RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE … OR !

Who in his right senses would ever walk right in the enemy’s known ambush. You know that a snare has been laid for you, in a particular place, by certain people who have been shadowing you, for three whole years. You know that they mean to drag you with them and murder you. … and you walk right into their snare. I wouldn’t do it, you would certainly run away, even thousands of miles away from home. Yet, Christ did just that.

He purposely went to Jerusalem, where He knew what was waiting for Him. He knew the right moment when He was being handed over to his enemies, to the Jews. And that was the moment when Judas Iscariot left the Upper Room, after accepting the ‘sop’ from his Master, but before they had dined. For that reason Christ declared: “Now, has the Son of Man been glorified.”
“NOW…”, why now? Because Christ knew that Judas was going out to set the ball rolling, down the hill.

On gathering momentum, downhill, the ball becomes a boulder and it will end in an avalanche. Christ knew all this. He had accepted, out of love for mankind, and in obedience to His Father, with open eyes. Yes, the Son of Man has been glorified. Why, one might ask?

Those who gain glory, who merit glory, who deserve glory, whose name is engraved in gold for posterity, are those who sacrifice their lives and shed their blood in defense of others. Theirs is the glory. We welcome back those who survive, good luck to them and God bless them. But the glory is shared by those who are buried in the soil, in some unknown place. Even though we might never know their names. Theirs is the glory for all eternity.

Christ’s road to glory started when the Iscariot decided to sell Him for thirty pieces of silver. In the process, Christ gave glory to the Father, in His submission to the Father’s wish. The Father’s invisible love has been made visible in Christ, God’s love has been manifested in Christ.

Another point to consider in this Gospel Text is Christ’s Testament to His disciples. He started by calling them: “Little children….” I suppose most of His Apostles were of the same age of Jesus, or even older. Yet He called them, ‘little children’. We have to keep in mind the customs and culture of those days. Christ, in all probability was meeting His friends for the last time, so what He had to tell them, He did right now. He was orally giving out, dictating His last Testament. Imagine a dying father on his death-bed, surrounded by his children and giving out his last admonitions, his final advices. Within short he will not see them anymore. It’s now or never.

The same was with Christ, and He did give them one last commandment. Now we say commandment, because it was a ’command’, it was not an opinion or suggestion. They were taxed, were obliged, they were bound to follow His command. HE commanded them to ‘love each other as I have loved you’. The urgency of this commandment is such that we find it repeated over and over again in chapter 15.

Have you ever realized that in those days, no existing culture was ever built on ‘love’? Christ’s idea to build, to launch a religion, a culture, a way of life built on ‘love’ was something unheard of before. It was a new concept. And not simply on love, He did tell them ‘as I loved you’.

Here we have the gist of the so-called ‘Beatitudes’. Of course HE was so right to call the poor in spirit, the meek, the persecuted, the sick, all those who suffer, “Blessed”. It was part of their existing culture to look down upon those who were poor, persecuted, widows, orphans, the meek, the sick, as people who were punished by God. Now Christ is telling them ‘Happy for you’, ‘Blessed are you.’ That is the type, the kind of love Christ had in mind when He commanded His Apostles to love each other. The face of God is MERCY.

Very probable that some of His Apostles expected to hear from their Master that they were going to inherit the power of raising people from the dead, performing miracles, just as He did during His stay with them. No, His legacy was of ‘loving each other as He did love them.’ These other things were, in time, added to them.
Those who love one another on earth will be the creators of each other, because they will be revealing God to each other.