The Road To Golgotha

Yes You Are Worthy- Says The Lord

I went to the Vigil Mass this evening and got a preview of the Holy Week theme-this week's theme will be "sin." Thanks for the warning. I think I will visit with the Presbyterians again. The Priest argued that they would be hitting that one theme home all week just to underscore the point about the need for Mercy and the meaning behind the cross.

The head Pastor apparently didn't get the Memo on how Jesus answered the Centurion. Jesus said to the Centurion who lamented "Lord I am not worthy, but only say the word...." essentially saying- congratulations! You won the lottery! Your faith saved you- you got over yourself. Now I am going to heal everyone in your house. If only everyone else would look at me and get over themselves. Looking at Jesus and still doing the chest thumping mia culpa two thousand years later refusing to get over themselves and insisting everyone else doesn't get over their respective selves is the surest way I know how to miss the point of the Cross. If you get Him, you get over yourself already. You remember sin no more-not yours, not any one elses.

Palm Sunday is the day of the Joyous ride of the triumpant Jesus into the City of Jerusalem on a donkey in fulfillment of scripture. It is a celebration of his ministry of miraculous healing and driving out demons. It's the preview of Easter. It was before the betrayal, before the Passover last supper dinner, before he was set up with ridiculously false evidence and insane slander at a trial by Pilate. It was before he was condemned by people light years his lessers. The point about Jesus' trip to the Cross was more that he was purely innocent and so qualified as the atonement for our sins, and that ought to be the focus rather than an obsession with the sins.

I have a "Jews for Jesus" friend who won't become catholic for precisely this reason. The emphasis on the soul wrenching "I am so unworthy" negative affirmations keeps people in self loathing spiritual poverty. Either Jesus died and built the rope bridge to heaven knit with his own body and blood tied in love knots from here to eternity or he didn't. If he did, then stop obsessing on and focusing on everyone's sin including yours. He flatly did not come to condemn the world-not anyone- not even the lady caught in the sheets with someone else's husband. When people were trying to make her feel bad, guilty and condemned he stopped by simply noting that they were no better. So why do you want to remind people of their sin when Jesus doesn't remember it any more. Remember that old maxim- one finger pointed at someone means four pointed back at you? Our Sin is to Jesus as far as the East is from the West. So how dare you devote a week to remembering it. Jesus Remembered it no more. You want people to swim in it? Jesus doesn't have a dirty laundry pile. His blood washed it all borax fresh and clean. You want to obsess on what no longer exists? You don't get the meaning of the blood.
You want to curse the darkness -you will drive out all the light.

While going to Confession can be better than free therapy, it can also be promoted in an unbiblical way as a pre-requisite to salvation. Jesus never lined anyone up and said, OK folks- first before I save you or before I carry that cross up on the hill I am going to have to hear of all the bad things you did this week. Then I will absolve you of them. No. Jesus already knows everything anyone does and did, and he knows the state of their heart concerning it- He knows if people are being trash mouthed and slandered when they did not do things they are formally accused of, he knows if people did things that they regret. Getting one's conscience clear has no bearing on whether Jesus forgives people. He forgave the very people who strung him up (Father forgive them) without them ever asking for it.

Whosoever. Whosoever. Whosoever. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord and believes on his name will be saved. Whosoever. Doesn't matter whether you stood in line to stand in a closet to tell another priest or person of the things you wish went differently. Jesus knows your prayers before you utter them.