go free, prisoner — Hilary Yancey

I find myself looking at Jesus out the window of the borrowed Highlander in the midst of Waco.He is there clearly in my mind, maybe car windows can be like the iconostasis some days, that piercing window into heaven, that stirring up of your spirit to meet the Spirit.It's just a few days before Pentecost.I have been in the midst of telling Jesus that I am trapped in my mind, lost in the sea of obligations. I have been telling Jesus with the bold and arrogant assumption more often made by the accustomed Christian that Jesus is mild-mannered and so tolerating this rant, and that eventually the emotions will subside and I'll go on, and Jesus will go on, both of us mostly unchanged.Let me tell you something: that is not Jesus.Instead I hear the thought ripple - no, that's too gentle - rip into my mind, hurricane wind, not just a little bit of fire in the voice. I am telling you, go free, prisoner. I don't know what you're talking about, Jesus, the easiest lie, the lie of pretended incomprehension, because a God that we say is so beyond our knowing surely cannot be speaking so clearly to us, to me, as I stare out the car window hoping against hope that I can find my way around the words.I am telling you, go free, prisoner. It takes nothing less than the Spirit to shake us out of our assumed ignorance back into the obvious truths, the who we are before and afters. Because I am so much of the time a prisoner rattling the iron walls when the door behind me is swinging open and it is Jesus who stands there, arms open, waiting. I am the too busy noticing my own struggles to see that the shackles are at my feet, that the sun through the window is the first day of the week and I'm living in the time of the resurrection.I do this with the story of how eating became harder, or how I don't know how to stand up for myself, or how I am too people pleasing or too quick to worry or how I don't know when to allow myself to feel grace because I worry that if I give myself room to not be perfect I'll collapse altogether. I rattle the walls of the prison of I should be better or I should do more or I am not good enough at and then there is Jesus, calling for me - go free. Me, in that car, driving through Waco, and there is Jesus, caring so much more than I imagine he does. Not mild-mannered, not indifferent, not unconcerned. No, I meet Jesus who says, Go free, prisoner, and who keeps calling out to me, who is relentless in the message that my heart is no longer bound anymore, but freed. That there is no need to rattle the walls because the door is opened, because life is beginning.Just a few days before Pentecost I hear again the old story, the Gospel of the radical concerned grace of God - that God will not be mild-mannered or indifferent with us, but come to us, driving through Waco or when we are in front leading worship or as we glance back at the iconostasis, and Jesus will keep saying, go free, prisoner. I have loved you, I have freed you, you are urgent and important to me, you belong to me. Oh, how the Gospel needs preaching again and again to this tired heart.And oh, how good God is, to still come shout it over me.Love,hilary