IN WRITING a reflection on this Sunday’s gospel (Mark 9:30-37), it could have been much easier to focus on humility and servant leadership, as contained in Jesus’ own words towards the end of the text, “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”
That could have been both timely and interesting, and shall I add, easier. But knowing that many will zero in on this subject, I’ve decided to explore instead the road less traveled – the first part of this gospel which speaks of Jesus’ suffering and death.
Jesus taught his disciples, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death he will rise.”Reading further we see that Jesus’ disciples did not understand what he said, and that they were afraid to question him.
Today, about 2,000 years later, Jesus the Son of Man, has indeed been handed over and killed, but as what the Lord has said, he rose again on that beautiful Easter Sunday. The question is, “In our time, are we any different from the first disciples who did not understand why all these had to happen?”
We were told, we have heard, and we have read, that Jesus had to offer his life to save us from our sins and to give us eternal life. Yet has this knowledge in our heads transcended into understanding in our hearts?
Many of us now ask, boldly but reverently, “Why did all these have to happen? Was there no other way by which God could save us? Why would a powerful, loving Father allow his only Son to suffer a gruesome, bloody death, to accomplish his purpose?”
An answer to one of the questions is that, of course, there were other ways that God could have used for our salvation. After all, everything is under his dominion and control. He could have simply willed it, and would happen. He could have just spoken a word, just as he did when he created the world, and it will come to pass.
But no, God the Father chose, from the very beginning, to implement his plan of salvation, not as the world thinks it should be, but as how God has decided it should be. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,” says the Lord, “nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
The answers to our questions must be found in the nature of God himself, first and foremost, that he is a God of love. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 5:13). In offering his Son, God proved his love for us by giving us his very best. “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him (Romans 8:32)?”
We know that suffering entered the world because of sin. The serpent, the devil, wanted to usurp God’s power, and so he tempted the best of God’s creation – man. Man fell because he succumbed to the devil’s deception on power.
God, who is most powerful, could have defeated the devil in his game – by using power to combat power. Yet God chose to fight on higher ground. He decided to fight evil with good, and he won. As St. Paul writes, Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good” (Romans 12:21), and “Love does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:6-7).
Through one man, Adam, sin and the consequence of sin which is death came into the world. Through another man, Jesus, truly Man and truly God, redemption was won, and eternal life, restored (see 1 Corinthians 15:21-22).
In Jesus, God’s justice, which demands a penalty for our sins, was satisfied, but he satisfied it through love. “For our sake God made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is just as what Isaiah has foretold, “Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured. We thought of him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).
And so, going back to our basic question, why did Jesus choose the way of suffering and death? The answer: Because of his immeasurable love for you and me.
Isn’t that awesome?