Making Sense of the Passion

Two weeks until Easter and I have a confession to make.  When I realized that next Sunday is Palm Sunday, I had the same thought I have most years.  I wondered how I might avoid standing through the long Gospel, the reading of the story of Jesus’ passion.  This man I like to think is my lord, my savior, and somehow my brother and companion is suffering humiliation, torture, and death, and I’m thinking of my discomfort.  I feel like a hell of a Christian.  But my psychology background comes to my rescue and tells me that my feelings are understandable; I’ve become desensitized.  Desensitization is a condition in which our brains do not process the stimuli received from our senses.  Old married couples talk about “selective hearing” for example; hearing the other’s voice so often, we stop paying attention.  Or when the first warm day of spring occurs, we go outside and feel the refreshment of the same warm air that we will soon not even notice as we become accustomed to it.

So here I am, wanting to walk with you through the next two weeks, the last two of Lent, our last chance to make something of Lent, and to share the most profound mystery of Christianity, and my senses fail me.  As I began to scan the Gospel for Sunday and felt this flat response inside myself, I felt the flatness, and felt too its contrast with the stirring stories of the last three weeks, the discourse with the woman at the well, the healing of the blind man, and the raising of Lazarus.

The thought came to me to bring these three along on the journey of thee next two weeks, so that they may guide me sensibly along this way to which I have become somewhat numbed by repetition.  I’ve given names to the first two. 

The Samaritan woman at the well I have named Atashaah, my best estimation of the word “thirst” in Arabic.  From her I will seek the senses of taste, smell, and hearing.  

The man born blind I have similarly named Mashad for “sight”, from whom I will seek that sense.  

We are already blessed with the name of Lazarus, from whom I will watch for awareness of touch. 

I know that I am lack what they have been so recently given by this same Jesus whose way seems out of reach of my own senses.  I pray this morning that in their company, I will enter fully this greatest mystery of Christianity with all of my senses at my service.