Letting God Loose in Your Life

Gospel of John #4, Second Miracle, Part A

9. Jabez was honorable above his brothers; but his mother named him Jabez (sorrow-maker), saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” 10. Jabez cried to the God of Israel saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and you would keep me from evil so it might not hurt me!” And God granted his request.
1 Chronicles 4:9-10

Jesus, his mother and his disciples were in attendance at a wedding at Cana of Galilee. They host had run out of wine, and Jesus mother came to him with the problem.

He responded to his mother in Aramaic, asking, literally, “What to me and to you?” This can be translated, “Woman, why are you involving us in this? It is not my time yet.” Jesus’ self-understanding, and our understanding of what it means to be disciples of the Christ, was not guided by his own vision, his mother’s vision, the dictates of Rome, the dictates of Jews, and certainly not by the dictates and needs of a wedding reception. Jesus, and all who receive the Christ of God into their lives, is guided by God and God alone. Just as the Spirit descended on him like a dove, this sign of the first miracle, the miracle of the incarnation was God’s demonstration that the agenda of the Christ is always God’s agenda, not human agenda.

But John also seeks to convey to us, that while God’s agenda is not human’s agenda, there are some things we can know about God clearly, things that have always been true of the one true sovereign God, and the first and foremost is that God is Love. So paradoxically while God’s agenda is not defined by our specific agenda, the very nature of who God is-LOVE-always compels God to step in to meet human need, to satisfy our need for nurture and care, and to quench our thirst for life. When we address human suffing, human misery, oppression, hopelessness, we are responding to God’s agenda and not the human agenda.

Because God is love, wherever love needs to intervene, we find the answer to the question Jesus posed to his mother, “Why are we to be involved?” For Jesus, the hour, the time of his passion, his death, his resurrection was yet to come. But in truth he discovered as we will discover or have discovered, that the time of our death begins with the acceptance of the Christ of God in us. The Christ presence dictates that we, and our old human agenda dies and Christ lives in us—guiding us into God’s agenda. 

In one of Paul’s earliest letters, perhaps one written on his first apostolic journey, he writes (Galatians 2:20):
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer
I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I
now live in my human body, I live by faith in—
that is to say reliance upon and complete trust
in, the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself up for me.

On hearing Jesus’ his mother responded, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Jesus mother was saying, “Let him loose. Let him do his thing. Do whatever he tells you.” When we get out of God’s way, then God’s miracles begin to transform our existence. God’s solutions begin to take on our problems, God’s deliverance steps into our failure.

Jabez literally means pain. He was born in the royal line of the tribe of Judah, the family of David. He was one of the 9 brothers born to Etam, the son of Hur, one of the five sons of Judah (Judah Ben Hur). Unlike his brothers, he had no offspring. The circumstance of his birth, some fetal trauma, had wounded both he and his mother. He was more honorable than his brothers, but his mother gave him the unfortunate label, “sorrowmaker.” Unfortunately we do our children great harm by labeling them, putting them down, discounting their value and worth as the HIGLY FAVORED OF GOD.

Too often we hear, “He will never be any good.” “He was bad from birth.” “He ain’t #%@*!” Whatever the condition was, it prevented him from having offspring. This meant that he would be landless, he had no sons to farm his vast holdings, hence no produce, no profit, no future. He would have no heir, no heritage and hence would never be respected as a clan leader.. Yet he is listed among the genealogies of the worthy offspring of note of King David.

God is not directed by human will, and yet it is human tragedy that cries out to God. This is why David speaking prophetically in Psalm 72:12-13 declares:

For he will deliver the needy when he cries for help, The afflicted also, and him who has no helper. He will have compassion on the poor and needy, and the lives of the needy he will save. He will rescue their life from oppression and violence, And their blood will be precious in his sight;

Jabez was a troubled young man. He would be called Travon Martin today, or Oscar Grant. But their blood is precious in God’s sight.

These children had troubled childhoods, they could have been called sorrowmakers or sorrowtakers, but they were God’s children, our children, a part of the fabric of life, of families, of men and women who with all their limitations and failings, like us, loved them, and they returned that love in spite of the pain and sorrow that life had for them. They certainly did not need to be shot down like dogs, because those who hate and fear us view us and all of our children as threats. They are the human need that cries out to us to let God do his thing in us.

So we ask with Jesus, “What has this to do with our discipleship?” The answer comes quickly, “Do whatever the Christ tells you to do.” “Do whatever love tells you to do.” Unlike Jabez, many are too wounded to call on God to enlarge their land, increase their options, give them alternatives, but we can.

We can reach out to them in love, so that they will build the self-esteem that one needs and realizes when we teach and preach and demonstrate that the Jabezes, the Oscal Grants and the Travon Martins are God’s Highly favored. We can cry out to God for them, embrace them and share our power, our life, our love, our compassion, our uplift, our encouragement with them.

We can reach out to them and teach them that they, too, notwithstanding the pain, the sorrow they bring, that they live in, that they carry, are the objects of God’s love, God’s grace, God’s care. Do what He tells you to do. Let God loose in your life. Let the love flow. Let your life glow.

For he will deliver the needy when he cries for help,
The afflicted also, and him who has no helper. He
will have compassion on the poor and needy, And
the lives of the needy he will save. He will rescue
their life from oppression and violence, and their
blood will be precious in his sight;
So we are called to bear witness to and align ourselves with the second miracle of the Christ, his first sign in response to the human condition. It is time for the disciples of Christ to respond to this sign, and “Do whatever he tells us to do?

Amen.