047: Jesus and Passion

April 3, 2010
Mark 14:32-15:47

I just finished watching Mel Gibson's The Passion. Regardless of the various opinions on the movie's portrayal of the crucifixion, I am so thankful that my parents own a copy that I can watch. I've been saving it for this weekend, because I wanted to be able to view it on my own, in private, during the traditional commemoration of Jesus's death and resurrection.

The first time I watched The Passion I went to the theatres with my youth group to view it. I remember walking out feeling very sobered.

My response is different this time. The movie is heartwrenching, of course, and I realized at the end that my fingernails had been leaving little marks in the palm of my hand, and my lips are swollen from biting them - but this time I was watching with the "filter" (so-to-speak) of looking at it less as a tragedy, and more as a triumph of God's love.

I've been meditating on that idea recently - thanks to various books and movies and conversations that have percolated into my life - and I am overwhelmed by it. God's love is SO vast. It's incomprehensible. Fearsome in it's extremity, and enthralling in it's passion and boundlessness. I don't get it.

One of my favorite scenes in The Passion is the moment that Jesus dies. The camera is looking down at Jesus on the cross, and it zooms out and out and out. Then the screen blurs for a second, before a raindrop falls down, down, down, to break at Jesus's feet. Except I don't think it's a raindrop. I think it's a teardrop.

And that reminds me that Revelation promises that there will be no more teardops in heaven. I wonder if God cries now? Because He chooses to love us SO passionately, does He cry when we are hurt? And when we hurt Him?

I hate the thought of making God cry, but I love the thought that He does cry (or whatever it is that an immortal Spirit does)… I can be an insecure, unsure, self-focused little girl sometimes, and it is incredibly comforting and nurturing to my heart to think that God cares enough about me to see my hurts and hurt for me in them. Of course, I also delight in the fact that He is sovereign and in control – that He knows the end from the beginning and promises to work “ALL things together for good for those that love Him and are called according to His purposes.” Even our hurts. Even Jesus’s hurt on the cross.

I think it was Oswald Chambers that wrote, “If God can accomplish His purpose in the world through a broken heart, why don’t we thank Him for breaking ours?”

My heart isn’t broken tonight, but I still want to have that attitude. After all, that’s exactly what Jesus lived out… Oh, that I would be more like Him – even to the extent that He went through to submit to His Father’s will… Passion, Lord, may I have it? Teach me to cultivate it…