“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” – John 3:16-17 NLT
The Chosen has captivated so many of us, as we imagine the likeness of our Savior, and the people in biblical pages that have become palpably real friends to us. My cheeks often wet as I watch, the common denominator of joy in the life of Jesus is undeniably rich, wonderous, and alluring like no other pull I have ever experienced in life. How? Why? What? Questions implore my mind to excavate the Bible for myself, daily in the quiet of the morning, to experience the Living God speak timely truth into my life. But I won’t be able to watch The Chosen's depiction of the crucifixion, no matter how wonderfully done, I'm sure it will be. I know myself too well.
Holy Week is emotional. The touchiness of my tears begins alongside Lent, and every year older I become, the sacrifice Jesus made for me becomes harder to digest and impossible to watch. John 3:16 is the hallmark verse of the Christian faith, but the day it speaks of isn’t my favorite day to celebrate. My favorite day is Christmas, celebrating Christ’s birth – God’s arrival on earth. This day is full of hope, wonder, and a choir of angels singing to shepherds …the symbolism of which I’d rather write about for days …and have! But Easter is the Super Bowl of our story, not Christmas. Though without the virgin birth of Christ, John wouldn’t have penned Chapter 3, verse 16, it is in the stretch of those words that the gravity of our existence comes to pass.
Why Is it So Hard for Us to Witness Pain?
The importance of the one who wrote John 3:16 should never be lost. God is incredibly detailed and never coincidental. John was Jesus’ best friend. He was there until the end, at the cross, as Jesus died after the others had deserted Him. One of the last things Jesus did was to ask John to care for his mom. Oh, the sweetness of our Savior’s humanity. Imagine losing your best friend. Many of us can. We’ve been through the painful journey of loss this side of heaven, to a soul who was so especially entwined with ours they can never be replaced, and the thought of them brings fresh emotion to the surface. John’s best friend was the Messiah …the Christ. A close encounter with Christ brings us to our knees in unspeakable emotion – John walked with Him, literally in His presence. He actually hugged Him, as so many of us look forward to. The intense fulfillment and peace of His presence made the loss that much more permeable. John wrote these words as someone who had witnessed God in the flesh- and gotten to know Him as a friend …a best friend. It rips my heart out.
Entertainment and the arts have always reached in to touch our hearts and captivate our minds and imaginations, whether we are seeking to escape reality, or make something …or someone…we’ve never seen in real life come alive as we watch a movie or a well-written, biblically accurate depiction of the Savior of the world. Of all of the gifts God has woven into our core, empathy is the trickiest, isn’t it? Emotions can leap off a screen, and the first notes of a song can bring us to tears. God knows this. He made us this way. He is this way. Empathetic, compassionate, deep, stirring, and creative. He is loving, righteous, and funny. Read the Bible. There are some great zingers in there if you pray for them to pop off the page. It is our empathy- the tender hearts God has laid in our chests- that makes it so hard to watch and witness pain.
Why Does Jesus’ Pain Bother Us?
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16
My daughter came home from YoungLife this week, and recalling her leader’s talk, she said the story of this verse hit her in a new way. “I know how much I love my son,” the leader spoke, “and as much as I love you guys, I would never trade him for you.” YoungLife is the most incredible display of Christ’s love on this earth that many will ever witness, yet all of the love we can muster doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of love that would make a sacrifice like that. A love that would carry the cross to the finish line for His Father’s plans. It’s actually insane. “Until then,” my daughter continued, “Jesus never experienced the separation from the Father like we do …”
Jesus feels our pain, and we feel His, to a certain extent. We can’t filter our emotions as the spotless Lamb of God can, but God built our minds with mirror neurons, the scientific way to explain why we literally feel what others feel. Empathy. Mine is in overdrive, scientifically, as a genetically Highly Sensitive Person built with more than the average mirror neurons in my brain …but also on account of my love for Jesus. The more we love someone, the harder it is to watch them suffer in any way.
We Are Not Able to Shoulder Pain as Jesus Did
Jesus shouldered our pain, literally. He carried His own cross …literally and figuratively. I can’t watch it. It’s the one thing I really can’t relate to. I am incapable of making the same sacrifice He did, and I know it. It blows me out of the water trying to wrap my mind around the pain He voluntarily walked through. I complain of aches and pains resulting from average aging. He felt all of our pain at the same time …willingly. How could a good God let bad things happen? This is often what we question when things in our lives fail to navigate a roundabout correctly. We feel despair, hopelessness, and anguish. The sorrow in our souls on this side of heaven is too heavy to carry. Today, I am sure Jesus Himself dragged me out of my bed. I did not want to do today. Yesterday was too hard. The string of days leading up to yesterday was impossible. I knew today would be no different. Why did Jesus drag me out into another minefield? My morning devotion smacked the answer onto my forehead:
“Come to me with your gaping emptiness, knowing that in Me you are complete …rejoice on those days when you drag yourself out of bed, feeling sluggish and inadequate.” (Life in His Presence, Sara Young.)
He meets us right where we are. Unmistakenly. From the cross all the way to our daily minefield. He is as faithful to us individually today as He was on the first Good Friday. Tormented by physical pain, mental anguish, hatred of those who cheered Him into the city just 7 days earlier, and abandonment by His Father on the cross. Jesus chose that fate for us. It wasn’t easy. He was fully human. Fully God …but fully human. Physical pain causes us to ball up under the covers. It pulls the rug out from underneath us. Mental anguish is a growing companion in our daily lives, compounded by the information age, shelling us with more than the empathy we’ve been allotted can process.
Why Did People Hate Jesus?
I can’t watch the depiction of people hating Jesus. They spat on Him, called Him names, and let their rage carry over into physical violence. People hated Him because He represented the truth, and they didn’t want to hear it. He upset the status quo, and the leaders freaked out about losing any bit of control. He exposed the sin in all of us and the hopeless plight of ever escaping it.
People called Him names, lied about Him, and cheered because He was in pain. His friends deserted Him one by one, and then His Father. No way I could survive an ounce of what He took on that day. I hate having enemies, coping only with the truth of God’s word, instructing us to pray for them, pointing to the comforting reality that He knew we would have them. Jesus Himself prepared us to be hated for loving Him. (And for just ruining relationships out of our sinful nature, which is no less painful.) If you follow Jesus for any amount of time, people start to get under your skin …you begin to really love them, beyond explanation, and even when they bother you. Jesus loves people and charged us to do the same, so it’s the natural result as we follow Him through life. Loving people makes it hard to watch cruelty …towards anyone. It begins to shatter our hearts as His does when one person …the least of people …is suffering. I can’t bear to watch.
Jesus Was Alone for a Moment, So We Would Never Be Alone.
The moment Jesus hung on the cross is a brutal picture of all-encompassing pain and abandonment. Is there any pain greater than loneliness to those of us who have sat in a lonely season of life? Being misunderstood qualifies – it may be the loneliest of the lonlies.
On this day that I dragged myself out of bed, I just did one thing. I made coffee and sat down to pray and read the Bible. And miraculously, I’m still typing into the late hours of the night, reveling in the way He truly did help me persevere through another really difficult day. It was another minefield, filled with tears, worry, overwhelm, and more fires than I had water to put out. John 3:17 says,
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
This minefield of a day …of a season …that’s honestly lasted a few years …is what Jesus died on the cross for. When we are in pain, He actually feels it - before we tell Him, turn to Him, or ask for help. Some days, my prayers are just frustrated tears. He somehow understands, but it’s nothing compared to what He did.
My late grams, my favorite person ever to walk this earth, used to say, “Do what you fear.” I trusted her wisdom because the church hymns she sang still echo throughout my mind, reminding me why we can do the things we fear …and why we should do them. Jesus died so we would live life to the full, not in fear. She lived through the Great Depression, orphaned by the age of 12, and separated from her siblings. She loved her family, and she was the most generous, loving person I have ever known. When we lean into the pain, choosing to trust God with the life He so carefully crafted and intimately loves, we persevere. We don’t always get the immediate relief we crave, but we receive something better – Jesus, Himself. Grams knew that. Late in her years, telling me old stories and watching Golden Girls was enough for her …and me, too. But as I grow older, the pain she persevered through, which I never realized until long after she was gone, comes into focus as I grow older, myself.
What Are the Stations of the Cross, and Why Are They Important?
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” – 2 Corinthians 5:21
Good Friday is a great time to walk through the stations of the cross, which meditatively commemorate each solemn event of Jesus' crucifixtion. Each step towards the sacrifice Jesus made is important to meditate on. (Click here for more details about the Station of the Cross.)
Paul wrote the above verse, probably in pain, prison, or while being persecuted. The truth of the Bible is woven divinely by people who knew what it was like to lean on (literally, in some cases) Christ and persevere. There is no richer gain. As I sit here at the end of this minefield of a day, which has now bled into the next, I am overcome with emotion because of how faithful our God is. How real Jesus is.
I cannot watch the crucifixion. It’s too personal to me. As much as I love to immerse myself in the possible reality of what it was like to be near Jesus via watching The Chosen, I'm afraid watching the crucifixion will be too hard. It’s immensely more painful to meditate on what He went through that day, knowing who He is. He is my best friend. Some days, my only friend, it feels. We’ve all been there. Life can be lonely and isolating. But simultaneously, it’s riddled with joy, blessing, love, and laughter. Today, I persevered through a day littered with minefields, yes, but also teeming with hope. The notes of reconciliation were being sung over a friendship I thought was forever lost. Medical tests revealed nothing but the normal process of aging. The forward progress of a full day’s work. The connections with the people God has placed in my life. Phone calls and texts back and forth with friends – two smiling teenage daughters drifting off to sleep amidst their own minefields (which contribute to mine) …a warm home, and a home-cooked meal. Time. I prayed God would stretch my minutes today, and He did.
Holy Week is an emotional rollercoaster for me. Perhaps it is for you, too, as you grow through life alongside the Savior of the Universe. My best friend, undoubtedly, who sits with me in my sadness and ensures I never miss a note of joy in the easy or the hard, the ups or the downs. In my mess, He is my friend. Not waiting for me to be better, but loving me as is. I don’t have to explain myself …He knows me. (And as a parent of two teens, not having to explain things is a miraculous blessing. The word count is high around here in this season.)
I can’t watch the crucifixion. From Christmas to Easter, I know Him. So deeply. The miracle of God is that we can walk with Him our entire lives, and like the unknown depths of the ocean, so is the Living God. The crucifixion may be hard to watch, but it was, oh, so temporary. The heartbreaking reality of that moment dissipated as Jesus walked out of the grave alive. He is still …alive. Get to know Him, and He’ll show you.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/ Alex Noriega
