CowPi Journal

I saw the movie, The Passion of the Christ.

I was not going to comment on it, but…

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Do you have a bumper sticker on your car? I don’t. Never found one that perfectly expressed my attitude or opinion.
Do you remember those bumper stickers a couple of years ago that read, “Shit Happens”?
I always thought that statement was mildly amusing because of its comment on how things tend to happen in life, especially if one leans toward perfectionism. The world is not perfect. Things are always getting messed up, especially when dealing with people. Nothing is ever neat and tidy and clean. Life is messy.
But where life is messy, there is, after all, life. And where there is life, there is always hope. And where there is hope, there is God.
I would like to see a new bumper sticker. I want it to read, “Life Happens”.
I’d put that bumper sticker on my car.

Michael at Mystic Cowboy posted the following quote called “Which Christ?” from a Daily Dig from Burderhof:

There is the Christ portrayed in The Passion [a reference to Mel Gibson’s movie], which has caused an international stir with its brutality and controversy. But there is also the Christ of the four Gospels, who works in quiet humility and does not make headlines. This Jesus doesn’t persuade or manipulate: he wants voluntary servants. He does not draw us to him with images of agony. He says, “Come, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest,” and “Whoever drinks the water I give shall never thirst.” His good news is free and belongs to every person who is willing to accept it. It is a gift to all, and it cannot be paid for with a ticket.

— Johann Christoph Arnold

I like this quote. I thought of posting it myself. The author is reminding us that there is more to Jesus than just His sacrifice at The Cross.

Then I read David M.’s comment:

…The Passion Addicts miss the point of Jesus’ teachings and life. What kind of a God needs blood sacrifice? Not the God that Jesus talked about. Something is terribly wrong with most so called Christians interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’ life.

This comment irritated me. I understand that some people do not like the movie. That is their freedom. I am not going to defend the movie. (I have not seen it yet.) It is, after all, just a movie. It is a powerful, moving movie for some, and a revolting scene of blood and violence for others. The movie is someone’s interpretation, and any discussion of the movie must keep that in mind. BUT that is not the point of this post.

David’s comment irritates me because it implies a misunderstanding of the sacrifice of The Cross. I posted the following reply:

David, you are correct that the teachings of Jesus are important, but they are pointless without framing them within what happens on the Cross and His resurrection.

“Which Christ?” is a type of question that tries to de-construct Jesus. You have to accept *all* of Jesus and His message, not the bloodless parts that you like.

You ask a good question—did God need a blood sacrifice? I particularly don’t think that God *needed* one. But I ask you, why did Jesus willing choose to sacrifice Himself for us in that manner?

In all honesty, I barely understand or comprehend Jesus’ sacrifice myself. The Cross is a mystery that I am trying to workout for myself. I do know that to ask why God demanded the death of His son is to frame the question in such a manner as to point the search into a fruitless orchard. The question, at least for me, needs to be framed in why did Jesus sacrifice Himself for us?

Scripture hints to why. Jesus said that for one to lay down his life for another is the highest form of love. (God is love.) He also said that one must loose his life in order to live. Jesus also followed God’s will in such a radical way. He trusted God completely and wholely. He knew that His death was going to be painful and humiliating. He trusted in God that everything, in the end, would turn out for the best. Jesus knew, as Nouwen writes, “Instead of a final irrevocable end [to his ministry], his death became the beginning of a new life. Indeed, his yes enabled him to trust fully in the rich harvest the dying grain would yield.” It is through the humanity of Jesus that we are saved. (See my posts The Cups of Sorrow and Joy and Can You Drink the Cup? for more background.)

I am familiar with the traditional line of reasoning. He had to die so that He could be resurrected. It is in the Resurrection that He destroyed death so that we may live. So that we may live in Him, through Him, for Him. He paid our toll into heaven, because the price is impossible for us to pay. “Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28). (See the poem by Charles Péguy about a judging father, I Am Their Father.)

I feel like I am circling the heart of the matter. I need to dive into it, except that I am not sure how to hold this mystery, how to live this mystery. I need to accept it within my heart as my narrative, not that of the Church.

Finished reading The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. This is one of those books that I kept hearing about here and there. Mea was the last impetus needed to finally read it. It’s a pretty darn good book as fiction goes. It makes you think. I highly recommend it. Here are some quotes that caught my attention:

No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river. (p. 10)

People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solice is meaningless. (p. 35)

This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for. (p. 35)

The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed. (p. 48)

Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know. (p. 49)

No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. (p. 50)

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down. (p. 57)

Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning. (p. 91)

Sacrifice, you made one. I made one. We all make them. But you are angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost… You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something you regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to care of her sick father. (p. 93)

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else. (p. 94)

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhood completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair. (p. 104)

You have peace when you make it with yourself. (p. 113)

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move away. The moments that used to define them—a mother’s approval, a father’s nod—are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives. (p. 126)

Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves. (p. 141)

People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. (p. 155)

Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive. (p. 165)

Life has to end. Love doesn’t. (p. 173)