This passion Gospel just read in parts reveals a different sort of God – the God who endures betrayal, incarceration, and torture, the God who is moved by and weeps over the plight of humanity. God is the Rock of our salvation, but God is also a Rock who weeps.
But when we keep Jesus a little strange, maybe we can live more like Mary, opening ourselves to whatever extravagant gift an encounter with the living God might draw out of us. A gift we’ve not yet imagined, perhaps. A gift our rational, sense-making selves might rule out before it’s ever called forth.
We read these stories over and over again not because we think they’ll turn out differently but because we find ourselves in the stories and we get a glimpse in them of what we can bear.
Jesus taught that God isn’t waiting to wreak havoc on people who go astray, but there is an urgency to our lives, and we may have to change course to find the abundant life we were made for.
As we prayed Psalm 27 together this morning, the raw prayer of an individual became the raw prayer of our community. We all shared in prayer the deepest longing of our heart – to be in such intimate communion with God that we dare to seek the face of our Lord.