The Sorrowful Power In Christ’s Passion

We may be sullenly sombre

And we may uncontrollably cry

But there is only about Christ’s Passion

The will within to die.

Eternal reluctance is what it is

As we experience this frightening scourge

To be beaten half to death

Because to death we will certainly merge.

THERE is nothing romantic about the cross. Nothing. It breaks the heart of the one who connects with Christ’s Passion every reason that the Passion is the worst injustice ever conceived.

Heart-felt thought of the Passion breaks us open to experience pain, and a pain so indescribable it transcends the physical. Indeed, physical pain in the comparative midst of sorrow in the soul is but an insult. Physical pain turns itself into something palpable at the level of the soul.

It is amazing that humankind is so forgiven for its ambivalence. The fact we can procure a theology for the Passion, and analyse it logically, is quite reprehensible. We must feel it, yet we are rewarded in this world for dumbing-it-down to the level of cognitive enquiry, to earn a degree, to preach and teach about it, etc.

We crucify Christ afresh every time we approach the Passion irreverently, yet how are we to possibly approach it any other way? The Passion, in its essence, is bound to floor us. Yet there is a sorrowful power that compels us from death to life, all because we were prepared to travel all the way to death for Christ.

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The sorrowful power in Christ’s Passion is impossible to describe. It seems maddening to try and attempt it. But it is the human will to want to unravel the mystery. So I will try.

There is power in the Passion narrative even today.

If we will seek to connect with the message of the Gospel we will be prepared to throw everything we ever knew out the window, and, as such, find God in the mode of surrender.

To throw it all away is to gain power.

That’s the power of the Passion, and the very energy we speak of is to be approached never possibly more respectfully, and the source of such energy is its inherent sorrow – to give itself entirely away.

This sorrowful power is a persuasive power for the uplifting of all because the power of one is rescinded.

The Passion pulsates in the psyche of the person who has eternal life. They get it. Others who do not get it will possibly never comprehend it.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.