Brennan Manning - The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus

1986, 2004 by Brennan Manning

Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com

Previously published in 1986 under the title Lion and Lamb by Chosen Books

Ebook edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-5855-8213-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

the Holy Bible, New International Version . NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture marked JB is taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, copyright 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd. and Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture marked MESSAGE is taken from T HE M ESSAGE , by Eugene H. Peterson, Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked NAB is taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms. Copyright 1970, 1986, and 1991 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and is used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For Pete and Lois Kelley/Smith, whose refusal to quit has charged the old clich Hang in there with new meaning, humor and hope.

For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
like a great lion to Judah.

I will tear them to pieces and go away;
I will carry them off, with no one to rescue them.

... And they will seek my face.

Hosea 5:1415

Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!

Revelation 5:12

Contents

Foreword

T wo personal encounters with Brennan have especially marked my life.

The first came after my request for spiritual direction. A spirit of bitterness had taken root in my heart and I couldnt shake it. As I confessed the ugly details, Brennan teared up. Oh, great! I thought to myself. Something I said triggered some of Brennans mess, and now Ive got to take care of him.

As I was adding pride and noble self-pity to my already present bitterness, Brennan said quietly, Larry, every time Im with you, Im so drawn to Jesus.

I couldnt have been more surprised. Why? I asked.

Because you hate anything that gets in between you and Abba.

I sang at the top of my lungs in my car all the way home. Someone had seen me with the eyes of redeeming and hopeful love. So thats the gospel! I remember thinking to myself.

The second encounter took place on the balcony of a ninth-floor hotel room. Brennan and I had just finished speaking to a pastors convention, and we were enjoying a brief moment of quiet before leaving for the airport.

Where to next? I asked innocently.

I start a seven-day silent retreat tomorrow, he replied. Im not leading it, Im taking it.

Brennan, help me here. I know youre into that sort of thing. How are you different after getting away for a week with just you and the Lord?

Without conscious intent (I think), Brennan gently cut through my American pragmatism when he answered, I dont know what it does for me. Ive never thought much about that. I just figure God likes it when I show up.

I walked away from that encounter more thirsty to experience the Fathers fondness for me.

Reading The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus has been a third encounter, but, like the two Ive mentioned, not really an encounter with Brennan but with God.

A mystic is a person whose life is ruled by thirst. Thats in chapter 12.

I began reading this book a couple of hours ago and just now finished. It came at a good time. I have set this week aside as a sort of personal retreat. My journey has taken me recently into the desert. Its hot and Im thirsty. But all Ive been able to see is burning sand stretching out all the way to the horizon. With no water in sight, thirst had nearly given way to resignation. Ive been trying to call it trust.

Ive been here before. Theres a pattern. When I put down my shovel, when I quit trying to figure out what I must do to find water, a well seems to bubble up.

This time the Spirit used Brennans book. I can sense resignation yielding to renewed thirst, and hope. As I read these honest, grace-saturated, humbly iconoclastic, distinctly un-sugar-coated but still somehow gentle words, I could taste familiar water, living water that only people who are thirsty for life can enjoy.

Radical Christianity. The real thing. An upending encounter with Jesus that changes everything. Experiencing His love. Letting the Lion tear away every false hope. Riding the Lamb all the way home. Thats what this book is all about. Read itand hope again!

Dr. Larry Crabb

A Word Before

O n the eve of His death, Jesus prayed to the Father: that you love them as you loved me... so that your love for me may live in them (John 17:23, 26 NAB ). The same verses in The Message read: that youve sent me and loved them in the same way youve loved me... so that your love for me might be in them exactly as I am.

This conjoined passage bends the mind, stuns the heart and beggars speech. It is the cause of ecstatic utterance among the saints, the source of spiritual intoxication among the mystics and, along with the incarnation, the most extraordinary demand ever made on Christian faith. It simply seems incredible.

God loves you just as much as He loves His Son, Jesus Christ.

This is what Scripture says without nuance and with utter precision. Of course, the radical leftists and the right-wing extremists, with their one-note agendas, vociferously protest, because neither can live with biblical clarity. On the right, words without nuance terrify; on the left, there must be nuance for nitpicking. The mavens of the media on both sides are apoplectic, hurling accusations of fundamentalism from the left and lunatic liberalism from the right.

Neither side knows the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. The divide between human beings and God is nowhere more apparent than here. You may like your spouse 90 percent, a colleague at work 50 percent and your attorney 20 percent. If you assume that God divides His affection with 100 percent for Jesus, 70 percent for Mother Teresa and 2 percent for you, you are thinking not of God but of yourself. As Peter van Breeman notes, We have love, but God is love. Love is not one of many activities that God pursues. It is His entire being.

The psalmist writes, Pause awhile, and know that I am God (26:10 JB ). I favor the Jerusalem Bible translation because it takes time for me to be still, to come to that place of inner quiet. Stillness is more than silence and it is beyond solitude. Interior stillness is too deep for words. Unhampered by self-consciousness, our attention is focused entirely on God and His love. In this sacred now, we immediately understand that God cannot measure His love, giving 100 percent to Jesus and a tiny fraction to us. When Catherine of Siena, a dynamic contemplative in action, was asked to describe the God of her personal experience, she cried, He is pazzo damore, ebro damore crazed with love, drunk with love. Yet her words are feeble and inadequate, as are all human words, because Mystery is spoiled by a word.