A few thoughts before Eastertime

In the hubbub of first-century Palestine walked a man who many found instantly attractive, a man who, as no other in their experience, spoke with authority, a man one instinctively wanted to follow.

This phenomenon of Jesus' personality was no less unusual for Palestine Jews of the first century than it would be for us today. Everyone found Jesus remarkable, and it is with this mysterious, unaccountable attraction that the story of Jesus begins.

When he spoke, he did not dispel the mystery. If anything, his words made the mystery deepen. Though his inexplicable magnetism attracted crowds to whom he told stories that were open to ambiguous interpretation, some found him more and more opaque and gradually turned away.

Others found their hopes growing: This could only be the Messiah-God's Anointed Messenger, come at last as the Jewish scriptures had foretold, to raise them up and scatter their enemies. Still others found their worst suspicions confirmed by what they saw as the deviousness of his slippery tongue: Here was a real troublemaker, who must be got rid of before he invited Roman intervention and involved them all in some bloody political catastrophe.

Now, it has long been a Christian tradition here in Malta to dramatise the events leading to Jesus' crucifixion in the week before Easter (pageants, processions, etc).

In such dramatisations, the part of the crowd of the Jews who urged Jesus be crucified is usually taken by the congregation who back in the day shouted "Crucify him! Crucify him!" To find oneself among this crowd is to understand that one is, that we all are - in some cosmic sense - responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. But the Church exhibits certain blindness when it assigns the role of Christ to that of a local clergy.

Rather, the local clergy should play the Pharisees, the Chief Priests of the Jews - the religious establishment. A local political figure should be invited to play Pilate.

The role of Jesus should be assigned to an outcast. The local lay-about, the local prostitute, the local madman, even better, the local illegal alien, these would all make better candidates than the local priest.

Jesus may not have begun as an outcast but he certainly ended as one. And it was with outcasts that he identified. He told us to look for him not in the churches but among the poor and the dispossessed.

He tells us that he has come not to call on the righteous but sinners, you and me. The keynote of Jesus' personality is his compassion - his superhuman ability to suffer with others and for others. Throughout his life, as dramatised by the gospels, his affection and sympathy for children, for those who mourn, for those publicly accused, for those who hurt on behalf of others, for all who are somehow bereft, is boundless. This is the same life he calls us to. This is his invitation.