Disempowered Friday

Today I've had a fresh reflection on Good Friday. For disabled people, one of the most painful experiences is that of being disempowered. No one can really understand the acute frustration of sudden or gradually increasing powerlessness, unless they've experienced it themselves. All at once or bit by bit your ability to do the simplest tasks is stripped away. You can't dress yourself. You can't turn on the light. You can't cook what you want. You can't get out of the house. The "can'ts" proliferate endlessly.

from "The Passion of the Christ"

I'm fortunate in that I have a wife and family - and friends - who enable me to do what I wish or have what I need. But not everyone is so blessed. In a strange way, having disability forced upon you, mitigates the pain, because you just have to lump it and make the most of it. You have no other option - except to wallow in the quicksands of self-pity. That way, as I've said before, lies madness.

Yet it struck me, as I was coming down in the lift this morning (it takes longer when it's this cold), that on that Passover preparation day, which we now call Good Friday, Jesus experienced the nadir of powerlessness. Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ showed in stark and shocking focus the extent of his powerlessness in the face the able-bodied empowered representatives of political, religious, philosophical and popular forces. Not only are his clothes stripped off, but also his skin is flayed off him.

And the crucial difference, of course, is that at every point he does have an option. He could at any point have said, "Not yours, but my will be done." He could have asserted his power. However his was an entirely voluntary powerlessness in order that death and evil should be allowed to do their worst with God. What they did was as bad as it can get, worse that the greatest film-maker or artist could ever depict.

And yet, as we know, today is not the end of the story. But it already holds a crumb of encouragement for the powerless. He has been there - and beyond. As the Bible puts it, "We don't have a High Priest who's unable to sympathise with our weakness but one who's been tested in every way like us except without failing." There's a modern song which has the line, "It was my sins which held him there / until it was accomplished". In fact, I think a stronger power than "my sins" held him to the cross that day, and that was His love.