Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter
by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me,
a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength
that comes from God”.

(2 TIMOTHY 1:8)

Today, among many of us churchgoers, there is growing propensity to self-protect rather than risk crucifixion for the world. We are well-intentioned in this, but, good intentions notwithstanding, our actions are the opposite of Jesus. He loved the world enough to let himself be crucified rather than self-protect. 

Jesus’ disciples were forever trying to protect him from various groups they deemed unworthy of his presence, and Jesus was forever clear that he didn’t need or want to be protected. 

More importantly, his disciples were also trying to protect him against persons and things they deemed as threats to him. What was Jesus’ response to this effort at protection? We have his words: no more of this! But we don’t have the tone of those words. Were they spoken in anger, as sharp reprimand? Were they spoken in frustration, recognizing that Peter, the rock, the future pope, had so badly misunderstood his message? Or were they spoken in that sad tone a mother uses when she tells her children to stop fighting even as the resignation in her voice betrays the fact that she knows they never will? Whatever the tone, the message is clear that his followers didn’t understand one of the central things about their master: Jesus had spent his entire ministry healing people, including healing diseased ears so that people might hear again. And, on his last night on earth the leader of his apostles cuts off the ear of someone in an attempt to protect him.
 

Everything about Jesus speaks of vulnerability rather than self-protection. He was born in a manger, a feeding trough, a place where animals come to eat, and he ends up on a table, ‘flesh for the life of the world,’ to be eaten up by the world (JN 6:51). The first words out of his mouth call for metanoia, the opposite of paranoia. In the end, he gives himself over to crucifixion rather than to self-protection. That was Jesus’ response to a world that grossly misunderstood him and violently mistreated him. He opened his arms in vulnerability rather than closed his fists in self-defense. 

Ideally, that’s how we should respond when the world is unfair to us. Unlike Peter, who failed to remember Jesus’ message and instinctively struck with his sword, don’t let threats erase what was central to Jesus’ teaching by responding in a manner antithetical to the gospel, hostility for hostility, immaturity for immaturity” (14-15).