Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

"Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.  Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, 'God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to You!'  Jesus turned  and said to Peter, ' Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."  Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' " --- [Matthew 16: 21-27].

There is an inevitability about Jesus' death that is personal and painful and chilling.

How much is the world immutably altered with the death of Jesus?

A pastor at our church once gave an Easter homily in which he said that, as a small boy, he used to fantasize about Jesus using His miraculous powers to walk down from the cross, and thereby, defy death.

Coincidentally to this Gospel this week, I am reading "Jesus: A Gospel Portrait", by Donald Senior, C.P.  In this book, Senior says about Jesus' inevitable Crucifixion---  "Jesus could not change His message without destroying Himself. Yet, if He did not change, His opponents were determined to destroy Him."

How much more starkly could Jesus' options be stated?

I think about the times in my life as a child, when I faced such stark choices. I was a child filled with Faith in God, and in Jesus' loving ways. Yet, I grew up in a family so wholly secular, that their ways seemed cruel and harsh.

I was isolated. Any loving relatives lived far away. Or, even if I told them the truth, they would be highly skeptical of my claims, given my family's position in the community.

If I told a teacher, there could very well be recriminations and worse treatment, at home.

Or, if my claims of abuse were proved, I could be taken away from my family.

This was the cross that I had to bear as a child.

What were my choices then? Would I become just like my family, and therefore, deny God? Would I become as brutal as they were, in my assessments of others :  calling persons of other ethnicities crude names; adopting my family's hate; mocking Christians for being weak and hypocritical for needing God?

I could not change to their ways. I desperately needed Love. I could not become Hate.

And, I was a mere child. Did I dare to challenge them directly? No. I was not that powerful.

Along the way, to protect the Love in my heart, I gradually hid my True Self. I shut down.  It was not safe to show my True Self. Yet, it was unthinkable to change.

My True Self became like a tiny, vestigial fragment, frozen in amber.

In many ways, I lost my life. That is, my True Self shrank almost to Nothingness.

But I would have rather enshrined a tiny piece of my Truth, than inherit my family's entire World.
 I would rather have minimized myself to the insignificance of an atom, than to become a full-blown human being of their rage and cruelty.

 This is what it means to say, "What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" I would have had to kill my loving Soul, in order to inherit their World. A horrible bargain. I refused to do it.

As an adult, I suppose that I had other choices than to "take up my cross" and follow after Jesus.

I could have tried to numb the pain. Plenty of people do this, by abusing drugs or alcohol, or both. In this, I would have destroyed myself, perhaps to the point of Death.

I could have denied that this was my life. That would probably have led to some form of alternate reality, such as insanity.

I could have decided to end my life. Plenty of people commit suicide, because the pain is excruciating, and they desperately want to stop the pain.  I fought so hard as a child to have a life and have it abundantly. I cannot do this, that is not what I have fought so hard for.

You notice that in the Gospel, Jesus tells His disciples that, "He must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly, and be killed and on the third day, be raised." Then, when Peter objects to this prophesy, Jesus tells Peter, "You are an obstacle to me."

You see, denying the Cross is the secular response. We say, 'Nuh uh! Make it go away."

The sacred response is our Resurrection Faith. We say, like Jesus, 'Yes, I am going to carry my Cross of Pain, because I am going to my Resurrection!'  In this way, we trust God to raise us up again.

I often question what to do with the Pain? The answer for me has been to use the Pain, to define my message, in order to help others. And so, I write in this space, not to complain about my life, but to praise God for His Grace in my life.

The only way to handle one's Pain in life is to walk through it, seeking your Resurrection at the other side. We become the Pain and by doing so, we surpass it.  We conquer it!


[Related Postings : " Who Killed Jesus?",  May 7, 2014.]

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