Responding to the Unexpected (Friday Devotional)

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

- James 1:3

I never expect car trouble. It’s an inevitability of vehicle ownership, sure, but anytime a warning light comes on or the engine won’t start or a tire blows out, it always comes as an unwelcome surprise. Every incident of car trouble begins with the mixture of frustration and self-pity best summed up by the questions, “Why me? Why now?” But eventually, whether after a few seconds or a few minutes, I have to move from moaning about the problem to responding to it. I never see car trouble coming, but when it does, I have no choice but to eventually do something about it.

Similarly, the week of Jesus’s death and resurrection was, for those around him, an exercise in responding to the unexpected. Despite repeated warnings from the Lord, it seems that no one saw the cross coming; everyone was ready for his glory, but none for his suffering. But when the crucifixion came, it demanded a response, and Scripture records three very different kinds from three different groups of people.

The first response comes from the denizens of Jerusalem. Some may have been at the city gates on Sunday to greet Jesus with palm branches; they may have shouted “Hosanna!” and welcomed him as a liberator. But by Friday, they had been persuaded that Jesus was a false prophet, a blasphemer, and, perhaps most egregiously, a disappointment—if Jesus was not going to be the Messiah they’d expected, then their response was to him was rejection.

The second response comes from the twelve disciples, those who knew Jesus best. At the critical moment, theirs was a parade of failures: Judas betrayed Jesus, Peter denied him, none stayed awake to pray for him in the garden, and all fled into the night when the Lord’s enemies came to arrest him. When the crucifixion came, they were not at Golgotha, but in hiding. Their response to the cross was fear.

But from a third group we get a different kind response. An assortment of women from Galilee had been with Jesus nearly as long as the twelve disciples, supporting his work behind the scenes. When the Lord went to the cross, they stayed with him, weeping as he took his dying breaths. When he was buried, they followed him to the tomb to pay their respects. And when Sunday morning came, it was these women who bore witness to the empty tomb and were the first to proclaim that Christ is risen. Whatever their fears or doubts, their response to the cross was faith.

This Holy Week we find ourselves, like the crowd and the disciples and the Galilean women, having to respond to an unexpected reality. There will be no community Easter egg hunts this year, no feasts with extended family, no packed sanctuary on Sunday morning. Instead, a virus has confined us to our homes and turned life upside down. Every day we are confronted with new fears, new frustrations, and new failures. Living through a pandemic is not a reality any of us expected—or wanted—to face.

In the face of this unexpected reality, some will respond like the crowd, angrily rejecting a God who would allow COVID-19 to take so many lives and upend the world. Others will respond like the twelve, paralyzed by fear and uncertainty, unsure who to trust. But my prayer for you this Holy Week is that your response will mimic that of the steadfast women whose devotion to Jesus did not waver even as he suffered and died. I hope that you will remain in the Lord even when your expectations are tested. Some will opt for fear and anger this Easter—may you instead choose faith.