Passion Week

There is a part of me that really doesn’t like passion week. While it is a beautiful story of a God’s love for his children, so great that he would send and sacrifice his own, I just have a hard time with it. I hate to admit that I am the reason that Jesus died. From my own self-righteous, humanistic approach, I don’t like the dependency that it causes. For without God, I am truly nothing. Without him, I have no gifts, no abilities, NO LIFE. It is easy to look at the cross and say, “yep, Jesus had to come and die for their sins because they keep on sinning.” For those people. But me, He died for me? This realization causes a response on my behalf that I am not sure if I am comfortable with. It cause me, well it humanly obligates me to do something out of response. If someone took a bullet for me, I would no doubt do whatever it took for the rest of my life to ensure their happiness. However, someone took 4 nails and a spear to the side for me, took on hell itself, will ultimately crush Satan, and here I stand like this is no big deal. I cannot simply blame my sinful nature, because even my sinful human nature would respond differently than I have if a friend today did all that just so that I could have life. It just doesn’t make sense, and that is what makes passion week a bit uncomfortable to me. The crucifixion of Christ was not necessary. He didn’t have to do it. But he did! He died for me, for us, and for all the crap that we would do so that he could make up for it with his own sweat, his own blood, and his own tears. And here we are living our comfortable lives like it’s no big deal, just a free pass to heaven. This makes me uncomfortable.