Overwhelming Possibilities

Luke22:1 22:3  22:24 22:45 22:52

Although I am a hopeless swimmer I do sometimes venture out into deep water and with a body board safely by my side, I have even been known to ride a few waves.

But when the waves are anything like strong – I am easily overwhelmed.

The breaker completely engulfs me and I am as nothing.

I feel for a brief moment as if I’m going to drown – I gasp for breath but all I take in is water, I try to see where I am but I am stung by the salt, I flail about trying to feel for sand or stone – but I don’t know where I am.

With me,  the wave soon passes and I am left to splutter my way back to normality. The rest of the family continue to bob about much more happily than me – and they laugh at my plight.

I also try to laugh – but just for a second I’ve actually felt panic stricken.

I have thought that this is how the disciples must have felt when struck by storm in the dead of night on the Sea of Galilee and how they cried so passionately “Save us Lord, do you not care that we are drowning”

The whole story of Jesus’ passion is God’s response to the cry of his people as they are overwhelmed by forces they cannot control.

The more I read this gospel passage from Luke – the more I find this sense of overwhelming taking shape and driving the people on into disaster – and the more I see Jesus not standing to one side – with fine words and a light miraculous touch, but entering into the place of our swamping, our gasping for breath, our lack of control, our own passion.

See how every character that takes to the stage in this Gospel narrative is overwhelmed by some force or another.

The light of the day is overwhelmed by the night and the ensuing darkness is deep.

The Chief Priests and the scribes seek to kill Jesus because their fear of the people overwhelms them.

Judas agrees to betray Jesus to them, not because he himself was a wicked man but because the power of Satan has overwhelmed him

Just when the disciples should be concentrating on Jesus they are sidetracked into discussions about status, just when they should be watching in the garden alongside their saviour, they are overwhelmed by sleep

It is not soldiers who come to the garden to arrest Jesus – it is a “multitude”, all sorts of people come pouring into Gethsemane to overwhelm him with swords and staves and by their numerical strength.

Peter is overwhelmed by his sense of failure as he denies the Lord.

The welcoming of “Hosannas” are overwhelmed with “crucify Him”  

The sense of overwhelming is a condition easily known to us.

Not perhaps drowning at sea – nor yet caught up first hand in the arrest and trial of the Son of God, but those dark forces we can scarcely name that dominate and twist our thoughts and haunt our dreams.

 Jesus moves forward painfully to Calvary because he is overwhelmed by love.

This love overwhelms the force of obligation under the law.

This love overwhelms opposition and enemy.

This love overwhelms that which holds us back from loving.

This love means there can never be a turning back from Calvary no matter how agonising his cry in the garden.

So I can bring to the passion story my most heartfelt prayers – my most desperate requests for help. I bring them not to a king on a throne who dispassionately dispenses justice – but to one who takes hold of that which threatens to engulf me and makes it his most wonderful and complete expression of love.