"Choices Along the Way"

It didn’t have to end this way.

A question that perhaps every Christian has asked at some point is this: Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Or perhaps more to the point: What kind of God would allow, even command, the torture and death of his own son?

Writer Mary Gordon tells of a Jewish friend who became irate when speaking about the death of Jesus. “The idea that God would demand the death of his son was to him hateful,” she writes.

“For him such a suggestion was one of the things that made the idea of God untenable; even if such a God existed, he could not be a God of love; therefore, if he elicited any response it would be one not of love, but at best a rebellious contempt.”

If God did, indeed, demand or foreordain Jesus’ death in this horrible way, then Gordon’s Jewish friend is right – such a God could not be a God of love, and should be held in contempt, not worshipped.

But Scripture tells us that is not the way it happened. Jesus’ story of suffering, death, and resurrection is not fated; the ending was not known from before the beginning. Everything could have turned out differently.

Jesus was not a puppet in a script written in advance by his father. He was a human being struggling to be faithful, to live with integrity, to discover what he was called to do, and to have the courage to do it.

All along the way, Jesus had choices. He could have become a carpenter and raised a family. In the desert after his baptism, he could have taken one of Satan’s offers for power, and glory, and fame.

He could have stayed away from Jerusalem, where he knew authorities were waiting for him. He could have decided in the Garden of Gethsemane to run away, as he was tempted to do. He could have placated Herod or Pilate and begged for release. Who would have blamed him?

All along the way there were choices – real choices that Jesus struggled to make. In that garden before his arrest, he prayed so hard and in such anguish, Luke tells us, that that sweat poured from him “like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.”

In our own day, Jesus and the life-choices he made are mirrored by those of Martin Luther King Jr. and El Salvadorian Archbishop Oscar Romero, whose feast we celebrated this week.

Both King and Romero knew that if they continued on the paths they were on, it was likely, perhaps even inevitable, that their lives would end in violence. Both had opportunities along the way to stop, to take a different path.

They refused. The result: King, killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis 42 years ago next Sunday; Romero murdered while celebrating the Eucharist 30 years ago this week.

Both chose to continue -- not because they wanted to be murdered, but because they wanted to be faithful to those suffering from injustice and oppression.

Jesus, too, made his choices knowing what the consequences were likely to be. His death on the cross was not foreordained, but given the choices he made it was inevitable.

If Jesus didn’t have a choice, didn’t struggle, didn’t face his death with anguish and fear, then there is really no need for us to read the passion story.

We don’t learn from a puppet acting out a script. We learn from real human beings, struggling and succeeding; sometimes failing. We read the passion stories to learn our own ways of fidelity, and to find ourselves within Jesus’ journey.

As Nikos Katzantazkis wrote in the prologue to his famous novel The Last Temptation of Christ, “In order to mount the cross, Christ passed through all the stages which men and women who struggle pass through.

“That is why his suffering is so familiar to us, that is why we share it, and why his final victory seems to us so much our future victory.

“That part of Christ’s nature which was profoundly human helps us to understand him and love him and pursue his passion as if it were our own. If he had not had within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness, he would not be able to become a model for our lives.

“We struggle, we see him struggle also, and we find strength. We see that we are not alone in this world: He is at our side.”

All the elements of human life are before us this week – betrayal, denial, suffering, and death. And courage, faithfulness, joy and love. The whole panoply of human life and emotions is unfolding.

We are called this week to listen, to become part of the drama, to take our place within the stories.

Literary critic Erich Auerbach puts it this way: “Far from seeking…merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, (this story) seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world.

“Christians who tell these stories, stories that are rich, enigmatic, sometimes puzzling and ambiguous, can find that their lives fit into the world they describe – indeed, that our stories suddenly seem to make more sense when seen in that context.”

And so the Church invites us to take our place in the stories of Holy Week. Once again we have this opportunity to hear, and see, and learn the way of the cross and of the triumphs of Easter—learning again from Jesus how to live and how to die.

* * *

Indeed, the story of Jesus’ passion could have been different—easier, simpler, happier. Thanks be to God it was not.

Not because God demanded his suffering, or any suffering. But because there is suffering in the world and sometimes in our lives, because there isviolence, and destruction, and death, so often among the weakest and most vulnerable of God’s children

And because we need to know how we are to keep faith with them, and with all who suffer, including our families, our friends, and indeed, ourselves.

Jesus was called by his Father in heaven to show us these ways; and he did. These are the stories of this week, this Holy Week. Come and see, and hear, and live them once again.

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Readings

Isaiah 50:4-9a

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.

Philippians 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Mark 14:32—5:39

The Passion Gospel

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