{"id":3501,"date":"2024-03-21T07:50:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T11:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2024-03-21T07:52:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-21T11:52:23","slug":"the-god-who-feels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/21\/the-god-who-feels\/","title":{"rendered":"The God Who Feels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>
 
Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at the miracles of Jesus \u2013 his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels.    <\/em>
 
\u201cI feel your pain.\u201d<\/em>
 
Even though he spoke those four words on just one occasion \u2013 when addressing a heckler at a 1992 campaign rally during his first run for president \u2013 that simple phrase became lastingly associated with Bill Clinton.  Many observers responded (then and now) with something on the order of \u201cYeah, right \u2013 as if a career politician could actually care.\u201d 
 
Interestingly, the same kind of skepticism prevails across the global religious smorgasbord when it comes to God. 
 
Does God actually have feelings? 
 
Certainly not, according to Muslims, who insist that Allah\u2019s unchanging perfection is incompatible with transient emotional states.  Hindus, Buddhists, and Taoists imagine the Ultimate Being (if there even is one) to be impersonal, and thus incapable of feelings. 
 
The so-called God of the Philosophers, embraced as a necessary principle by thinkers like Plato, was assumed to be disinterested in trivial realities like love, anger, and compassion.  The Deists of the Enlightenment suggested that an all-powerful Cosmic Force apparently got the universe going \u2013 it was a bit like winding up a clock \u2013 but then permanently left the scene.  We cannot touch the heart of such a God, and he will certainly never touch ours.
 
The texts of both the Old and New Testament are stunningly different.
 
Yahweh \u2013 the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Father of Jesus of Nazareth \u2013 responds to human requests.  He laughs.  He becomes exasperated.  He cares.  According to Jews and Christians, God feels our pain.
 
Such emotions rise to the surface in Jesus\u2019 conversation with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, whose body has now been in a limestone tomb for four days.  Jesus, for reasons the sisters cannot fathom, chose not to show up when there was still time to heal him.   
 
Therefore we can presume there\u2019s an edge to Martha\u2019s \u201cgreeting\u201d when he finally shows up: \u201cLord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.\u201d  Nevertheless, her hope is relentless.  \u201cBut I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask\u201d (John 11:21-22).
 
Jesus counters with a word of assurance: \u201cYour brother will rise again.\u201d  Yes, says Martha, I know that\u2019s true.  That will happen someday.  But what about today?  What about now<\/em>? 
 
Jesus\u2019 next response transforms the conversation.  \u201cI am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in me will live even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  Do you believe this?\u201d (11:25-26).  He appears to be saying, not, \u201cCould you come up with the right answers about life and death in Sunday School?\u201d but rather, \u201cDo you really believe, in your heart of hearts, that all this is actually true?\u201d
 
Author Rebecca McLaughlin thinks Jesus is saying to Martha, \u201cAs you stand here in your desperate grief, your greatest need is not to have your brother back.  It\u2019s to have me.\u201d 
 
We often spotlight Jesus\u2019 claim, \u201cI am the resurrection,\u201d overlooking the fact that he also says, \u201cand the life.\u201d  In John 14:6 he asserts, \u201cI am the way, the truth, and the life.\u201d  He himself is our life<\/em>.  He is the meaning of life in the face of suffering, death, and unanswered prayer. 
 
When Mary arrives, she echoes her sister: \u201cIf you had been here, things would be different.  My brother would still be around\u201d (11:32).  People standing nearby observe, \u201cCould not he who opened the eyes of a blind man also have kept this man from dying?\u201d (11:37)
 
Anyone who has ever heard or read this story knows what\u2019s coming.  Jesus is about to perform a spectacular miracle.  \u201cLazarus, come out!\u201d 
 
The only problem now for Lazarus is that he\u2019ll have to do the whole thing over again.  He\u2019ll have to die again one day, and his family has already used up his burial insurance.
 
McLaughlin makes an important observation.  The miracle may be wonderful, but for Martha, the real action \u2013 an altogether different kind of miracle \u2013 happens in the space between her brother\u2019s death and resurrection.  It\u2019s during that in-between time that she learns who Jesus really is.  He is her very life.   
 
He is also the living representative of the God who feels our pain \u2013 something that jumps out at us in two special Greek verbs.
 
The first is splagkhnizomai<\/em>, which is often translated into English as \u201chaving compassion.\u201d  But it means so much more than that.  Its root is the Greek word for small intestines, or \u201cguts,\u201d which were widely assumed to be the seat of human emotions.  It denotes a visceral reaction \u2013 something that makes you clutch at your stomach, perhaps with a twinge of outrage. 
 
The word isn\u2019t used very often in the Bible.  But wherever it appears, it definitely leaves a mark.
 
In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus says that the waiting father (who represents God) has a gut reaction when he sees his lost child approaching \u2013 he runs and throws his arms around him.  In another parable, the good Samaritan who comes upon the mugged traveler feels a visceral surge of compassion and stops to help him.
 
Splagkhnizomai<\/em> is significantly associated with Jesus\u2019 miracles.
 
When he sees the restless crowd \u201clike sheep without a shepherd,\u201d his heart goes out to them (Mark 6:34).  He then provides a banquet with a few loaves and fishes.  His \u201cguts\u201d are moved to compassion when he sees a widow who has lost her only son, hears two blind men crying out for mercy, and is approached by a leper whose disfiguring disease has left him nowhere else to turn.
 
In each of these dire circumstances, we see God\u2019s Messiah stirred to do something<\/em>.  He is not neutral.  He doesn\u2019t remain on the sidelines.  This is a God who rolls up his sleeves and goes to work.
 
The second Greek verb is even more dramatic.  It is embrimaomai<\/em>, which is usually translated \u201cdeeply moved.\u201d 
 
It appears twice in the account of Jesus\u2019 visit with Mary and Martha. 
 
Most of us know \u201cJesus wept,\u201d one of the shortest verses in the Bible (John 11:35).  But as author and theologian Os Guinness points out, sorrowful weeping doesn\u2019t begin to exhaust the description of what Jesus is experiencing in this cemetery.  Embrimaomai <\/em>is the verb used in John 11:38 to describe his feelings as he approaches the tomb.  Its root meaning is to \u201csnort in spirit.\u201d  The ancient writer Aeschylus famously used this verb to describe Greek stallions \u2013 war horses \u2013 just before battle.  They pawed the ground, reared on their hind legs, and snorted before they charged towards the enemy. 
 
Jesus likewise displays a surge of anger as he approaches the enemy.  What enemy? 
 
He is coming face to face with Death. 
 
Guinness writes, \u201cEntering his Father\u2019s world as the Son of God, he found not order, beauty, harmony, and fulfillment, but fractured disorder, raw ugliness, complete disarray \u2013 everywhere the abortion of God\u2019s original plan.  Standing at the graveside, he came face to face with a death that symbolized and summarized the accumulation of evil, pain, sorrow, suffering, injustice, cruelty, and despair.\u201d
 
Crying real tears and feeling heartfelt outrage, Jesus \u2013 who is Immanuel, God With Us<\/em> \u2013 declares that Death\u2019s days are numbered. 
 
\u201cI am the Resurrection and the Life.\u201d  And then he provides a preview of coming attractions by raising Lazarus from the grave. 
 
Most important of all, he is more than just the God who is all-powerful, omniscient, high and lifted up. 
 
He is the God who feels \u2013 which means he\u2019s the God we need more than anything else over the next 24 hours.

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Every day during this season of Lent we\u2019re looking at the miracles of Jesus \u2013 his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels.     \u201cI feel your pain.\u201d Even though he spoke those four words on just one occasion \u2013 when addressing a heckler at a 1992 campaign rally during… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[701,700,11],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-god-feels","tag-lazarus","tag-miracles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3505,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions\/3505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}