A few words now in advance of the passion, to help us hear it rightly…
In the movie, “Good Will Hunting”, a man named Will Hunting – played by Matt Damon – is a 20-year-old genius who works as a janitor at MIT. He was severely abused as a child and has been in trouble with the law ever since. When Will finally agrees to get counseling to keep himself out of jail, he meets a therapist named Sean, played by Robin Williams. Their relationship is rocky, but Sean won’t back down, for he knows this kid is throwing away his life. In one interchange, Sean offers – in part – this challenge to Will, speaking from the pain of his own life, from what he’d himself experienced:
“… If I’d ask you about war, he says, “you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help.
If I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting-up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself.
“You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself.”
In just a moment, we get a stunning glimpse of God … and see a God who loves us exactly that way. Jesus loves us more than he loves himself. In the proclamation of the passion we see there is nothing “theoretical” about this love. This is not an intellectual concept. This is not some romantic feeling. This is what love is. This is what love does. If we hear this story rightly, we could never again think of God as aloof, separated from us, unable to truly understand what it is like to be us… For this is the story of the incredible pain in the heart of God that only occurs only from loving something more than oneself.
[Proclaim the PASSION according to Matthew]
These days, all the elements of the passion are also unfolding in our very lifetimes, right before our eyes. The same ugly hatred that Jesus faced also rears its head in some awful ways these days. And, the amazing love that shone through Jesus throughout his suffering also shines, through ordinary people whose goodness blesses us in these tough times in so many beautiful ways; that gut-wrenching letting-go by Mary and the disciples at the foot of the cross is being played out in thousands of letting-goes at hospitals and cemeteries and bedsides. All the pain “that only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself.”
You’ve seen it, haven’t you?
- The last words of a nurse dying from the coronavirus to his sister: “Can’t breathe. I Love You.”
- the 85-year-old man visits his wife of 60 years through the window of the memory care center. She has dementia, and sobs as he tries to explain to her that they can’t be together because of the c-virus.
- Exhausted first responders, medical professionals and aids –asleep on the floors and chairs of the hospitals where they serve – who aren’t able to be with their own families as they keep their patients alive…
- the woman who brings her dying husband home from the nursing home, because at least he will not be isolated and die alone and isolated because of
Some 2,000 years ago the Passion of Jesus Christ changed forever our understanding of who God is – one who loved us more than he loved himself. And, it challenges us to a new understanding of who WE are – called to mirror that same love. We might grouse about the impending stay at home order. It is an inconvenience. But it becomes a real sacrifice if we do it out of love for the other. It becomes one way that we, the people of God, can live the passion in our midst today – as we learn in all these moments how to love something more than oneself.