Your words, Lord Christ. A terse, blunt account of what we now call your Passion and the events of Holy Week:…everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.
Then, Luke tells us that your Disciples failed to understand: Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about. (Luke 18:31-34)
Am I any different from the Disciples? Do I grasp the meaning of your suffering? I’m rushing to Easter morning attempting to avoid the troubling details:
Rejected by the religious establishment. Wronged by the authorities. Betrayed. Deserted. Humiliated. Tortured. Killed.
It was an unimaginable sacrifice...expressing a love of incomprehensible intensity.
Jesus, you endured humanity’s malevolence that we might rise above it. Today. And at our own resurrection.
