THE WHIRLPOOL!

      When I read the story of Easter, I think of a whirlpool.  Here is Jesus, telling his friends over and over, “I must go up to Jerusalem where I will be despised and put to death.”

     We watch the journey, and it seems to get deeper and deeper.  He’s caught in the downward spiral of the whirlpool.  His friends try to turn him away.  He keeps on going.
 
      He enters Jerusalem and upsets the flea market tables on the porch of the Temple.  He drives out the money-changers.

      He dares to enter the city on a donkey.  He is hailed as “messiah.”  He won’t stay away, even though he knows they are after him.

      He calls his friends together for a “last supper.”  Again he tells them, that the end is at hand.  It’s a sad scene.

      He goes off in the night to pray.  “Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me.” But it’s too late.  The whirlpool has caught him.  “Not my will, but thine be done.”

      The soldiers come to take him away.  He could still run away and leave it all, but he is resigned to the inevitable.

      At trial he could defend himself, but doesn’t.  He is silent.  He accepts what is pronounced.  He will die.

      With no cry of complaint he carries his cross. He is whipped and spit upon and verbally abused.  The nails are accepted as part of the deal.

      The whirlpool is at its darkest point when the cross is raise and when, after a few hours he speaks some final words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

 
      While Jesus appears caught in the whirlpool, one thing seems strange.  He seems to have his hand on the tiller.  It is actually a journey in faith.  Despite the sound of that last prayer, he trusts God as Father.  He believes that no whirlpool can separate him from God.

      Scholars believe that the details of the whirlpool story come out of Psalm 22.  If you want an understanding of what Jesus went through at the last, Psalm 22 describes it.
It is thought that when Jesus spoke the words, “My God, my God…” he was expressing the faith of that Psalm.

      Yes, it describes the whirlpool of despair, the helpless, irreversible events that life often gives us.

      “Why art Thou so far from helping me…O my God, I cry day by day, but thou
        dost not answer…”

      “I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people.
        All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me…
                  ‘He committed his cause to the Lord; let him deliver him…’”

      Despite all this, faith in God remains!

 “Yet thou art holy…
 “Yet thou are he who took me from the womb…
 “But thou, O Lord, be not far off…
 “The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
  Those who seek him shall praise the Lord!”
      The whirlpool is powerful, but so is faith in God.