Jack Hardaway
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Carried away.
Carried away with excitement. Joining in the excitement.
Carried away by events beyond our control.
Carried away by mob violence.
Carried away under arrest.
Carried away by the storm, by the darkness, washed away.
We all get carried away.
The city welcomes Jesus’ arrival as a King, there is so much excitement that even the stones are about to shout out! Creation is quivering.
Then carried away by betrayal, arrest, torture and capital punishment.
The Passion.
Jesus is carried away by forces that are beyond his control, the power of darkness has gathered and washes him away.
What is striking about the Passion in Luke’s Gospel is how Jesus responds.
He is carried away but he is not controlled.
He doesn’t strikeout, he doesn’t cry out that God has abandoned him.
Jesus’ identity as the Messiah is defined by his prayer of acceptance of God’s will, of trusting God, of prayer that is so intense that his sweat is like great drops of blood, like a fever.
And then the fever breaks, he accepts the cup that has been given to him and from then on he walks through the passion with fearless compassion.
Who he is and who we are to be is found only in prayer, fervent, feverish, anguished prayer.
In Luke the Passion is really more when Jesus prays than in the cross. When he prays for the cup to be taken away but then he accepts God’s will. That is the moment of victory and that experience of God is what carries him through.
Walking through the storm with fearless compassion.
He stops a mob from killing the Temple guards that have come to arrest him and take him to his death, he heals the wounded ear, he redirects the grief of the weeping women, he prays for forgiveness for those who crucify him, while being mocked on the cross he consoles the second thief on the cross, and his dying breath is a prayer of surrender.
In an uncivil world of hate and yelling and slander, he walks in peace, calming the storm, rebuking the wind, binding the broken.
He is free, free to choose to love. Jesus is setting us free to do the same.
The world is literally spinning out of control, darkness has literally flooded the world, and Jesus walks through the storm, an island of calm surrounded by the swirling hurricane of madness.
Choosing to love.
He is who is. The one who brings healing and freedom to a world of bondage and brokenness.
They can take his life, but they can’t take his soul. They can’t take away who is, who he chooses to be. He is free, and freedom chooses to love.
It is almost like Jesus is baiting the darkness, luring it out, out in the open, exposing it and then he carries it away.
It leaves us wondering.
Is it really the hour of darkness after all? Or is it the hour of God?
Set free to love. God’s freedom carries us away.