Though His coming was prophesied by Isaiah, the acclaiming crowd had no idea how He would save the city. In reality, they were expecting a King powerful enough to overthrow the occupying Roman forces.
They were wrong. They may have been clamouring but amid the noise there sits a silence which is almost uncomfortable. This poignant silence is not of hopelessness but rather a silence pregnant with possibilities. In the stillness before Calvary, we recognise the depth of God’s will acting in the life of Jesus. Interestingly, the Lord’s prayer according to Luke (Lk 11:2), makes no mention of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Instead, it is inserted into the Passion—“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless,let your will be done, not mine”. He went to the slaughter, not relying on His divinity. Instead, emptied of His divinity, He embrace our death in order that we may regain life eternal.
Perhaps it is no big deal that He should divest Himself of His divinity. For some, it is a fact, maybe a useless fact? For if it meant something, I suppose it could have been more impactful; perhaps evoking a bit more heart-wrenching regret on our part. Someone willingly laid down His life for our sins and naturally, we should, in gratitude, be moved to conversion. For example, the cathedral should be packed to the rafter every Sunday and not just for Holy Week/Easter or Christmas. Every Sunday the congregation should be like at Easter or Christmas. Sadly, closer to the truth is, it may be yet another fact which bears little consequence in the way some of us live, that is, if you judge the way some of us park our cars outside in the taman or honk at a driver who is slow on the way out of cathedral grounds. We have been getting a spate of irate home-owners who shout abuse at our Rela volunteers or the security guard for our inconsiderate parking. If not, some annoyed parishioners will give the Rela volunteers a hard time when exiting the compound.
Why are we unmoved by the sacrifice of Christ?
The answer is perhaps located in our self-sufficiency. We are a people confident of our achievements like “Malaysia Boleh”. We place our trust in the structures of our making. We are constantly tweaking the system to make it more perfect. Is that not why we have “new” this or “new” that with better formula, enhanced capability or improved engineering. And, the wealthier we are, the more secure we feel, the less we worry about salvation. In fact, an unspoken assumption today is that everything human, including our gender, is a social construct—all within our control to manipulate. We are who we want to be and we should be able to create society the way we want it. This is evident by our laws struggling to address this assumption.
The irony is, we, who have everything we need to be happy, we are still unhappy. In this vacuum of unhappiness, our book shelves are crammed with books that does nothing more than to shout the mantra that we are in effect our own saviours. We are saved by our own strength through the frameworks that we design. If only we can find the balance, that would be perfection. Furthermore, if not through structures or frameworks, then through our own efforts. Through self improvement, we should also arrive at perfection, which is another word for salvation. The very notion that someone has to save us definitely defaces the illusion that we are self-made.
Deep down, there is a brokenness over which we have no control and the wholeness we crave remains a Utopian project, a Sisyphean task that points to the need for a Saviour to come. Since we are enamoured of human capacity, He should come from our ranks. But unlike us, He must have the power to save us. So, we need a Saviour not only from within but also from without—a Saviour who is everything like us and yet, He alone has the power to save us from ourselves and to heal the brokenness we are.
If we want to avoid the mere motion of enduring yet another Holy Week, we seal these days with silence so that the gratuity of God’s divine condescension can manifest itself more clearly to us. Jesus did not cling to His equality with God but emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave. To appreciate this Man and the Saviour, we soak in the drama of a Man who loves us unconditionally; a Man for whom even stones would sing. We give Him time and space so that His suffering which saves may slowly embrace and envelop us, soothing our ache and satisfying our hunger. We embrace a silence which is not devoid of sound but rather a silence which is the absence of noise—both electronic and social media noises—thus giving Him time and space so that our heart will be moved, our spirit contrite and our soul repentant.
