I think that the experience of the disciples during the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry was a lot like ours. The week started with such promise. As Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of acclaim on Palm Sunday, His disciples must have assumed that He was coming into His own.
On Monday Jesus cursed a fig tree and drove the money changers out of the temple. On Tuesday he denounced the religious leaders calling them “blind fools” and “hypocrites.” On Wednesday, at least as far as the biblical record is concerned, nothing happened. Instead of being swept into the city in victory–the whole project seems to have stalled out.
On Thursday there was that awkward Passover supper. The disciples fought among themselves about which of them should be regarded as the greatest and Jesus began acting strangely again, dressing like a household slave and washing their feet. Then, of course, the whole thing fell apart. Instead of being recognized as Israel’s rightful king, Jesus was arrested. On Friday He is tried, condemned, crucified, and buried.
Then on Saturday-nothing but silence.
And this, I think, is where many of us live in terms of our experience. We live in the silence of Holy Saturday. Things haven’t turned out the way we had expected–or the way we had hoped. It may even seem to us as if this whole “Jesus thing” has failed. Miserably.
Our problem, it turns out, is the same problem that the disciples had. We can see what God is doing (more or less) but we don’t understand it. We often wish that God would explain His actions to us. Why has He allowed things to unfold this way? But if the Gospels are any indication, we wouldn’t understand even if we were told. Because Jesus did tell His followers in advance what God was doing. They just couldn’t comprehend it.
In his book A Cross Shattered Church, Stanley Hauerwas observes, “We say that ‘seeing is believing,’ but it seems in matters having to do with God that ‘believing is seeing.’ But believing does not mean that we must accept twenty-three improbable propositions before breakfast. Rather, believing means being made participants in a way of life unintelligible if Jesus is not our Lord and our God. To so live is not to try to make the world conform to our wishes and fantasies, but rather to see truthfully the way the world is.” Hauerwas goes on to say that before we can see the world as it is, we must be transformed. Or to use Paul’s language, we must be transferred or translated into the Kingdom of God’s Son (Col. 1:13).
In other words, the only view which enables us to make sense of the strange things that God has done with our lives is the view from above. It is a view from the cross. It is from there that we can see, not only the cross itself, but also the empty tomb which lies beyond. It is not a vision of life which comprehends God but one that comes from Him. Hauerwas was right. Believing is seeing.
