Finals
Ministerial Meandering
Finals
In the Fleet Air Arm, as it was called - or WAFU’s, as those of us who didn’t fly in the Royal Navy used to call the sky jockeys - there was a saying; ‘Any crash you can walk away from is a good one.’ Having been involved with the results of one or two, I might question that.
I am not a pilot, but many of my friends have been, and I have spent a lot of time in the air in Navy helicopters of one sort or another. In fixed wing aeroplanes, the pilot tells flight control as he is on his final approach that he is ‘turning finals’; in rotary wing (helicopters), he usually just says ‘final approach’. Either way, it is a point of commitment from which the aircraft either makes a safe landing - or it doesn’t.
It is much the same as you enter the examination hall to sit your final exams for your degrees for medical school - the culmination of six years of hard slog. You either know it now - or you don’t, and waiting for that moment when the invigilator says, ‘You can turn your examination papers over now and begin,’ is an adrenaline pumping moment.
I can only imagine what Jesus must have felt as he sent his disciples away to find the donkey he needed to ride into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday. That was the moment of commitment, the ‘final approach’, the ‘turning finals’ onto the runway.
From that moment he knew that every step of his was mapped out from the beginning of the world, and everything depended on his relationship with his heavenly Father to help him find the strength to go through with the ultimate sacrifice.
As a man, he must have been functioning on pure adrenaline - how he managed, I cannot begin to think. He must have been screaming inside - and indeed, we know he was, because it all came out in the Garden of Gethsemane where Luke tells us, ‘He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.’
Can there be a more graphic description of soul pain than this? - knowing that in only a few moments all his disciples would desert him - and that the next time he saw any of them would be when he was hanging on the nails of the cross.
When we have to make our final approach to something tough and frightening ahead of us, just pause for a moment and consider that there is nothing that will come to you that Jesus hasn’t faced himself - and almost certainly a lot worse. And he faced his crucifixion as a man - not as God.
Philip+