Holy Week Reflection: Choices

This week I've made so many choices - and so, probably, have you.  We make them all the time without even realising and from time to time we have to make really big ones.

The narrative of Good Friday is a story full of choices.

Jesus chooses to remain silent when accused.  He seems to embrace the cross rather than argue pedantics with Pilate.  It's not easy to know when to speak and when to refrain from speaking.  But there are moments when lifestyle, acts of compassion and justice, or even just an encouraging smile are worth a thousand words filling up a heated debate in which no one is listening.

Pilate chooses to probe and then pass the buck.  Is he a crowd pleaser?  Maybe he is just doing the obvious political thing, getting the job done by upsetting as few a people as possible.  To even begin to square a circle and attempt the seemingly impossible - find justice and truth even when a baying crowd is in the forecourt - would have taken enormous courage and leadership.

And the crowd chooses - Barabbas over Jesus, the obvious over the nuanced, the easy answer rather than the difficult question - but that, I suppose, is generally the nature of crowds and peer group pressure.

I, of course, also have a choice.

I can choose to:
...come to faith as a Seeker after Truth, open to change, willing to move on and to greet each new day with its joys and challenges as a fresh expression of truth and exploration.

I'm in the crowd today.

I can call for Barabbas - for the spectacular choice.
I can pass the buck and say it's always down to someone else.

Or I can:
...grasp the complexity of life lived faithfully with pain
...battle on with the confusion and lack of answers that faith sometimes brings
...feel with heartfelt passion what is just and hopeful and live out that passion in my actions
...walk with faith, make the road of faith, live a life of faith - and in the doing learn what it means to be a person of faith.

I could call for Barabbas or...
I can call for Jesus.