Love wrapped in Tragedy, that Springs to Eternal life’.