A few years ago I was in the United States travelling around Chicago. One of the things that stood out was the almost unending roads that seems to stretch in to the horizon. Paradoxically, these roads often come to an abrupt halt at “T” intersections where I you are given the choice of heading north or south. An easy choice if you know where you are going. I didn’t!
Choice is one of those lovely things that we all like the idea of. Yet choice can be crippling. We’ve all faced those moments in shops where we’ve had to choose between two favourite items and find we can’t choose. What horrifies us is the idea that might regret the decision afterwards.
Freedom to choose is fabulous when the options are between black or white, nasty or nice. But the grey misery of choosing between bad or worse is just too much.
Philosophers have debated the idea of freedom for a few millennia. Are we as free as we think? Perhaps most of our decisions predetermined by our upbringing, prior experience, potential implications and fears? Maybe the phrase, “I had no choice”, is truer than we think.
Personally I think we have a degree of free-will when we choose to engage with our decisions. How pure that freedom really is will be a matter of dispute. Yet from time to time we face “T” intersections where we must decide. Left or right? And neither the past nor the present can truly dictate our decision.
Most people who have some understanding of Easter know that Jesus chose to go the way of the Cross. He chose death. But what we fail to consider is that he did actually “choose”. Christian familiarity often blinds us to the enormity of his decision.
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus agonised. Perhaps we see it merely as the agony of facing torture, but his well-known prayer reveals that there was a greater struggle. At that moment Jesus faced a “T” intersection in his life. His prayer, “not my will, but yours be done” leads us to ask the question, “What was Jesus’ will?”
I think it was the struggle between leading a revolution, which the disciple’s hoped for, and taking the path of sacrificial love. It was the final struggle between Jesus humanity and divinity. The God/Man was being pulled in two different directions. Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of Christ, grasped the awfulness of the scene.
For all followers of Christ there are Gethsemane moments -“T” intersections at which we are faced with a decision: to follow the way of Christ, or do our own thing. One is the way of sacrificial love; the other is a path of self-indulgence. It’s an agonising place to be.
Easter is the Christian reminder of discipleship. Jesus prayed that the “cup of suffering” might be taken from him; earlier he asked his disciples if, “they could drink from that same cup”.
We all make decisions to follow Christ or not. What will your decision be this Easter?
© Digby Wilkinson 2008