Holy Week

Yep, I'm back.  April seems to be my blogging month :)

We've just started in on what many call Holy Week.  It's a week where we recall the last week in the life of Jesus.  And, it's pretty common to hear readings of the Gospels that depict this part of Jesus's life.  If you're Catholic, you've just endured the longest gospel reading of the year. This year, it was from the gospel of Mark.  Mark is renowned not only for being the first gospel written, but also for being the most brief and concise,  Catholics love Mark :)

If you're like me, you've heard and voluntarily read this story more than once. This has the undesirable effect of making it "common", i.e. it's just a story you've heard before, tune out.  But, in recent years, I've listened and read deeply.  And, there is a lot going on here. 

First is just the sheer enormity of the story of God, and what happened to Him at the hands of men.  Even bigger than that is the truth that God let this happen to Him, and that God not only felt this but saw it happen at the same time.  Trinity paradox, don't try to figure it out.

Then, you step away a bit, and look back in scripture, and you see that this was planned from the beginning.  Some think of Jesus's death as God's plan B, but they forget that God is never surprised.  So, before He breathed Adam and Eve into life, He planned to go to the cross.  As a popular song recently pointed out to me, God could still look at creation, even the creation of man, and know what the plan was, and still say that it was good. 

So, the plan is now in place, man has fallen and God needs to die to restore fellowship with man.  Jesus could have picked any time in history to do this, and any method of execution.  He chooses to come during one of the most barbaric points of history, born to a people enslaved and abused by a world power, who perfected a form of execution created years before into a brutal art.  This is how He chooses to die.  Amazing. 

Then, as the words start to blur as tears form when you comprehend all of this, you see what lies beneath.  It's about love.  God created man out of love.  The love has always been there, from the darkest part of the void of nothingness before, to the world's ultimate outcome.  But, man had to be convinced (and I wonder who am I that God needs to convince me of anything?  Is not my next breath evidence of His love?), so God did the unthinkable and had the unthinkable done to him, to convince me that He loves me.

I don't know what this week holds in store for you, but I would invite you to think about what happened to Jesus on this week 2000 years ago.  Better yet, pick up one of the gospels and read it for yourself.  And, think about it, the sacrifice, the brutality, the forgiveness... and ultimately, the victory that we celebrate this Sunday.

Yours in Christ,

Rahn.