“Morning after morning, God awakens me to hear as disciples do,” says Isaiah. “God opens my ears.”
How DO disciples hear? How do they hear the story of the Passion? It is possible to become so fixated on Jesus’ torturous suffering that those details are allowed to conceal the orchestrated oppression and torture of everyday people in our world today. Even more common is the tendency to listen to these events as part of Christian history without letting the deeper message of Jesus’ example really sink in.
As our Teacher, Jesus takes us into the heart of human suffering at its darkest, facing cold, intentional brutality as a direct result of the betrayal of a trusted friend. He faces into that multi-layered suffering, that gruesome death, head on, walking toward it as he makes his way to Jerusalem one last time. He asks that the cup before him be set aside, but he doesn’t run, doesn’t blame, doesn’t fight his accusers or save himself as Paul tells us he COULD do. He shows us how a disciple is called to face life—humbly in those moments of triumph, and without bitterness or malice in times of persecution, betrayal and suffering of every kind.
How do we hear his story? How do we embrace the Passion after joyously waving palms and singing ‘hosanna’ at the top of our lungs? How do we move from joy to grief maintaining trust in a God who created this world of horror and beauty?
As disciples we are students in training. We enter into the awful details of Calvary with ears and eyes open, learning in fitful steps to apply Jesus’ most transformative lesson to our own life and times. We accept his example of complete self-emptying, his central message according to Paul. And we adopt the discipline of letting go, even a little at a time—letting go…letting go…letting go—until our ego is drained, our attachment to possessions gone, and all that is left is God shining from the cross of our lives. Maybe this sounds extreme, but it IS the lesson of the cross.
Human nature rallies to the display and experience of joy, pleasure, victory and excitement. It claims success when all we’ve hoped for has actually been achieved! We naturally back away from defeat and from everything that smacks of failure since every loss is an experience of death.
The cross is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. If we ask Jesus how we can help further God’s reign on earth he tells us to sell all we have, give the proceeds to the poor, empty ourselves of everything the world values and then follow him. He tells us to let it all go. Not with a sense of futility, but with a heart full of love. Accept life on its terms, he says, and remain anchored in faith, trusting the God within you to lead the way. In all things—Love. Have faith.
THIS is how disciples hear the Passion. This is the road to Easter and beyond.
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