But our God is more than a God of love. Our God is a God who is close to us, who shared our human life with us. We, on the other hand, silly and sinful and short-sighted beings that we are, fall short of God in wisdom, in goodness and in realizing the consequences of our actions. We are caught up in our own silliness. We have lost our way - and a lot of us don't even realize it. And God shares in that, too.
God, being God, knows that we have lost our way, and like a true shepherd comes to help us to be less silly, less sinful, less short-sighted. And God, being God, sees the consequences of our actions, the pain we cause ourselves, the pain we cause each other, and our own inability to escape from where we have got ourselves.
This pain is something we have become hardened to. The thick skin of our own sinfulness has anaesthetized us. We cannot see how bad we really are. But God can see. And God, who shares in our humanity, feels the pain we cause, and knows the agony it will cause us to change our ways.
From Palm Sunday to Good Friday, we meditate on the last few days of Jesus' life. In Jesus' death on the Cross, God's goodness came up against our sinfulness. And in his resurrection, God's goodness triumphed over all the pain, all the sin and all the agony.
The events which we look back upon during Holy Week portray God's love at work in the mess of our existence. Crowds welcome Jesus to Jerusalem. "Hosanna, save us now," they cry. Caiaphas and the Saducees seek his death. The Sanhedrin condemns him for being what he is. They turn him over to Pilate on specious charges of treason. Pilate unwillingly consents, for the crowds are now baying for blood: "Crucify him!" And, tortured and tormented, the son of God slowly strangles on a cross at Golgotha.
We call this the Passion. Passion in this sense means suffering. The Greek word it translates is only partly related to the other kind of passion. But if we look at Jesus during these events, we see God's love burning for us. Jesus prays for all who believe "that they may be in us, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you...so that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may believe that you have sent me, and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:21-23). Jesus invites his disciples to share his death by sharing bread and wine, and by sharing his death, to share also his risen life.
We share his precious death - precious is an old-fashioned word, carrying the sense both of costly to the giver, and of valuable to us. For Jesus' death lays open the pains and agonies of our short-sighted existence, so that in him and through the resurrection, we may share the life of God.
HD