Passion and Compassion

Reflection by Matt King

Soon there will only be you. You alone can walk the road ahead. It will be painful. You will feel isolated and attacked. But there is nowhere to go but forward. There is no turning back.

How lonely Jesus must have felt on the night he was betrayed and handed over to be tried and executed. All was just as he said it would be. He knows what will happen next. He has, in some ways, always known where the road has been heading. He knows that the crowds he heard the other day as he entered the city will soon be back. This time they will be shouting something different. This time they will be singing a different tune.

No longer will there be cries of “Hosanna!” on their lips. No longer will they praise him and ask God’s blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord. They were all for him coming, just not in the way Jesus came. They are were all for disruption, but only if it throws off the shackles of Roman oppression immediately, not if it offers them something deeper than earthly comforts and makes them rethink everything they know about this life, God, and the future. “Save us. Don’t transform us.”

Instead of a ticker-tape parade, this time it will feel more like a mob with torches and pitchforks. He will have to stand before those who want to stop his movement, knowing their efforts will be futile. He will have to stand before Pilate, one who can’t possibly understand his authority, and who will be stuck between his own sense of justice and what is right and his orders from Caesar to do whatever it takes to keep the peace in Jerusalem during the Passover festival.

They will all have a choice, and in the moment when they have to make it they will all go another way. They will choose to let a bandit go free, so that they can put him to death. They will mock him. They will beat him. They will curse him and spit on him. They will place a crown of thorns on his head and they will nail him to a cross to die. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, indeed. And already he knows they have no idea what they are doing.

Only he can go through this. Even with the crowds around him, and the followers who haven’t yet run standing on the side and watching in horror, he will not face a lonelier moment than this. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he will cry. It will happen soon.

Even with his closest followers with him now, the overwhelming sense of isolation is creeping in.

He gathers them together for a final moment of fellowship and preparation for what is to come. They won’t understand it, but it will be a Passover that they will never forget. He serves them. He shares with them. He gives them symbols they will need to make sense of what they will soon see. He offers them final words of encouragement for when he is no longer with them. He talks of his body, and his blood, and his love.

As soon as the meal is over, they sing a final hymn. Judas goes off to put the plan of betrayal into motion, but Jesus leads the rest of them to the Mount of Olives. He warns them that they will all soon leave like the betrayer. They will all cut and run, even Peter who tries to be as faithful as possible, but falls at least short as any of them. But that is as far as he can carry them. He has to go it alone now.

There won’t be any sleep tonight. All he can do is pray. So he goes to a place in the garden where he can be alone to think, to contemplate, and to be with the only one who keeps him steady and on the path.

As he leaves them, he encourages them to stay up and pray too. They will need the strength of the connection with God to get them through. But they fall asleep anyway. They can’t see what is coming like he can. If they could, they wouldn’t sleep either.

His prayer is the most earnest prayer ever prayed. It is born out of passion, out of agony and suffering, knowing what he must endure. “Father, there has to be another way. Nothing is impossible with you. Surely you could find a way out of this for me. I don’t think I can drink from this cup. It is too bitter. I’m not sure I can handle it. It is too heavy a weight to bear. It is too high a price to ask me to pay. But you know that if it is what must be done, I will do it. Just give me the strength to do what I must.”

But it isn’t just the start of his passion, his own suffering. It is compassion at its finest. He is suffering with all of us. He is suffering for us.

There is a universally recognizable tone in his prayer. He is in the midst of undeniable grief. It would be easy to simply pass over this moment and avoid the distinctly human nature of it, but that would be a lie. It would diminish its reality.

So what if he always saw it coming? So what if he had more time to contemplate his own death than most of us. Clearly it didn’t ease the burden. If he ever denied it, he can’t any longer. The hour has come.

Was he ever angry? He must have been angry. The pitiful nature of crowds to whom he ministered who often only came looking for a miracle when he wanted to give them the keys to abundant life, the rag-tag bunch that followed him each day but who would soon abandon him, the religious authorities who stood in his way, “This faithless generation” he called them. Would he really have to die for them? For us?

I don’t know if you can really call it bargaining or depression, but clearly he would have gone another way if it were available. But he can’t. He must accept it, and he does. “Your will, Father. Not mine.”

This is what God’s love looks like. When all was said and done he died for us, even though we were never worthy of the life he was willing to give. He went to the darkest place in the world because that was and is the only way the world could be rescued. The only way you and I can be rescued. The only way by which God’s love can take the worst on itself and leave us free.

So he submits to the will of God and offers all of himself, including his very life, to others. He willingly walks the lonely road. But even though he walks it alone, our faith tells us that we must follow. And perhaps that is why we tell the story year after year. We are still following, trying to understand. He went there first to change the world, but we must follow and tell the story with our lives so that we can do his work for others now.

“What wondrous love is this?” we sing. What wondrous love, indeed. It invites us into deep authentic relationship with God and with each other. And we must go and do like he did, walking the road for others, suffering with and for others in his name. Our own passion because of his compassion for us.