“Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
Only one feat is possible−not to have run away.”
-Dag Hammarskjold
The events of Holy Week surely reveal our weaknesses. Judas was impatient and disappointed and decided to force Jesus to be what he, Judas, thought he should be. Why didn’t Jesus do something?! Peter was afraid, unable to stay, unable not to run away. Others could not even stay awake. Many joined the mobs that do what mobs always do, what they are told, joining ignorance to ignorance until the innocent are unfailingly brutalized. Pilate was cynical and too clever, corrupted by power and indifference. The soldiers just obeyed orders and drove in the nails as if this was just doing their job.
If we ever wonder why horrible things happen in the history of humankind we need only look to the stories of Jesus’ last week on earth. What is significant in the story is what is different. What is different is the ending which is not an ending at all but rather a beginning (the possibility of a beginning) as we find from this story itself is often the case with endings. The ending of this story of brutal oppression and injustice, violence and mass stupidity is not the usual despair and endless grief and pain, human misery writ large over the centuries, but that there is hope for our hopelessness and there is strength for our weakness and what God can do can and does overcome what we do.
And that hope and that strength can be summarized in this way: Love is real and more powerful than our fear and sin, our violence against the gift of life itself. Love is of God and is forever and can save us from our weaknesses. Death is over come by life. Hatred is overwhelmed by love. Despair and fear are cast out by love. While it is evident that all the weaknesses of humankind revealed during Holy Week are still very present in our world today, there is always, always, the possibility of a new beginning if we don’t run away and hide. It is Easter that gives us the strength to not run away, to keep beginning, to keep acting in love, to keep doing what is right when everything seems so wrong. As such the resurrection continues and the world, though battered and torn, is not lost. Thanks be to God.
Larry
