Immensity

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     It never ceases to amaze me, the rhythm and pace of Holy Week. Each year, I read through the Gospel accounts of Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday and I’m astonished: how could those morons in Jerusalem be so fickle? They went from “Hosanna!” to “crucify him!” in less than six days. They missed Messiah. He was there and gone before most of them could decide who he was.

     I like to picture myself as one of the “insiders,” maybe even one of the few who stayed with Jesus at the cross. As the scoffers scoffed, I would have put them in their place. Maybe Jesus would have sent his mother home with me, since I resemble the other John so much in character.

     And then comes the other thing that amazes me with each trip through Holy Week: had I been there for the original, I would’ve been as fickle and clueless as anyone else, maybe more. Why? Because my head, like all humans heads, isn’t nearly big enough to get itself around what Jesus was doing at the time. And even with twenty centuries of hindsight (which the eyewitnesses didn’t have), I have to take the facts a few at a time, lest my fragile noggin explode.

     Immensity. It’s the word we use for something that has more size than can be taken in. You can’t see it all from any one angle. It is its own horizon, and all that lies beyond. If it’s bigger than big, huger than huge, it must be immense. I get a weird feeling whenever I’m close to a large ocean-going vessel: “This thing moves?! Holy smokes, you’ve got to be kidding. It’s too big to move – oh, but if it does, and it moves my way, there’s not a thing I can do to stop it. Whatever is immense is also unstoppable… right?” I know: the logic doesn’t hold up. But immensity has that effect on me. Paddle your kayak up to a supertanker and see if the same thing happens to you.

     What Jesus did from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday put immensity on a whole new scale. If you’re expecting me to categorize and quantify every detail from the triumphal entry to the resurrection – well, I cannot. Jesus blew the lid off time, and made eternity circle back on itself. What he did had its roots before the earth was formed, and will never stop. He rode into Jerusalem on a silly little donkey, and all the prophets’ jaws hit the ground. Angels were caught unawares – what chance do we stand of taking it all in? At this point, maybe the best thing I can do for you and me, Church, is call us to an awed reverence of our Savior.  

     Today is Good Friday. But as the old preacher said, “Sunday’s comin’.” Sunday came, and can never be stopped. There was a resurrection. The first person to be raised from the dead, never to die again, walked healthy and whole out of a hole in the ground. The devil stopped mid-dance, and knew in an instant he was thoroughly and irreversibly doomed. Mary was called by name, setting the pattern for all who would come to know the risen Savior. Jesus was not found among the dead. To all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives the right to be children of God – forever.

     Good luck describing all that, along with the billions of chain reactions going off in all directions. We’ll have better success counting the grains of shifting sand on the seashore. Up against immensity, generalities are the linguistic crutch we lean on. Let’s just go with the awe for now.

     If, however, I could be so privileged as to travel back in time and be a player in any one Holy Week scene – hmm, which would it be? Many good choices, but the most appropriate would have to be when Cleopas and his fellow traveler returned to Jerusalem to tell the gathered disciples about being with Jesus on the road to Emmaus:

    As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit (Luke 24:36-37).  

    Why would that be my natural role? Because the astonishment would be altogether genuine. In a more lenient translation of Luke’s gospel, I would be the unnamed disciple whose only recorded word was “A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ugh!”

     So there. I’m over my cocky attitude toward the eyewitnesses of the original Holy Week. Until next year.  Which frees up life and breath to simply praise Jesus, who is King now and King forever, coming again soon.

 Join me?

 Grace and Peace (and no little astonishment),

 

John