Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent - April 13, 2019
Have
you ever felt pressured into doing something that you knew probably was not in
the best interests for you, your family, or your loved ones? Or maybe you said or did something that you
knew you were doing just because it was the easiest solution, or you were only
going along with the flow. Surely, at
one point or another, you have been in a setting where you did not have the
loudest voice in the room. Whether it be
at the office or in a large group, being heard is not always the easiest thing
to accomplish. Or maybe you are the type
of person that is not as outspoken as everyone else is, so things you feel are
sometimes left unsaid.
In
today’s gospel, I get the sense that there were many who probably knew that the
right thing to do was to follow and have faith in Jesus Christ. Leading up to this gospel passage, Jesus had
been caring for the poor, healing the sick, and he had just raised Lazarus from
the dead. However, there were those that
were scared, timid, or just plain to cowardly to fully believe and have faith in
Jesus Christ. Even the high priest,
Caiaphas, the elected person for the Jews, the person who was given the power
of voice, took the easy way out. The
easy thing to do was to give Jesus up to the Romans, sell him out, and keep on
living day-to-day, keeping the status quo.
It goes
without saying, the times were different, and the situation was dire. The Jews had to choose to either buy into
Jesus Christ and explain themselves to the Romans or turn a blind eye and let
the Romans do what they wished with him.
Jesus was a disrupter and the Romans could not allow such disruption in
their kingdom, especially from a man who was called “King.”
Ultimately,
the easy thing to do was to keep the status quo and give him up.
Honestly,
as I write, it is hard to say if I, myself, would have had enough courage to do
the right thing. Decisions today
typically are not as ‘life or death’ as it was in the gospel. Our day-to-day decisions, although important
on an individual level, do not carry as much weight as the decision in the gospel. Yet, how often do we make decisions just
because it is the easy way out?
Jesus
Christ never took the easy way out. He
stayed true to himself, each day, always doing the right thing. This is the image of Jesus Christ that may be
the hardest to live by, but it should be an easy decision.
Q: Do I take the easy way out? Do I live with
courage in the face of difficult challenges?
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