A Thought For The Week Of April 11, 2016

"He said to them, 'It is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day ...'" (Luke 24:46) You can't say that they weren't warned. I'm thinking here about the disciples of Jesus. It's very intriguing that the disciples respond with such horror and shock around the Good Friday-Easter events. It's not as if Jesus didn't tell them after all. It's right here, in this verse: "the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day." And yet when these events actually happened it's as if the disciples were dumbfounded; as if they had no expectation that something like this could possibly happen. I suppose that, in a way, the disciples represent all of us. Don't we all have a tendency to want to hear all the good things but ignore all the bad things - especially if the bad things are things that are going to directly affect us? Isn't the church sometimes guilty of that? Don't we sometimes become obsessed only with the comfortable things and with making people feel good - only to leave people unprepared when bad things happen? As Christians don't we have a tendency to love grace but ignore the responsibilities that grace implies? We usually choose the easy way - the "wide road" as Jesus once described it. The problem is that the easy way and the wide road don't represent life very well. Well - life as we want it perhaps, but not life as it really is. The disciples had been told that Jesus would suffer - but they didn't want to hear. Rising was great. The problem is that you can't rise unless you first fall, and resurrection had to be preceded by crucifixion. The disciples wanted to avoid all the "bad stuff" - but ultimately they get dragged into reality. Just as we all do. Reality means that even in a life of faith there will be both good and bad - and it means that God is present and reaching out to us in all of it.