During the Scripture readings in
the liturgy in the immediate preparation for Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, you
have a sense of the drama of Jesus’ final days unfolding. What has struck me about them is that Jesus
had no death wish. Often in the Johannine
texts, as in the Synoptic gospels, Jesus moves on after a confrontation with
the ruling authorities. He simply goes
to another place and carries on his ministry.
In one account, the bystanders
gather stones to stone him to death for blasphemy. In another, Jesus’ raising of Lazarus evokes
either faith or wary hostility in the Jews. In response, the high priest sees
Jesus as a threat to political stability.
Jesus moves on.
However, at some point, avoidance
became impossible for Jesus. There is a
line fidelity to God that cannot be crossed where compromise is impossible no
matter what the consequences will be.
The gathering hostility towards Jesus gave him a sense of the
inevitability of his imminent death. In
that moment, he faced the outcome of his unwavering commitment to the God of
Israel. His life-giving actions, his
inclusivity and his teachings threatened religious and political stability.
Stability brings comfort to
people but too often comfort comes at the cost of blindness to those who are
excluded, who suffer who are ‘not one of us’.
Jesus stands in the line of Israel’s prophets when he exposes this
blindness which is to compromise the Covenant of the Holy One with Israel.
Jesus did not, could not simply
throw his life away. He, who in the
words of the Fourth Gospel could say, ‘I have come that they may have life and
have it to the full’ and whose every action affirmed human life, could not
count his own life as of no value.
However, fidelity to the Giver of that life and to his sisters and
brothers in God’s image and likeness could not be compromised because this
would be to deny what the gift of life was about.
The Fourth Gospel depicts Jesus
in his last days and hours as majestic and calm – he is God enfleshed who is in
control of events. The Synoptic Gospels
show Jesus at different moments in his life being confronted by events that
shape him and how he understands him ministry.
We see Jesus taking the human journey of experience and insight that
leads to new understanding.
In the Synoptic passion
narratives, we see him painfully and humanly coming to terms with his death. His struggles in Gethsemane to accept the outcome
of his ministry bring him, once again to surrender in fidelity to the Holy One
of Israel and his mission.
In the darkness of this
surrender, Jesus held on to the history of his people Israel, a history that
spoke so clearly of God’s saving power in weakness and failure and
adversity. He knew, in the deepest fibre
of his humanity, the promises of God. Somewhere
in apparent failure and death God would bring new life as had happened so often
in this sacred history.
To think of Jesus going to death
knowing the outcome is to trivialise his humanness and God’s way of
working. In human life we don’t know
what a new thing will be until it happens.
We can only see intimations and it is on to these hints that we place
our hope, trust and fidelity to the Holy One who gives life because God IS
life.
The text of the psalm quoted by Jesus
on the cross begins with the very human experience of dark fidelity, “My God,
My God why have you abandoned me”, it laments with great vigour, continues with
a reflection on God’s mercy and ends in the great proclamation of God’s fidelity
and salvation (Ps. 22). Rabbi Jesus knew
his Scriptures.
This was at the heart of Jesus’ life.
