‘We have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of
Jesus… Let us approach with a true heart.’
We have spent much time this Holy Week reflecting on love: extravagant
love, loves that we release, love that loves those who don’t love back, love
that assumes the lowest position.
Today we have to ponder a love that suffers: a love that
loves even in and through pain, a love that willingly chooses the suffering and
pain. It is a love that does not choose the easy way. It is a love that does
not give up when things become difficult. The easy way does not lead to love,
and the avoidance of pain certainly does not lead to love.
I have witnessed a lot of such love: the man who nurses his
dying wife at home, the relatives who surround a love one as they take their last
breaths, the woman whose husband no longer recognises her but she stays next to
him anyway, because in that moment there is nowhere else they would choose to
be. Or the love of the person who chooses to walk with somebody else in their
suffering, even though there is no real reason why they should. It is that love
that says: ‘You are suffering, and you cannot change that. I will walk with you
in the suffering.’ It is such love that chooses something unnecessary, for love’s
sake.
There was no reason for Christ to become man. There was no real
reason for Christ to be willing to be handed over, crucified. It was all, like Mary
on Monday, an extravagant waste. And the cynic might ask: ‘was it all worth it?’
So often we measure things by their worth, or their productivity.
So often we measure things by quantifiable measures that show how successful
they are.
Even the Church sometimes falls victim to this: the worth of
a community is based (in part) on numbers on seats, the amount of money that
they raise and contribute. Effort, projects, and achievement all becoming measures of worth and success. What efforts are
being made? What projects are being undertaken?
Good Friday calls us to emptiness and waste. It calls us to
stand and watch as a man hangs on a cross, powerless, bleeding, dying. It calls
us simply to watch and wonder. What does it achieve? When we walk away from
here this afternoon, how will this change our lives? Why are there not more
people here? How can we attract them?
And yet we are called not because it is attractive. We are
not called because it is exciting. We are not called because there is so much going
on. We are called, simply because a man was prepared to do this for us. We are
called to watch with the dying, to be present, even though it doesn’t achieve
anything, and we walk away in emptiness.
Of course, we know that this is not the end. We know that we
will assemble in the darkness of tomorrow evening to hear the Good News that
this death was not the end. We will find the tomb empty. What appeared empty
and a waste will be seen to be fullness of life and salvation.
We want so often to avoid the hard struggle. We want so
often to avoid pain. And yet love is so often only at its fullest with pain and
suffering.
I watched the film Shadowlands the other evening about C. S.
Lewis and his relationship and later marriage to Joy Gresham. In a scene where
they are caught in a rainstorm, Joy wants to speak to ‘Jack’ about her coming
death. He wants to hold onto the joy of that moment but she says to him that ‘the
pain then is part of the happiness now’. In other words, in order fully to
live, in order fully to have joy now, we must be prepared for the pain that
will inevitably come.
Jesus chose the hard struggle. Jesus chose the way of pain
for us. Jesus chose to enter into our struggle and claim his victory over sin
and death by rising to new life.
Where there is death, there is resurrection, and there can
be no resurrection without death.
Today we stand in the pain. We stand in the emptiness,
knowing and believing that the new life will come, a new life, a victory that
is ours through this pain and suffering.
And so truly we say:
‘We adore you, O Christ,
and we bless you,
Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.’
Because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.’
No comments:
Post a Comment