The Passion of the Christ

Jesus Christ died for us. We say these words so often. We sing it in our songs. We hear it from the pulpit almost every Sunday. They have become a part of our liturgy and creed. For many of us, these words have lost their meaning. They have lost their power. We have forgotten what it really means. We have forgotten what it took for Jesus to endure the agony of the cross. We have forgotten what God the Father went through as His only begotten Son hung there. We have forgotten what a mother who had spent 30 years raising her child felt as she looked on helplessly as the crowds had their way with Him.

Yet, every year, we are called to remember. This year on Good Friday, it is no different. Watching Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ at Putera Aman Assembly, I remembered again. Even though I wasn’t there on the streets of Jerusalem, nor ever was I on the windy slopes of Golgotha, I remembered the immense suffering and rejection that Christ went through. I cried. In my mind, I began to form images of my own possible futures; going through intensive chemotherapies and dying in pain on a bed in a hospital somewhere; crashing into the sea at hundreds of miles an hour before being engulfed by burning jet fuel; drowning in a tsunami; all these pale in comparison to what our Christ went through. I thought about the mission to Sarawak, about the difficulties that I may have to go through. It would be shameful if I were to label these slight discomforts as suffering, in light of the pain that was inflicted on Christ.

The three years of Christ’s ministry on earth were all about action, as Christ went about teaching, healing and redeeming the lost. In the final days that led to His crucifixion, His ministry was all about passion, as He was led where He would rather no go, mocked, scourged, pierced and killed. Both action and passion were for the glory of God. Our lives as Christians are filled with action. We want to do things for God. We want to do things for people. However, there will come a time when we will have no choice other than to be passive and let God lead us where we would rather not go. It is then, that others will do things to us, and things will happen to us that will be beyond our control. Persecution, rejection, pain, suffering, and finally death; these will be our passion. May our passion, just as our action, be for the glory of our God.