In the few days that remain before the suffering and death that await him in Jerusalem, Jesus spends time with those he loves, visiting with his close friends in Bethany. Of all the people around him, Mary alone seems to recognize something of the significance of Jesus’ approaching death, and to want to honour it in whatever way she can. She alone wants to do something for Jesus, rather than expecting anything more from him, this man who had been so moved by her tears and who had returned her brother to life. She does something beautiful for Jesus while she has him with her, preparing his body for its inevitable death, a death that ultimately will gather into one all the scattered children of God, a death that will bring everlasting life to all who turn to him in faith.
The apostle Paul also recognized the significance of Jesus’ death and the resurrection that followed. More that that, he recognized the wonder of the man who died then rose again, when that man met him on the road to Damascus and took hold of his life and transformed it by calling him into a whole new way of living.
Paul had been born into very favourable circumstances which gave him a good social position from the start. He then made the most of it in terms of the qualifications and connections he acquired while developing his career. He had a lot to be proud of as he lived blamelessly according to the religious code that he subscribed to. He thought he was in good standing with God as he did all that he had been taught was expected from him.
Then Paul met Jesus the Risen Christ, and everything changed, most of all his way of understanding his own life. He hadn’t known how lost he was until he found himself in the person of the Christ, who brought him into right relationship with God as Paul placed his trust in Jesus.
Paul seems to have been an all-or-nothing sort of man. Previously, he had decided that the Christian way was a threat to those who wanted to live righteously as observant Jews, and so he zealously pursued Christians in order to persecute them, trying to eliminate what he thought of as a heretical sect. After his conversion, Paul pursued the way of Christ with equal zeal but renewed understanding, enduring all manner of hardships in his efforts to support and encourage the persecuted and struggling Christian community.
I think Paul would have appreciated the following, from Rowan Williams (Resurrection):
The crucified is God’s chosen: it is with the victim, the condemned, that God identifies, and it is in the company of the victim, so to speak, that God is to be found … We are, insistently and relentlessly, in Jerusalem, confronted with a victim who is our victim. When we make victims, when we embark on condemnation, exclusion, violence, the diminution or oppression of anyone, when we set ourselves up as judges, we are exposed to judgement, and we turn away from salvation. To hear the good news of salvation, to be converted, is to turn back to the condemned and rejected, acknowledging that there is hope nowhere else.
… The tradition made it clear that Jesus offered no ‘violence’ to any who turned to him in hope: he accepts, he does not condemn, resist or exclude. His life is defined as embodying an unconditional and universal acceptance, untrammelled by social, ritual or racial exclusiveness.
Paul’s entire motivation from the moment of his conversion was to come to know this Jesus the Christ and to experience him as life-giving Spirit within, not only through the power of his resurrection but also in the closeness with him that Paul felt in his suffering. Paul disregarded all that had motivated him before as he stretched himself forward to take hold of that for which Christ had taken hold of him.
Writing to the Philippian church from prison close to his own death, Paul’s expressed hope of becoming like Christ in his death is understandable. Paul embodied the oft-quoted precept in our Rule of St Benedict, written so many years later: The love of Christ must come before all else … Prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.
And so, as we journey towards Holy Week, what hospitality might we offer to Jesus when he visits with us on his way to Jerusalem? What beautiful act of kindness might we do for him when he comes to us in whatever form?
The poor we will always have with us, those who struggle with the conditions of life as they experience it. How might we respond to that reality, if we are able to recognize Christ hidden among them in our day?