Scientists tell us that time is relative. We actually don’t need scientists to tell us that — just check with any family in the month of December. The children will tell you that the days leading up to Christmas are crawling. The parents will tell you that time is flying by and they don’t know how they will get everything done. If you are anything like me these days of sheltering in place and social distancing are more in the crawling category than in the flying by category. It has been fifteen days since the governor issued the “stay at home” order. It seems a lot longer than that. On the horizon loom at least another twenty-five days of isolation. This is going to be a long trek through the desert.
The relativity of time is witnessed in the scripture for today, Passion Sunday, better known as Palm Sunday. What a time for Jesus. It starts off with the adulation of the crowds and ends in ignominious death. Jesus might have wanted the palm waving to go on longer and the events of the passion shortened. But when you look at it, the whole event of Jesus’ passion as reported in St. Matthew’s gospel lasted less than twenty-four hours: the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the arrest, the trial before the Sanhedrin, the abuse by the guards, the denial of Peter, the trial before Pilate, the scourging at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, carrying the cross up Calvary Hill, the three hours on the cross, his death, the burial. Looking back on the events it seems like everything was on fast forward. My guess, though, is that for Jesus it felt like everything was in super slo-mo. What could he do to prepare his disciples for the shocks to come? How could he demonstrate his fidelity to the will of God as revealed in the scriptures? Was it possible to confront the cruelty of the Roman oppressors? But what really slowed down time was the pain. Notice all of the varieties of cruelty inflicted on his body and imagine what that was like. Jesus doubtless felt that time on the cross would never end. He probably wondered more than once “won’t this ever be over. When will the pain cease?”
Time on the cross. This is a holy week like none of us have ever experienced. Coming as it does in the middle of the stay at home order we have a hard time even marking this as anything more than ordinary days stretching backward and forward with a boring sameness. This is our time on the cross. But since time is relative we can invest these days with meaning beyond staring at TVs or computer screens. Like Jesus we can find redemption as we go through our (relatively minor) suffering of the pandemic. We can speed up our care for those we live with and slow down our tendency to judge. We can speed up our reliance on God and slow down our need to be in control. We can speed up our solidarity with suffering people everywhere and slow down our tendency to care only for little old me. Our time in the cross is relative – will it lead us to greater selfishness or greater holiness? Only time will tell.