HOLY WEEK IS PERSONAL.
This is Holy Week. Depending on your background and
upbringing, this may mean different things to you. Perhaps you think of this
week as a time of reflection, to remember the self-sacrifice of Jesus and to
act accordingly. Perhaps you think of it in relationship to community – a shared
celebration honoring new life, the return of flowers and plants and wildlife.
Perhaps you only think of this as a time of year – when seeds are sown and
tended in hope that there will one day be a harvest of reward.
No matter what you may believe about Holy Week, there is one
thing that all the forces of darkness and evil that undeniably exist in this
present world do not want you to realize. Evil doesn’t care if you celebrate
the seasons. Evil doesn’t even care if you celebrate community. Evil will even
let it go if you celebrate a good man with good ideas that changed the world.
What evil doesn’t want you to know is that Holy Week is
PERSONAL.
Evil doesn’t want you to understand the fact that if you
were the only person in existence, Holy Week still would have happened. Even if
you were the one who took a “good man” and put him on a cross. Even if you were
the one that pounded nails into his hands and feet and then stood back to watch
as his life slowly and excruciatingly faded from his body.
In reality, you did.
Whether you want to acknowledge you are that bad or not, you
did. I did. I stepped back in time and took a hammer and drove spikes into the
kindest, most powerful, most humble man who ever walked the face of the earth.
I screamed for his death. I spat in his face and pulled out his beard. I ripped
open his back with an ugly tool of torture.
I drove the nails into his flesh. I watched him struggle for
breath until he breathed no more.
So did you.
This seems a savage idea to share during a time of celebration.
And if you’ve never considered it before, you probably won’t believe it at
first. You had nothing to do with his death. You would never treat someone the
way Jesus of Nazareth was treated by his own people and by the oppressing Roman
Empire.
It doesn’t change the fact you did it.
That’s why I say that this week is personal. Go back to that
alternate reality again, the one where you are the only human being ever
created. The one Jesus came to and gave you your sight, your health. He
provided the food you needed. He sheltered you and protected you and taught you
how to live in such a way that would bring you blessing and peace.
And then you killed him in the cruelest way imaginable.
You think that’s not possible? Think again. You absolutely
would have done it, just as they did. Nothing in you is different than what was
in them.
But this personal story doesn’t stop there. You see, there
was another side to the proverbial coin. Jesus came to you knowing you would kill
him. Knowing you would take everything from him. He knew you would despise him
and hate him for loving you. He knew EVERYTHING.
And he still came. Because he knew there was a greater plan
at work. A plan for him to secure the power not only to heal you and provide
for you and teach you and love you, but a plan for him to make you like him. To
take your stony, dead, cruel heart and make it soft, and warm, and alive. To
give you a heart like his.
He looked at your face, so dear to him despite the contempt
written all over it. He saw what you could be if he took the blame for all your
evil on himself. If he made himself the sacrifice, the payment for a debt you
had incurred that you could never repay. And he loved you… YOU… so much that he
was willing to take your scorn in order to save your eternity.
Holy Week is personal. It’s personal because he made it
personal. He made a move you can’t deny or ignore, not if you want to settle
the matter of your emptiness and futility. Not to mention your eternal
existence. He wants you safe with him. He wants to give you ultimate peace that
passes your understanding of the word “peace.” He wants to show you himself,
reveal to you his wonder-working power to do what you cannot even fathom in
your present state.
Have faith that he can change your heart. Have faith that
his power – a power not only willing to go to the grave, but to come out of it
again – that he can do THAT with your heart. He’s done it before. I’m here to
testify! If you do not know what it means to have your heart come alive, you
are missing the best thing that has ever been offered to you. It’s worth more
than all the money you can earn, all the status and pleasure and comfort and
safety you can scrape up for yourself. Infinitely more.
Come to Jesus. Let this Holy Week be your time to look at
Jesus in a personal way. Not just to see the depth of your trespass against
him, but to see what he did for you in return. He waits, for now. Come before
your life or this age passes away and the invitation has expired.
“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the
day of salvation.” – 2 Corinthians 6:2
