The Galilean

“The Galilean”—2

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□ His Vulnerability

•   John 6:66, 67
•   William Shakespeare, Julius Caeser: “Et tu, Brute?”
•   Oswald Chambers: “Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s.” (My Utmost for His Highest 218)
•   Ellen White: “As the world’s Redeemer, Christ was constantly confronted with failure.” (Desire of Ages 678)
•   Isaiah: “He said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.’ But I said,

  ‘I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due me is in the

  LORD's hand, and my reward is with my God." (Isaiah 49:3-4)

•   Anne Lamott: “My fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do—and I think

  my parents may have accidentally given me this idea—and you do poorly, what then? It’s over; you’re wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud.” (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith 142)

 “The review in the newspaper the next day was not very good. But by then I’d figured out the gift of failure, which is that it breaks through all that held breath and isometric tension about needing to look good: it’s the gift of feeling floppier. One of the things I’ve been most afraid of had finally happened, with a whole lot of people watching, and it had indeed been a nightmare. But sitting with all that vulnerability, I discovered I could ride it.” (Ibid 143)

□  My Vulnerability

•   What if the Galilean’s kind of vulnerability became ours?
•   #1—You and I would be a lot more vulnerable with God.
  •   Ellen White: “Never can the cost of our redemption be realized until the redeemed shall stand with the Redeemer before the throne of God. Then as the glories of the eternal home burst upon our enraptured
    senses we shall remember that Jesus left all this for us, that He not only became an exile from the heavenly courts, but for us took the risk of failure and eternal loss.” (Desire of Ages 131)
  •   Philip Yancey: “Unless I level with God—about bitterness over an unanswered prayer, grief over loss, guilt over an unforgiving spirit, a baffling sense of God’s absence—that relationship, too, will go nowhere. I may continue going to church, singing hymns and praise choruses, even addressing God politely in formal prayers, but I will never break through the intimacy barrier. ‘We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us,’ wrote C. S. Lewis. To put it another way, we must trust God with what God already knows.” (Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? 42)
•   #2—You and I would be a lot more vulnerable with faith.
•   #3—You and I would be a lot more vulnerable with each other.
  •   Brene Brown: “We love seeing raw truth and openness in other people, but we’re afraid to let them see it in us.” (Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead 41)
  •   “Vulnerability is based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It’s not oversharing, it’s not purging, it’s not indiscriminate disclosure, and it’s not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process.” (Ibid 44, 45)
  •   GROW Groups

□  His Vulnerability

•   Naked
•   “Be ye therefore vulnerable as your Savior in heaven is vulnerable.”

“Lord, to whom else shall we go?”