after the passion

(I wrote this Thursday night, but didn’t think I wanted to put it up. I now feel that I need to be honest about my own struggles and questions. My brother-in-law has been asking questions off and on for some time and, though he has not seen the movie he asked about sacrifice. “Why did Jesus have to die? What about people before Jesus? Did they all go to Hell?”

I found when I was faced with Christ’s pain and suffering I was asking the same sort of questions. Especially about those who were not Jewish in the Old Testament.)

I saw The Passion tonight....[long sigh]

As I watched this happen to this man I kept finding myself saying to myself, “This doesn’t make any since. This doesn’t make any since.”

What is it that my faith is in here?

This blood
All this blood
Punishment
Pain
Murder
Sacrifice
Anger
Forgiveness
Greed
Power
Fear
Love

Love....

We say he died for our sins.

What does that mean?

Was it murder or sacrifice?

A death of a companionate and loving man at the hand of fear and hatred and greed is what I see and is there to be seen by all. (that is the fear and hatred and greed of all parties involved. The Romans. The Jews. The crowd of people, who in Isreal would have been a mixed group of people, views and religions.)

Murder(?)

But the loving God I rest my faith in is not about doing this to anyone. That is not love. I don’t see that. That is what does not make since to me when I see all that damn blood and you say, “Jesus died for my sins.”

Christ says that he lays His own life down, but he didn’t just whip himself and climb up on the cross on his own.

This does not make since.

It only begins to make since when I begin to see a glimpse of the whole which is that it is both. Not one or the other, but both.

On the ride home alone(?) I was reminded of the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. He had told his brothers he was going to forgive them for selling him into slavery and they questioned whether he was or could really do that. Joseph understood who his brothers were. He was not naïve. He knew that his brother’s, after their belly’s being filled and pocket’s filled with cash, would walk away bickering. He told them that what they had intended for evil the Father used for good.

God didn’t cause Jesus’ death. Sin did. All of it. Christ didn’t save himself from it because he knew it was the loving nature of Our Father to use it.

I was told once by someone while we were talking about engaging cultures that are not necessarily our own that he didn’t thank that God called us out of our comfort zones. If that’s the way ya’ want to look at it I suppose, it is so obvious that following Him will lead us WAY outside of them though.

Christ was a loving, companionate, and innocent man who engaged everyone with open arms and an open heart and we are called to do the same. And He made it clear that if the world did not spare Him for it than neither would they spare us.

“By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - from John 13:35

Love! Not being the Hip New Church. (that title of that article ticks me off by the way) I’m not learning to pray to a different drummer. I am learning to pray and drum alongside The MixMaster.

The heart that I have right now as a Christian causes me to focus on the whole story. Not the blood and the pain and not just the flashbacks in the movie where you find that it is in the context of those relationships that this pain is put to use and the only place that it makes since to me.

I don’t understand why Christ had to die. I don’t understand sacrifice in the old Testament. I do understand that Love is a verb. God is love. I have my faith in Him. The love to me isn’t that Christ hung on the cross. It is that he didn’t get down because He and the Father are one and He understood that the Father is love and He would not just allow this to happen without using it.

ps - And another thing. If you think I would be pissed about my son being hurt like that you know that God is going to be a bit moved. The difference between Him and I is that He used it for good. I on the other hand would smack the stuffing out of ya’.