It has been said that there
are only four or five different types of story.
One of them is common in everything from fairy stories to
Science Fiction
Epics and Television Dramas. One or more Goodies are given a hard time
by one
or more baddies. In the cowboy films of my youth, the former had white
hats
and the latter black. A hero arrives and helps the goodies use
justified
force to overcome the baddies. And the goodies live happily ever after.
This is exactly what the Jews of Jesus' time were expecting from their
Messiah.
Oppressed by the Romans they were hoping for a revolution to overthrow
them.
But Jesus was different, He came to save everyone and had a much more
radical
view about who was good and who was bad. In fact He said that He came
principally
to save sinners not the righteous. And, instead of taking up arms, He
laid
down His own life as a ransom for many.
The Kingdom of God which Jesus announced would not be brought into
being by violence and confrontation but by sacrificial love.
For
whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his
life for my sake shall find it.
This is Matthew 16:25 but the same saying appears in all four
Gospels.
I found a
wonderful appreciation of The Way in the sermon by a young RC priest at
the end of the film Chocolat
How
shall we measure our goodness as we follow Jesus?:
By the things we do not do? or what we deny ourselves?
By what things we resist and those we exclude?
No;
Rather
by what we embrace, what we create and those we include.
