The “Prelude” To Easter

FRI., APR. 21, 2000, 6:14 AM
FARM, STUDY

Last evening you were part of a long commemoration of the events that are remembered as Maunday Thursday. My life as the living, preaching, teaching, healing Jesus was soon to end. I was to be betrayed, and the testimony about Me would “push Me” toward crucifixion. But then I’d say that this was all “meant to be,” and I was doing My part, by words and actions to insure the verdict.

I’ll comment on your stated wonder – what if it had happened “another way”? The most dramatic “alternative,” of course, would have been to let the execution proceed, and then when someone yelled, “Come down from the cross!” I would have miraculously disengaged from the nails and stood among them, proclaiming, with now evident authority, that I was the Messiah, the King of the Jews.

What would the Jewish “leaders” have done then? Would I have publicly forgiven them and invited them to be with Me in My spiritual “kingdom”? But would I then have never been appealing to the larger and more diverse Gentile population? It seemed clear to Me that while I preached of the oneness of humanity there were “differences” between Jews and Gentiles that even such a miracle couldn’t bridge. And I knew, of the diversity of people and religions in “the rest of the earth”… beyond that small portion of the Middle East where this Biblical story unfolded.

You see, My love for diversity in this earth is greater than My love for oneness, harmony, and peace. As Jesus I had great powers, and, though unheralded, I, as Holy Spirit also had powers. This whole “story” could have been resolved without violence, but… don’t you see… the violence was necessary for the vitality of the situation. We considered the “coming down from the cross” story and decided that the more important “message” would be the “suffering servant” Who died for the sins of the world. It was the ultimate sacrifice of earth life, but not as a direct and blatant suicide.

Remember also that, while the story can be told as factual (and there is pretty good agreement among the Gospel story-tellers) it is, finally and basically, mystical. How could My death, by crucifixion on a trumped up charge, agreed to be Pilate, in an effort to “keep the peace,” be a propitiation for your sins, for the sins of all in your family, for the sins “of the world”? It makes no rational sense that one heroic act could “cover” for all of the sins, minor to major, in the earth, then, now, and in the future. Yet My “place” in spiritual history is assure by this both tangible and mystical event… suffering and dying on a cross.

Last evening was the remembrance of the “prelude” to the arrest, the judgment, the trudge to Golgotha, and the nails through hands and feet. Symbolically, at 3 this afternoon I will have given up My life as Jesus, the living, breathing human. My body shall be taken down from the cross, prepared for burial, and left in an earthen tomb, sealed with a great stone.

I failed in My Mission. My disciples have denied Me and began to scatter. All seems lost. The hours between My death, this afternoon, and My resurrection, on Sunday morning, is sometimes called “dead time.” The remembrance of My “losing out” has come and gone. Now, soon, My body is in the tomb. The “natural” story has been completed.

You see, “this story” has, within it, the act of sacrifice, and this must be recognized, in the midst of the realism. The mystical element is that I was BOTH put to death for insurrection, in an unstable community, AND I offered My Life as a sacrifice for the sins of “them”, including the unworthy Jews, and of you. The sacrifice was made… might as well accept it!

Aloha
7:16 AM