Ya Rabbi Yasou!
Four years ago, in February, there was this video that was released that showed the brutal beheading of twenty-one men on the shores of Libya, all but one of the men were young Coptic Christians from Egypt. All of them were dressed in orange jumpsuits as criminals.
Their crime? The captions state: “these insisted to remain in unbelief”... meaning, they were given a choice to convert to Islam or die, and each one refused.
As you're watching this video, you can feel an unnerving calm that can be found in the faces of men, in the moments before their deaths. And as their captors force them down to their knees, no one screams or resists. All that you can hear is the mumbling of their voices as they offer up a quick prayer in the last moment before their death: Ya Rabbi Yasou! (which means “Oh my Lord Jesus”...)
These men are now declared martyrs and saints in the Coptic Christian Church. Malak one of the brothers of “the Twenty-One martyrs” spoke about his brother's death, he said, “I heard him calling, ‘Oh Jesus’” and said, “I’m happy and I’m proud of him. He is a martyr for Christ.”
It is said that each year, something like 100 thousand are martyred, and perhaps somewhere up to 70 million Christians have all been martyred since Jesus Christ suffered his death on the cross.
For these men & women and for the Twenty-One, the Passion narrative that we just heard is not just another story. It is not just a reenactment of a bible passage. For these men and women (throughout the ages), what we begin celebrating here this Holy Week, is the memory of their good friend and Lord Jesus. A good friend who was not only fully human but fully God. He is our friend and our Lord who loves us so much, that he's willing to die for me and for you.
We have celebrated the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, at the beginning of Mass. And Luke says that a “great multitude of [Jesus’] disciples” are filled with joy and expectation and they proclaim, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”
But little did they know, just how terribly their expectations would be shattered. How horrifically... it would be shattered when their Messiah, their king, their friend, will go and lay down his life to die on a cross. To be honest, as I look at the death of the martyrs, I find my own expectations completely shattered. My own expectation that if I remain faithful to God, somehow he will give me a comfortable life; that he’ll somehow fix all my problems in this life. But the death of the martyrs, the passion and death of Christ proclaim otherwise.
In a similar false expectation, the disciples who had been following Jesus from Galilee all gather around Jesus and joyfully proclaimed, "Hosanna, Son of David”… “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!" They hoped that Jesus, the Messiah, has finally come to fulfill their IMMEDIATE needs... filled with expectation they were hoping that Jesus, their Messiah, would liberate them from the pressures of the world, that he would deliver them from political oppression... Yet in a few hours, instead of doing any of that, Jesus goes to offer his life on a cross. He offers his life for you and for me. You see... despite our own expectations, Jesus’ focus, his goal is longer and further.
While the disciples are focused on Jesus fixing their immediate problems here and now: their relational struggles, their political sufferings, financial burdens, even their health... Jesus instead is focused on our eternal problem... His eyes were fixed on the redemption of our souls... Looking all the way back to Adam and Eve’s sin and all the way into the future, the heart of Jesus desires our eternal salvation.
His goal is to make you a Saint. Sometimes we don’t realize that our 5, 10, 50 years of suffering is nothing compared to the eternity Jesus wants for us in Paradise. You can say that we expect too little from Jesus, and Jesus wants infinitely more for us than the little we ask for. He is truly a friend that wants what's best for us... not only now, but more so forever. And he's willing to die to make that future a reality.
The apostles would eventually realize this truth as they would eventually give their lives in witness to Jesus. The Twenty-One martyrs surely knew this. For them to convert, to walk away from their faith was not simply to deny some truth, to deny two plus two equals four. To convert, would mean that they deny their most intimate and loving friend… it would be a denial of the love that Jesus has shown them on the cross.
My Brothers and Sisters, this Holy Week, don’t just let it be just another week of busyness. Let your hearts be melted and soften by what your friend and Lord has done and is doing for you. Let your lives be changed forever by Jesus’ death. And respond to Jesus’... not only by our words and actions, but by the witness of our life. By completely laying your life down in His embrace, so that when your death comes, which it will come for everyone... that when it comes, your death, like Jesus’ death, will not be the end, but instead, be the beginning of eternity.
