Lunacy, lies and the sprout of hope.

It just struck me, right here, right now, at 6:30 in the morning, a week before Good Friday, that God does important things in gardens.

It was a garden where he first placed people, and a garden where people first betrayed God. Later, God prayed in a garden while his friends slept, and when he was done, another friend came to betray him.

I’ve been thinking about gardens because I am, like most of you, longing for spring. It’s been another rough winter here on the east coast. As I write this now a nasty hail storm is pummelling the windows, rattling the creaky house awake. For me, rain often brings longing, especially in the spring. It brings a sense of incompleteness….the bud of potential blooming, potential thwarted. It brings a time of missing the things that are gone and excitement for the things to come.

I wonder if this is why God chose gardens for the betrayals in his story. I wonder if he was reminding himself look, this one branch may fall away but look, look here at this sprout, it is the sprout of hope and redemption, the bud that will bring all of earth back to me. Maybe that’s why God put Jesus in a garden in those last hours — so that even in the betrayal of his friends, he would be comforted by the sprout of hope-potential.

I don’t know. I have writer’s block or something. I can’t seem to get this out the way I want. I am thinking of friendship and Jesus and the way he loves us. Sometimes, like right now, the Jesus I know just fills me up and spills out of me and makes me want to love everyone into believing in him. Can’t you see him? Don’t you care? Look at him, this beautiful man who broke himself for you. Please, just look at him.

I know it’s inconvenient. I know it’s ridiculous. Completely stupid to think that there might be a God who cares about you — about every intricate detail of your life. And this whole sin thing. I know — you smirk at the idea of sin. Happy to say “Hey, nobody’s perfect,” but this sin word — it’s a game stopper.

But the word sin — it’s not so heavy. Not as heavy as we might make it out to be. Certainly not heavier than the cross they put on Jesus’s shoulders. The word simply means that we’ve missed the mark. It’s an archery word. A soldier’s word. We’ve missed the mark of God. And God has put a plan in place to get us back on track.

And then again sin is so heavy. So incredibly heavy because we carry it around and ignore the freedom that Jesus is offering from it. We stuff it and hide it and cater to it and pretend it’s not there. We lick it like a pearl. We nurture it like pride. We idolize it. We do anything we can do to avoid confessing to it. We think, “Hey, I’m a good person,” and yet still, when compared with God, we miss the mark.

Ever walked past a homeless person?

Yeah, me too. Missed the mark.

Ever given someone the silent treatment? Yep. Ditto. Missed the bullseye by a mile.

Look, I’ll be real here. I have moments of doubt. Tiny little minutes when I think, What if it’s all bullshit? What if we made it all up?

But I always go back to this: two thousand years ago, something happened. Something that was so amazing, so radical, so life-changing that people died for it. All they had to do was say it was a lie — say that they didn’t see this guy Jesus who had been tortured and killed on a cross walking down the street three days later. That’s it. They’d be spared from death if they’d just say it was lunacy and lies.

But it wasn’t. And they didn’t.

So that makes it a pretty important decision to make. In fact, it’s the most. important. decision. ever. And everyone makes it, whether they know it or not.

And many of us make the decision by choosing not to make the decision. Here’s a clue: that’s a decision.

Jesus had friends; he had people who were close to him, who he let into his house. People he trusted and cared deeply about. He was for these people, he wanted the best for them.

He loved them.

So many of them abandoned him in his moment of crisis. And his moment of crisis was pretty freaking bad. His moment was facing horrific torture, pain, suffering.

And on top of it all that, his friends abandoned him. Peter, who swore he would be with him through thick and thin, ran far and fast. The disciples scattered and hid in back alleys and hidden rooms. These people Jesus called friends — they left. (Except the women. The women stayed.)

And I wonder if that hurt him almost more than the nails.

And the amazing thing I see about Jesus is how even when he is being betrayed, he feels compassion. It oozes out of the scripture into my lap, the compassion and love he feels for these people who will leave him. You can almost tell how broken hearted he is for what they are about to experience — the guilt and shame they will feel when they realize what they’ve done in their leaving. Just like he cried over Jerusalem for what they were missing, how they let him walk right through their midst.

It makes me realize first, just how human Jesus really was — just how much he really does get it. When I feel abandoned by my friends, by the people I trusted the most to love me despite my ugliness, Jesus gets it.

But it also shows me just how much I miss the mark, how if I have been the abandoned I have also been the abandoner, the one who leaves, the one who spits in the garden.

I long to know this man Jesus better. I want to do something to heal the wounds on his hands and his feet, the stripes on his back. I know I will always miss the mark. I will always give friends many good reasons to leave me. Yet some, like the women, will stay.

Holy crap, does that sound pretentious, like I am making myself out to be crucified. I’m not. I don’t mean to. This is the crappiest bit of writing I’ve done in a while. I am blocked and frustrated and overloaded with thought.

But it is true. I have friends who stay, I have friends who leave. I have a savior who gets it, I guess is what I’m saying.

I miss the mark consistently. I am a sinner, no two ways about it. But if, by any tiny little chance….

Maybe that time I chatted with the gang member about his love for Greek mythology, and I told him he would love the book of Acts, maybe that was like a little Neosporin on one of Jesus’ hands.

Maybe if I spoon some potatoes onto the plate of a homeless man, it will be healing oil for the cuts from those thorns on his head. Just maybe each time I speak gently, I forgive, I do the hard thing, have the hard conversation, love someone who doesn’t love me back, maybe each one of those things will be a little bit of balm on his wounds.

And maybe that little sprout of hope will hit the mark, and maybe, just maybe, a lush garden will grow in my heart, and it will be a place where my Jesus can rest comfortably. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll fill me up and spill out over onto someone else, so they can experience this radical, crazy, tattoo-rebel kind of crazy Jesus love, and they’ll never look at a homeless person or a gang member, or even a friend and her leaving, without the grace filter again.