In about a month we’ll enter Passion Week, the final week of Jesus before He was crucified and rose from the dead on the third day.  Like a bull’s eye, Passion Week is the center of Christianity; it is the center the carries the whole weight of God’s work of salvation. In his book, The Strangest Way, Bishop Robert Barron stresses the fact that Jesus “did not simply pass away; He was killed, executed . . . .”  It is one thing to die for the sins of the world, it is another thing to be killed for the sins of the world.  But, as Barron highlights, “the death of Jesus is not the whole story.  If it were, Christianity would be nothing more than a social movement and Jesus no more than a romantic and fondly remembered revolutionary.”  Jesus rose again!

Many have tried to paint the sacrifices that Jesus made as sacrifices of a revolutionary and His message and act of love as merely a social movement.  And many have tried to follow His steps to affect social changes.  It is good but not good enough, but more importantly, it misses the mark; it misses the bull’s eye.  Passion Week is not just a final battle of good versus evil; Passion Week is the ultimate face of love and obedience of the Son of God to the Holy Will of His Father.

Jesus did not come to bring about a political or social revolution, He came to bring about a spiritual transformation.  He came to free us, who were imprisoned in our own cages of sin guarded by the devil.  More than freedom, Jesus gave us a new way of life, a new purpose for living.  His death gives us life; His resurrection gives us hope.

So, as we are walking closer to Passion Week, take time to reflect on the great love and sacrifice of Christ, and on the great victory of the cross over sin and the great victory of the resurrection over death.  Take time to reflect on what God will do for us and will never do to us.  If He did not withhold His Only Son, He would never withhold anything else from us.  He gave it all and will give it all to us.

Pastor Paul