Prayer: In nomine

Well, here we are again. Engaged in re-enacting the drama of Holy Week. For some of us, perhaps, for first time. For most of us - a familiar drama. At the beginning of this most solemn week of Church's year, we focus on the events leading up to Easter - listen, ponder, grieve, imagine what it must have been like to have been with Jesus during the last days of his life.

They say familiarity breeds contempt. But that's not true for us - or we wouldn't be here. We are here because in some way, for some reason, this all connects with us, matters to us.

In a way we are the crowds in the entry into Jerusalem - enthusiastic, welcoming, celebrating this man who at that moment symbolised a victory over oppression. For the crowds of Jesus' day, his entry would have been seen as a win for the down-trodden, for the ordinary person - but victory is a consequence of war and Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, a symbol of peace in his tradition. So the crowds have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. They'd missed the point.

Jesus didn't fit their idea of who he was. Those who knew him best could have worked that out from being with him as he befriended the marginalised, eat with sinners and tax collectors.

We, of course, understand better. We know that following and welcoming Jesus into our lives means that we won't fit. That we'll disappoint the multitudes when they realise what we really believe, really stand for, how we really live.

I wonder. Let me tell you a story.
There was a man who went to a tailor for a new suit. He saw one he liked and tried it on but when he looked in the mirror, he found that it didn't fit very well. He said to the tailor, "this side of the jacket isn't right."
"Never mind", said the tailor, "if you hold your arm like so, the jacket will look great."
"Yes", said the customer, "but this leg is a bit short'.
"Never mind", said the tailor. "If you keep your leg bent a bit, it looks fine- and who will notice when you're walking along the street?"
"I suppose" said the customer, "but look at the lapel. It doesn't lie flat."
"Well", said the tailor, "if you put your chin over like this, it will look terrific."
So the man, with his arm like so, his leg bent and his chin holding down his lapel, bought the suit and went out.
As he walked down the street he overheard one man say to another. "Look at that smart suit."
"Yes", said the other, "isn't it splendid. What a pity about the cripple inside it".

I wonder if that is how it is for people outside the Church when they took at us. Do they see that they have to cripple themselves to fit a stereotype or do we convey perhaps in an inadequate way, a sense of Jesus' invitation to any or all, regardless of status, caste, religious tradition, nationality, occupation. No boundaries, no limits. All welcome.

All a bit impossible in the real world. We want to be generous, welcoming, but there are limits - if only for our own sanity and survival.

And yet, my guess is, we don't, deep in our heart, want it to be like this. I wonder why we have to tame Jesus' message and life. Why we reduce the impact of his life to manageable proportions.

Perhaps it's a bit like a small child when faced with the power and grandeur of the ocean. We've all seen them. They gaze for a while, assess the situation, then turn their back and start digging a hole which then fills with a little bit of sea. In their basic? simple? way, they contain the hugeness, the power.

Perhaps that's what we also do. We reduce the reality of Jesus' life in order to cope. Of course, everybody found him a stumbling block - even his friends. It's the sympathetic outsiders of today's passion reading from Mark who highlight the failure of Jesus' disciples by doing what they should have done.

In the earlier part of the narrative, we hear of the unnamed woman who anointed Jesus with precious ointment. What was the disciples' typical response but to push her away. It's interesting that Jesus, as ever, reverses the disciples' actions by making her an example of faithfulness.

It's a casual passer-by who is pressed into service to carry the cross. It's a Gentile, a Roman soldier of the occupying army, who interprets the events - who gives meaning to the mockery and obscenity that is the death of Jesus on the cross.

Such suffering - and silent suffering is a stumbling block for us. There is little in this gospel to reveal the meaning of Jesus' passion. No kind or sympathetic word. No kind or responsive action. No loyal commitment from his friends who, having professed loyalty until death at their last meal with Jesus, then abandoned him to suffer the contempt and derision of Jewish and Roman authorities.

No wonder we don't want to identify with such desolation; no wonder we shun engaging with such pain. Jesus' own words searingly convey his anguish. 'My God, why have you forsaken me?'

No wonder we protect ourselves. Convey only a fragment of this reality, reduce to manageable proportions these events, familiarise and tame this appalling procession of events.

If only Jesus had been the messianic figure that they expected and had acted in predictable ways, he wouldn't have been so impossible to deal with, to follow, to stay alongside.

But this never was going to happen.

Jesus came to show a different way, a different kingship, a different relationship to people. He came, taking the form of a servant and humbling himself, was obedient
- even to death.

This is how we must be if we want to stay connected with Jesus. Rather than the 12 who denied and abandoned him when it involved personal risk and suffering, we can be a sign of God's kingdom by being faithful to his humility, his obedience, his servanthood.

Another story.

In 1781, a man called William Herschel became the first person in history to discover a planet quite by accident. He discovered Uranus. After he had found it, other scientists tried to plot Uranus' orbit but wherever they thought Uranus ought to be, it wasn't. So they worked out that it was being pulled out of its expected orbit by the gravity of another, invisible planet, somewhere deep in space, far beyond the known limits of the sun's cosmic system. Even though this invisible planet, which we now know as Neptune, could not be seen, they knew it existed because of its effect on Uranus. The power and consequences of the invisible Neptune's existence was so strong that Uranus' orbit did not follow anticipated paths.

We can be a sign by our lives and actions of love of God that embraces the fringe, the unloved, the lonely, the overlooked. Through encountering us, people can glimpse something of the immensity of God's love.

Or course, we may need to convey this truth by being a stumbling block to the world, by acting in ways that challenge, confront, that are less than comfortable, by being different.

In this we are only doing what, as Church, we are catted to do, to be faithful to Our Lord, who is our stumbling block and yet our necessity. Without him, we have no life.

As we enter the tragedy and triumph that is Holy Week, perhaps we can take time to reflect on our response to his passion. Can we stay with him, stay present through the last days and hours of his life? Can we bring to the foot of the Cross all the ways in which we are crippled from following him, all the ways in which we are crippled from conveying him.

Can we draw further into Holy Week and at the foot of the Cross, facing Our Lord's cry of hopelessness and desolation, find a new suit, a new way of being that does not fit the world's expectations but that will bring us a wholeness and an integrity that conveys the truth of discipleship?

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