Luke 22:63-65 "Undefended Innocence"

My beloved team of Belgian draft horses has moved on to a new home.  After 16 years and hundreds of hours working in a delightful partnership I had to say good-bye.  I am grieving like someone has died.  Even so, My life is very much the richer having made their acquaintance.  I have learned more about myself and life in general over these years that I ever thought I would.  I have learned about trust and what it means to have “heart”.   

Dusty and Prince depended on me to take care of them.  They were always willing to help me with a task.  We drilled oats into a 12 acre field in the fall of 2009.  I worked with the boys about 2 hours a day to get the job done.  I think Dusty would have worked until he dropped from exhaustion.  I knew that, so I never asked him to go that far.  I took my responsibility for their care seriously.  . 

One day waiting for customers in downtown Healdsburg at my carriage stop a young man approached me with a sullen look.  He said to me, “Don’t you think that is unnatural?”   He was referring to me using an animal to pull a carriage around town and give tours.  He was clearly becoming disgusted.   I wondered to myself, unnatural compared to what?  Did he envision huge herds of draft horses running free on the prairie?  These wonderful animals have come to live in partnership with humans.  They do not have any other “natural state” than that.  We work together and I take care of them.  They would have no existence without that partnership.  

I could abuse my responsibility and cause them to suffer.  I feel deep sorrow when I see an emaciated or crippled horse that has been abused by its owner.   I also feel sad when I see a horse owner demand the servant hood of his partner with threats of violence.  I never beat or whipped my horses to get them to work for me.  I just had to ask and they responded. 

All this horse talk brings me to think about “Undefended Innocence”.    There are times when I look around me and see the innocent being cruelly taken advantage of or injured by the strong.  It makes me mad.  Children abused by their parents, teachers, and religious leaders.  Dogs, cats, horses, being very badly treated by their custodians. The poor dying of starvation in countries where war and famine run rampant.  The ignorant being indoctrinated by radical ideologies. (And you can add some more I am sure.)   I have asked myself, “Does God get it?”  Does he understand this terrible burden that the innocent have placed upon them by others in places of power? 

I have been wondering about the three verses in Luke 22:63-65.  Why did Luke write them down?   Why was this story remembered and passed along?  Jesus is being beaten and mocked.  They blindfold him and hit him asking if can “prophecy” and tell them who did it.  He hasn’t had a trial.  He has no one to defend him.  There was no one with a cell phone to record the beating and call for an investigation of police brutality!   What I see is that Jesus experienced being innocent and undefended.  He experienced what it was like to be at the mercy of the merciless. 

So if God gets it, why does he allow it?   Either I make a determination that God is weak, ineffective, and doesn’t much care about what goes on in the world or like the weeds and evil forces of darkness I have looked at previously, the experience of “Undefended Innocence” is a part of life.  If so I still hate it!   Jesus went through it.  He experienced it without deciding that God was weak, ineffective and uncaring.  This is one of those things I think that I have no satisfactory answer for.  I have to assume that I can still trust God’s goodness even when I see examples of “Undefended Innocence.”  But I still hate it.