Our pastor on Palm Sunday said that people’s confusion over Jesus–so that they hailed Him with palms and soon thereafter demanded His crucifixion–was because they wondered, “Can a king who doesn’t act like a king be a king? Can a God who doesn’t act like a God be a God?”
It occurred to me that the same confusions are rampant today, and that this is precisely what the events we commemorate during Passion Week are all about. God is supposed to be an abstract philosophical proposition; here is a God who made Himself a tangible, material human being. God is supposed to be transcendent and glorious; here is a God who descends down into the depths, subjecting Himself to humiliation and suffering. God is supposed to punish sin; here is a God who forgives sin, atoning for it by taking into Himself the sins of the world and punishing Himself for them. God demands sacrifices from human beings; here is a God who sacrifices Himself for human beings. God is supposed to be far above the world of suffering, looking down upon it all; here is a God who bears the world’s evil and the world’s griefs. God is supposed to either exist or not exist; here is a God who died and rose again.
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