First Presbyterian Church Of Baton Rouge

Jesus did not avoid the realm of death to which all humans go. Rather he went there. He died as the sinless one who was made to be sin on our behalf. He went to the inky darkness of the state of death so that we never go there alone. Now he leads us through. We, like Jairus, are dismayed by all this suffering. But Jesus himself went off the map into the wasteland of hell. There are no regions of human experience unknown to him. The Father did not rescue his Son immediately from the cross. He underwent the plummet into death’s isolation so that we cannot leap, no matter how angrily we push off, beyond his embrace of all human suffering. Jesus knows. And still he loves. We have not the power to negate that love even by the rashest act. We are not alone, nor are the most tangled and wayward of his sheep.