The Gall

The approach

Last year at this time, I was hyped about the resurrection,  and rightfully so. This year was different. My mental state was more like a three-ring circus of fresh grief, fresh questions, and fresh conviction. The topic of bitterness was nowhere near the surface, until God shook it there. And He shook hard.

Pixabay: Hyssop, Yakuplpek

One of several shakings was a sermon I heard. It’s a different time and place, but here’s a link to it. If you’re not Pentecostal, fasten your seatbelt before clicking that link. I’m focused on the last few minutes, the way Jesus refused to drink the gall.

I’d never realized the importance of it, but it’s no stretch to think Jesus’ refusal of the gall had a metaphor built in. It symbolized His full forgiveness, pure of bitterness. It was His goodness on display in a way my flesh doesn’t want to hear. Because if He had pardon for all who rejected and betrayed Him, beat and mutilated Him … then what does that mean for me and my hurt?

The gall

I shared this idea of the gall as a metaphor (in a butchered way) with a friend. She replied, “That rings true. Anger releases dopamine.” As in, the pleasure hormone. The temptation of bitterness is how it will help ease the pain. That part isn’t just a metaphor. It’s a neurological fact.

Another voice in my life affirmed how deep bitterness can have a numbing effect on your entire emotional and spiritual being. Once bitterness sets in, you stop feeling. You stop caring. When we consume bitterness, it consumes us.

 Bitterness is gall. The gall was bitterness.

Temptation

The gall was temptation. Jesus was tempted in the same ways we would be (Heb. 2:18). In trying to understand His temptation, we only have to ask, “What would any other person want?”  

Along with wanting to end the physical agony, He must have wanted to…

despise those who despised Him

reject those who rejected Him

shame those who shamed Him

mock those who mocked Him

punish those who punished Him.

And He didn’t.

He divinely forgave. But His humanity was like ours. He would have fought the urge to retaliate. To do justice. To treat them like they deserved to be treated. Those last hours, in the most extreme pain, He resisted every form of retaliation within His power. And He had all power.

He endured it all, and entered into death pure. The only man ever to stop breathing still sinless.

Song of the Drunkards

It’s my understanding the gall was prophesied only once, in Psalm 69:21. The context turns out to be fascinating. 

David is in extreme distress, lamenting. He repeatedly uses water to symbolize his overwhelm. I’m not sure I can articulate what I’m seeing here, but I hope the next time you read Psalm 69, you watch for the water.

I’ll use weasel words, because I don’t know. But this part is clear. Most of David’s direct petitions for help in this Psalm are linked to the water, and the water appears to be linked with his weeping. More details are posted below.* He describes the water as threatening, immersive, increasing, and out of control. 

He describes his enemies as hateful and destructive (vs. 4).

He describes the harm they did to him, causing reproach, shame, and dishonor (vs. 19). 

He describes being reduced to a song of the drunkards. He’s humiliated and broken (vs. 12).

He describes what he would like done to his enemies in twelve colorful curses spanning verses 22-28.

He asks to be delivered from his enemies, but he spends more emphasis asking to be saved from the water.

Salvation

All of this made me wonder if in this Psalm, David is praying for God to save him from his own gut-wrenching reaction to the wrongs. As David unknowingly prophesied about the Messiah being offered bitter gall, could it be he was warring in his own heart, begging deliverance from the poison of bitterness?

 If the water of his turmoil destroyed his footing (vs. 2), then his prayer may be asking for salvation from the emotional downward spiral. I found this relatable, because sometimes the pain about the pain is worse than the original injury. The chain reaction of emotions can be harder to manage than the actual offense.

Whether or not this is an accurate interpretation, I found it comforting to see David’s flawed humanity on display. When my reaction to pain is less noble than, “Father forgive them…” I can petition God the way David did. 

Hear me… 

Deliver me… 

Draw near...

Save me... 

Redeem me...

Like David, I can keep praising and magnifying a good God who hears, and who doesn’t despise me in my pain (vs. 30 & 33). 

The next time I’m overwhelmed, I hope I remember the pivotal moment when Jesus, as He was purchasing my salvation, overcame the curse of bitterness. And in doing so, He opened a pathway where I can walk sure-footed and free from it too.

And I will walk at liberty,

For I seek Your precepts.

- Psalm 119:45 (NASB) 

***

The first water cluster is in verses 1-2. The waters, deep mire [mud], deep waters, floods, could be linked with his weeping in verse 3. Either way, it directly falls under his first request, “Save me, O God, for the waters…” (vs. 1).

 The second water cluster is in verses 14-15. Mire [mud], deep waters, a waterflood, the deep, the pit. The pit here is usually translated “well,” so this is most likely a water reference too. It’s a break from description, and he launches into earnest prayer loaded with petitions: hear, deliver, let me not sink, let not the waterflood overflow me, hear me, hide not thy face, hear me, draw nigh, deliver me.

A Conversation with Jesus

Do you ever wonder what it was like to talk to Jesus one-on-one? In John 4 we have details of His conversation with a Samaritan woman. He asked her for a drink, and her response was to put up the guard of the cultural barrier between them. “Jews have no dealings with me.” Most likely she said this while looking at the ground between them.

He said, “If you knew who you were talking to, you’d ask me for a drink, and I would have offered you living water.”

She was skeptical. She asked, “Are you greater than my ancestor Jacob who built this well?”

He said, “Whoever drinks from this well will get thirsty again. I can give you everlasting life.”

He asked for her husband, knowing she didn’t have one, deliberately treating her with a dignity some would say she didn’t deserve. That led to discussing her marriage status. She lived with a man who wasn’t her husband, and she had had five husbands before that.

Jesus acknowledged the entirety of her past, but He didn’t berate her for it.

He saw the grief of a broken heart.

He saw her wounded spirit.

He saw self-esteem in shambles.

He told her, “If you knew who I was, and what I could give you, you would ask me for water.”

He talked to her in monumental terms of the ancient promises and world-changing prophesies about to be fulfilled.

She resonated with those words because she believed the Messiah was coming to reveal these things. She was perceptive enough to know that Jesus was important, but she couldn’t fathom that the Messiah was already close enough to touch.

Can you imagine her shock when He said, “That’s me.”

HE was the Messiah.

He didn’t elaborate on the gravity of her sins.

He simply offered her everlasting life.

In few words, He offered freedom from emotional bondage

He offered healing for her brokenness.

He offered fulfilment for her all her needs.

He made her a promise.

He gave her hope.

The next thing we know, this outcast sinner woman was running around town telling everyone, “Come see a man who told me all the things I ever did.”

Was she excited to tell everyone about her heartbreak? Her brokenness? Her sin?

No. She was excited because someone offered her unconditional love and eternal life. After just one conversation with Jesus, she was no longer ashamed of who she was. She wanted everyone to know about this gift of hope. 

As a follower of Jesus, I want to be able to interact with people like He did. I want a heart of compassion that will overstep the same boundaries and offer the same hope.

I can only speculate, but I would like to think that this lady in return gave her life as an offering to Jesus. I’m sure she was devastated at His crucifixion, and elated at His resurrection. I hope she was in the upper room for the first outpouring of the Spirit. Or maybe she was in the crowd when they asked Peter, “What should we do to be saved?” Either way, she had a story unlike any other. Her life changed on an ordinary day, in an ordinary place, after just one conversation with Jesus.

Quote #16

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” 

― Frederick Buechner