Hindsight helps in understanding Christ’s passion
If Jesus’ disciples had foreseen what tragedy awaited him by the end of the week, would they have been as giddy as they surrounded him on the “triumphant” journey down the Mount of Olives that day?
“That day” is what Christians know as Palm Sunday.
We know what the disciples didn’t. Still, our hindsight doesn’t prevent us from waving palm branches and singing “Hosanna” as we come into sanctuaries tomorrow morning.
Our hindsight extends beyond the crucifixion to Jesus’ resurrection. In fact, we often tend to “go directly to Easter, do not pass through crucifixion.”
Our entire faith, our entire belief system, is built on hindsight. We depend on the past to see what is important enough to us in the present that we can trust our futures to that faith.
Ironically, we all fall victim to the seductiveness of “selective hindsight.” We choose what to believe, what “fits” into our broader – though not deeper – belief system. This may be what, in fact, separates us from Jesus in the most elemental ways.
The Gospels tell what Jesus did and who he was. They describe a man totally after God’s own heart.
Our pursuits of God are not so single-minded. We are far more distracted by the other agendas of our lives. Safety, face-saving and control of others come to mind as just a few examples.
Gladys was an 89-year-old member of a church I served in 1979. She was a loving, gracious woman who also prided herself in knowing the Bible as “the literal word of God.”
One day, we were in a meeting together. She asked me, “Paul, do you believe in the virgin birth?”
My response was simple: “Gladys, I put as much emphasis on the virgin birth as Jesus and Paul did.”
As I recall, she gave me a satisfied smile, thanked me, and we went to another topic. I didn’t remind her that Jesus and Paul never mentioned the virgin birth one way or another.
She apparently didn’t know that. Her passion for believing the Bible literally didn’t push her to study it as completely as one might think a lover of the Bible would do.
I might have thought less generously of her for that gap in her knowledge if she wasn’t – as I mention above – a loving, gracious woman. Her knowledge gap was secondary to how she lived her life.
Having said this, I must also say that we miss some of the richness of the Christian faith when we don’t explore more of the hindsight information we have at our disposal. What’s more, we can unintentionally misrepresent that faith when we exercise more selective hindsight than we should.
Case in point: Passion Week is the traditional time when we remember the last days of Jesus’ physical life. Palm Sunday to Easter is the most dramatic time in the Christian tradition. Some Christians’ entire belief system is based on this week.
Yet there are gaps in that belief system because we don’t explore all of the hindsight available to us. When we skip over those gaps or just ignore them, our hindsight faith becomes even more myopic than it needs to be.
For example: We usually think of the “Passion of Christ” to mean his “suffering” during Passion Week, Holy Week. It does mean that. But it also means a great deal more. In “The Heart of Christianity,” Marcus Borg describes it much better than I could:
“The death of Jesus – his execution – was because of his passion for God and God’s justice. And because we see Jesus as the revelation of God, we see in his life and death the passion of God. He discloses both the character and passion of God.”
For me, this deeper hindsight into Passion Week means that the entire reason for Jesus dying on the cross includes – but goes beyond – the traditional phrase “Jesus died for our sins.” I will explore this more in my next column.
To be a post-Easter Christian means we must both extend and deepen our pre-Easter hindsight faith. This hindsight can help us more fully understand both the historic, crucified Jesus and the post-Easter Christ who embodies the radical hospitality of God.
Inclusive hindsight can show us where we fit in as representatives of both.