We begin the Holy Week as we journey with Jesus, we are walking into to power that God desires to place over our lives. Jesus enters into Jerusalem hailed as King, Son of David. As he enters to the hails of the people, he knows where the true power comes from. To enter into the fullness of His power he has the move toward Calvary. As we here the Hosannas and praises, we also listen to the cries of crucify him!
“Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord.
Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest.”
“But all together they shouted out,
“Away with this man!
Release Barabbas to us.”
Again Pilate addressed them, still wishing to release Jesus,
but they continued their shouting,
“Crucify him! Crucify him!”
True power and ability over our lives, like Jesus’, must come through the storms and challenges of life. Christ’s journey to Calvary becomes not only His strength, but the true power that comes over his life through the resurrection. Christ steps into the power of his glory of His own will and accord. As we journey with him through his suffering, passion and death we will rise with Him in the power that comes after, the Power of Resurrection.
Throughout our lives we find ourselves in storms, often times great challenges and obstacles that seem insurmountable. As we journey with Christ let us see in His path to Calvary and through it to His resurrection as a the source of our ability not to simply hang in there, but see it as the means to experience what God desires for us. What we go through is God forming and shaping us for what he has in store for us. We face the challenges of injustice, hatred and fear. These lead to despair, hopelessness but we must find in the journey of Jesus the source for our own strength, power and transformation. It is our formation and preparation to enter into the greatness God is shaping us for. It is our training ground, the place where like Christ we might desire the cup to pass us by, but we know we must allow God’s will to work through us.
We link our struggle for justice and equality, for healing, wellbeing and wholeness to the suffering of Christ. For we enter into the Power of His Resurrection over our lives only through a sharing in his suffering. “I want to know him in the power of His resurrection, I want to know him in fellowship of His suffering.” This is the means by which God’s greatness shapes our lives and that of those we serve. As Church we not only welcome those on the peripheries and on the margins, but we walk with them, stand with them and speak for them. We enter into and see in their struggle a means to their and our own transformation to open the doors and possibility of greatness.
As I look to the small mission at St. Joseph that was entrusted to me it initially seemed a daunting task. As I watched people leave, saw the and experienced the struggle, but each day in prayer and reflection, seeing the possibility of something greater that God has instore for us, only 18 months later see lives being transformed and changed. I see a community becoming a place of peace and lives being impacted by the love of God shown forth from this Island and place of hope. To see in our own very context the living passion, reaching out and seeking to share the love and power of Jesus Christ with us, it is here that we are strengthened and encouraged together to step into the power of the resurrection spoken over our lives.
