It is often said by Lutherans that we are not driven by emotions. We are not on a regular basis depending on transcendent emotional experiences to sustain us and encourage us in our faith. We are not a church body that struggles with highs and lows of transcendent faith experiences where people fluctuate form feeling God is present in every aspect of life- to feeling forsaken or abandoned by God. Ours is a type of practice of faith based on the sure promises of God’s Word and the good news of the gospel.
For all of these strengths in putting our faith fixed in God’s Word outside of our varying emotional swings- we might almost come to believe that our emotions have no place in our faith.
This is a question that often comes up in my conversation with other Lutherans, what about emotions, what role do they play? The answer is they play a big role. They play a big role because Jesus took on our human nature and demonstrated to us a range of emotions all centered around the truth that God is love.
Throughout the scripture we see the passion Jesus felt about our human condition after the fall. We see Jesus with compassion for those who are sick, those who are in need, those with diseases of body and those who suffer diseases of the mind. At the feeding of the five thousand the scripture notes how Jesus felt deep gut wrenching compassion for the people he was teaching- observing that they are like sheep without a shepherd.
When Jesus came to the location in which his friend Lazarus was buried, Jesus wept in the presence of all of the people. ‘See how he loved him.’ the crowds said. We see indeed how he loves Lazarus, and we see how he loved all those he encountered in the days of his public ministry through miracles of healing and miracles of freedom and restoration. Behind all of these acts of kindness was His steadfast and immovable compassion for all people.
We see this in a particularly intense way in our gospel reading for the second Sunday of Lent in Luke chapter 13 as we hear Jesus lament: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Jesus is weeping for the lack of faith in a place where there should be faith- Jerusalem, where God’s House has been established. It is without doubt cause for sorrow when little chicks refuse to be gathered up and protected by the wings of a mother hen- opting instead for a future of certain destruction.
Perhaps the strongest form of love we can practice in our life as followers of Jesus is to care about the spiritual well being of our brothers and sisters in Christ. If Jesus laments those who have rejected God, we should also lament the stubborn disobedience of unbelieving mankind. We should be willing to sacrifice in our lives for the sake of those who do not obey God’s Word. It is appropriate for us to mourn and lament over the unbelief of so many. In this sense our emotions are very important in our faith.
Jesus is without sin, so his emotions of compassion and distress to those who resist him does not turn to emotions of anger and resentment. Instead Jesus remains faithful in loving those who do not believe- even to the point of his time on the cross:
How deep were the emotions as Jesus prayed, Father forgive them, they know not what they do!” Up to the hours on the cross- and just the same in his resurrection, Jesus remains long suffering with compassion and love to those who are wayward- longing to welcome them into His embrace.
How about you, can you see those who are without faith in Christ as baby chicks in which we long to gather under our wings? Can you see the hurt and precariousness in which people live apart from faith in Christ? Can you feel the love in the pit of our stomach that makes us want to do all we can to share the love of Christ to our community?
This feeling of compassion does not come out of thin air, but instead is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, as we continue to hear God’s Word and hear the truth that God wants all people to be saved.
The hymn of the day for the Second Sunday in Lent is packed with Emotion: Part of the first verse celebrates what it means to consider all things a loss but for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord. “Earth has no pleasure I would share, yea heaven and earth were void and bare if Thou O Lord were not near me.”
In the closing verse we hear a confession of faith in the resurrection that you just can’t sing without a certain awe and trembling: “Lord let at last thine angels come, to Abram’s bosom bear me home, that I may die unfearing, and in it’s narrow chamber keep my body safe in peaceful sleep until thy reappearing. And then from death awaken me that these mine eyes with joy may see, O Son of God thy glorious face, my Savior and my fount of grace, Lord Jesus Christ my prayer attend my prayer attend and I will praise thee without end.”
What a wonderful way God chooses to gather us in under his care as the church! Jesus is relentless in his care for us. He feeds us with the finest nourishment in the world, His Word and his very presence with us in the Lord’s Supper.
He blesses us with not just a faith that is basic and shallow- but instead a faith that is deep through all of the ways in which His mercy is made known to us, all of the ways through which his great love and passion strengthen us in body mind and soul. Amen.
-Pastor Nicholas Fuller