I don’t like violence of any kind. When I was a kid, I used to cover my ears and look away during a fistfight on Gunsmoke! Those of you who are old enough to remember that show and those like it during the early years of television know that there was never much reality to their fighting. No one actually got hit and the sounds were poorly dubbed in. But it was bad enough for me.
For this reason, I don’t like reading about the days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s made even worse by the love I feel for him and the fact that he endured it all because of me and those like me. So today when my reading plan led me once again to the night of his arrest, I was resistant. Quietly I searched my heart prior to reading the passage to ask myself, “What do I desire from an encounter with God this morning?” I wrote:
“I want to be willing to suffer with Jesus during his experience and not shrink back. To respond to the current troubling times we are today facing in a way that does not deny the real possibility of hardship; but to use the low, minor chords of fear as a baseline for a joyful anthem of trust and praise.”
And then I read the passage from Matthew 26: 27-68. This is where Jesus is taken before the high priests and the other religious folk of his day to be questioned. It struck me that of all the homes Jesus had been invited into, this was the first time he had been inside the high priest’s home. And he was there as an unwelcome guest. I wondered at how these men who had spent their lives studying the sacred texts heard Jesus respond to their questions with the very texts they had studied and should have given them pause that perhaps this was the Messiah for whom they had waited for generations. And yet, they remained clueless. They slapped his face and nailed him to a cross.
Holy Spirit whispered to me…”You get what you are looking for.”
If I’m honest, I want a good life. My idea of a good life would be one without suffering or hardship, one where there is no injustice, one where we all have what we need and maybe a little more.
Jesus – you know, the one who came to give us abundant (incredibly good) life – defined this good life a different way. A way that lists suffering and self-denial right up at the top along with loving our enemies and a willingness to “lose” our life (or really, our definition of it). These come to us as unwelcome guests, for sure. But before we spit in the face of these unwanted intruders into what we see as our best lives, let’s see what gifts they might be bringing us.
What might emotional or physical pain have to teach me about what is truly important? What might I gain from a dwindling bank account? What might I miss out on if I avoid distractions, interruptions and inconveniences in my day? How might I gain something from listening to someone who has a radically different point of view than I? If God has chosen to begin building the Kingdom in the middle of all this stuff that is less than ideal, isn’t it possible I might be focused on the wrong thing sometimes?
Take some time with these guests in the company of Jesus before you spit in their face and slam the door.