How can it be? A Good Friday meditation on Palm Sunday

And can it be that I should gain

An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? - Charles Wesley

I have been a volunteer chaplain at the Barron County Jail since the new place opened up back in 2004. What that means, among other things, is that every fourth Sunday for most of the last fourteen years I have led the worship services at the jail on Sunday afternoons. Given that this was the fourth Sunday of March once again I headed up to the jail following the worship gathering at Refuge this morning. What follows is a reflection on my time there today:

I'm on my way over to Barron once again and I'm excited. It was a great morning at Refuge. The house was fairly full-ish, the story-telling was great, the Spirit of God was present. I'm expecting good things at the jail today. Early this morning I posted this on Facebook:

Usually I forget to recruit people to pray for me but God is so good he helps me anyway. But today is different. Today I'm going in with spiritual cover and so I walk up to the doors with confidence. It's gonna be a great afternoon.

But by the time I get to the room, things begin to go south. There are guys in there already (that never happens) and like little boys they're goofing around in the dark as nobody bothered to turn on the lights. One of them is standing behind the podium and says with profuse profanity how he's “gonna be the preacher today”. I've never seen this guy before but I know the type: young and full of himself and how “bad-a” he is. Whatever he's here for, he'll be back if not at Barron in Polk or Washburn or some other place. You can just tell.

As I get my guitar tuned up the guys are talking among themselves. They come from different blocks at the jail so the few minutes they have as they come in and before church begins is usually a time to find out what's going on with each others cases and when they have court or how long they got left. I don't usually mind but the punk is loud and despite the fact that we're a minute out before I invoke God's blessing on the gathering his profane commentary and juvenile behavior is beginning to tick me off. I've been in the room all of three minutes.

I offer my usual introductory comments. Ever since I began my stint at the jail on the fourth Sunday of every month my standard intro has been this:

“Hi. I'm Jeff, a pastor of a Christian fellowship in Chetek known as The Refuge. If you know Chetek and you know where the Dairy Queen is, we're right behind it. When you get out of this place [one time I accidentally said, If you get out of this place] you're going to need people. I invite you to check out our place. We may not be the place for you but it's a place to start. You will be welcomed there if you come.”

Admittedly, over the years, of the many times I have extended that invitation very few have taken me up on it but I can tell you that those few have been embraced warmly.

Having passed out the sheet containing the lyrics to the songs I've chosen to sing today and invited the Holy Spirit to come, our service begins. Usually the guys know that this is the signal for the chit chat to stop but the punk in the corner seems oblivious and keeps talking to the guy to his left as well as the guy across the room. If he keeps it up I'm going to stop and give him a dressing down and I won't care if I make him feel bad. That will be the point. In fourteen years of jail services I've only had to do that once and I regretted it later. But silently I ask for God's help while I sing

Wonderful, merciful SaviorPrecious Redeemer and Friend
Who would have thought that a Lamb
Could rescue the souls of men
Oh, You rescue the souls of men

The pastor of the church I was discipled in as a young man was a wonderfully positive man. He always had a smile, always had a good word to say to you, never once did I see him in a foul mood save once. A soon-to-be-graduated Bible college student I was an intern on his staff. My wife and I were engaged at the time and seeing him regularly for our pre-marital counseling sessions. Once on the day we were to see him I knew he had been in his office for a couple of hours trying to help a married couple reconcile. When he came out he looked like he had gone several rounds in the ring, his tie akimbo and his five o'clock shadow in full force. He came into the main office where Linda and I were patiently waiting and poured himself a cup of stale coffee and then said this flatly: “Well, they can go to hell if they want to.” I nearly fell out of my chair to hear him speak so frankly and then after a long sip of his coffee added, “I'm going to heaven.” I didn't know then as I do now that that's an old pastor's line that is usually uttered in jest, a sort of gallows humor one resorts to when one comes face to face with the hardness and the unmalleable-ness of the human heart. As I continued to sing

The pit from Batman Begins reminds me of the appearance of some of these guys' heart

You are the One that we praise

You are the One we adore
You give the healing and grace
Our hearts always hunger for
Oh, our hearts always hunger for

I think about that and this punk in my sanctuary who thinks he's all

What has happened to make the angry boy
an angry young man?

that and seems to not give a rip that he's pissing the preacher off. “I'm a volunteer here,” I say to myself. “I don't need this. I've certainly have better things to do than hang out with these so-and-sos.” But in that same instant I also suddenly see him – I see the little boy he really once was before whatever crap has happened to him and whatever bad choices he has made to make him the butt-hole he now is. And in that moment God gives me his heart for him. The last verse is as much my prayer as it is my confession:

Almighty, infinite Father
Faithfully loving Your own
Here in our weakness You find us
Falling before Your throne
Oh, we're falling before Your throne

As I continue to lead in worship, he and the others finally settle down and somewhere between the first and the third song I decide I'm going to share from John 19 and the scourging of Jesus. Good Friday is this Friday after all. I ask the guys, “What's the worse thing that can happen to you at the jail?” In unison all of them recite, “A-Block.” When I ask what's so bad about A-Block a real likeable guy in the front row (who I've known for years) tells me he just came from there. He spent twenty days there and that means he slept 10 days without a mattress and 10 days with one. It's essentially solitary confinement to provoke someone to reconsider their ways. Compare that kind of punishment to the scourging of Jesus. Unlike the Jewish community where flogging was permitted but limited (hence, Paul's claim “Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes” 2 Corinthians 11:24 NLT), when a Roman scourged a prisoner he could do it as many times as he had the ability to do so. On the day of Jesus' “trial” (Clarence Jordan describes what happened to Jesus as a “lynching” in his Cotton Patch Gospel), in his effort to appease the blood-thirst of the Jewish leadership Pilate had Jesus scourged and then offered to release him. The “cat-of-nine-tails” in the hands of a hardened legionnaire must have torn Jesus' back to shreds. The leadership, who is stirring up the mob, are not satisfied and won't be until Pilate orders Jesus to the cross.

And he had the horror of crucifixion before him yet

I talk for a bit about the particulars of crucifixion that if the Romans did not invent it they certainly perfected it. It is a horrible way to die and I tell the guys that every gospel writer tells the story to provoke us to ask, “Why? Why would anyone submit to such cruel and unusual punishment?” And while I'm preaching away a completely new thought comes to mind. I look at these guys before me, including the punk in the corner, and I think to myself, “Why? Why for these guys?” Every one of them has made something of a train wreck of their life. They've broken the hearts of people who love them and probably are praying for them. They are full of hate and total disregard for authority and a good many of them have not hit bottom yet. I tell them this: “I have four wonderful children and honestly guys, I wouldn't let any of them come to any harm for you or take your place. But God so loved the world that he gave up his son for each of you – and for me. I'm telling you as I live and breathe, I don't understand that kind of love.”

I wouldn't give any of them up for anybody

The punk has settled down as have the others. I have their attention

albeit tenuously. He then offers a comment (here edited for decency's sake): “What I don't get,” he adds, “is why Peter would volunteer to be crucified upside down.” That leads my reflection down a side path as we speak about Peter's thrice-repeated denial on the night of Jesus' arrest and how after the resurrection and his restoration how he spent the rest of his life trying to live up to the trust that the Lord Jesus placed in him. On the day he was martyred, according to tradition, he was crucified upside down at his request as he didn't think he was worthy to die in the same matter as the Lord who had loved him so. Peter reminds us that there's hope for all of us.

I lead in a few more songs

There is a redeemer
Jesus, God's own Son
Precious Lamb of God, Messiah
Holy One

Jesus my redeemer
Name above all names
Precious Lamb of God, Messiah
Oh, for sinners slain

Thank you, oh my father
For giving us Your Son
And leaving Your Spirit
'Til the work on Earth is done

...after which I take a few prayer requests and close in prayer.

It was an okay service. I've had better and a few worse but later that afternoon at another gathering I attended someone there who knew I had been to the jail asked how service had gone. When I shared with him about the nature of the gathering he quipped, “Imagine if you hadn't asked for prayer this morning.” Exactly.

But tonight as I race to put these thoughts together before they're gone I'm still struck by the fact that while the most I am willing to do for any of those guys is go visit them at the jail or attend their sentencing, I would never take a bullet for any of them let alone allow any one of my children so much as prick their finger for their sake. But our Heavenly Father would – and did!

 “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted

unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.” Paul in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus [2:1-6, The Message].

Tonight as I close this meditation I'm thinking about Charles Wesley's awesome hymn, And Can It Be?

He left His Father’s throne above—

So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For, O my God, it found out me!

Refrain:
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Indeed.

I don't know what those yahoos got out of the gathering today. God knows. But I know this that I'm glad I went this afternoon if only to be reminded that for all my theological education and pastoral experience I cannot begin to fathom the incredible love of God that he has for me – and for each of us. That was worth whatever annoyance I had to put up with this afternoon at the Barron County Jail.