FACING THE WHIRLPOOL

      My picture of Easter is one of a whirlpool…
                 an irresistable, irreversable journey to
                 an inevitable conclusion.
      From the middle of the Gospel story onward, we find Jesus heading toward his death in Jerusalem.  It is a story like the Titanic.  You see places along the way where the whole thing could have been stopped.  It didn’t have to turn out that way.

      But we find Jesus insisting, “I must go up to Jerusalem and suffer…I will be put to death.” (Matt  16:21)  You can see him being drawn into the whirl.

      In Galilee again he says, “The Son of Man is about to be handed over to men who will kill him.” (Matt 17:22)

      As if they hadn’t heard, Jesus tells them again on the way up to Jerusalem:

“Listen, we are going up to Jerusalem where the son of man will be handed over…They will condemn him to death and then hand him over to those who will make fun of him, whip him, and nail him to the cross.”  (Matt 20:17)
     John tells a story the others don’t.  It has the friends of Jesus asking:
    “Where are you going?”
     They see him being drawn away from them.  Jesus speaks from the whirlpool these words:
    “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.  Believe in God, believer also in me.”  He goes on to assure them that nothing—not even this whirlpool—will be able to separate him from God.
     Still again, two days before Passover, Jesus tells his friends “In two days it will be Passover and the son of man will be handed over to be nailed to the cross.”
     Then comes the last supper with his friends.  The hour is near for his arrest.  The whirlpool is getting stronger, faster, tighter.  Again he tells the end.
     He goes off into the trees in the garden to pray “Let this cup pass from me….”
     It’s not his favorite thing to do.  But he’s too far along to turn back.  “Not my will, but thine be done.”
     Then it happens rapidly.  Arrest, mocking, trial, carrying the cross to the hill.  The nails, the dying, the last words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The journey toward Easter is our life journey.
We too are in the whirlpool called life.  Our destiny is irreversible.
In Jesus we see something new in the face of the inevitable.  We see abiding faith.
Nothing will separate him from God.

      As I think this week about the death of my friend, John Paul Pack, I think about the dark times of is life, the whirlpool circumstances over which he had no control, and how in spite of these he proclaimed and lived faith in God’s unending love and presence.

- Art Morgan, March 1997