The Greatest Act of Valor

   The other night I was channel surfing and was looking for something good on TV.  I came across a movie on TBS called "Act of Valor".  I had seen the movie in the theaters already several years ago and even though the movie was almost over I decided to watch it anyway.

    When I selected the movie, the scene I caught was the final scene where the Navy SEALS are driving into a Mexican stronghold. The terrorists were thought to be planning their entry into the US through a tunnel.  As the men fought there way through the buildings , a man drops a hand-grenade from above them.  The SEAL in the back of the group, a Lt Anglo, sees the grenade and realizes he is the only person to know it's there.  He yells "GRENADE!" and then proceeds to throw himself onto it and prevents the explosion from hurting anyone else.  Because of his selfless act of valor his men were able to continue their mission and prevent the terrorists from fulfilling their plans.

   The scene ends with sight of blood running out from under Lt Anglo's body onto the ground and him shutting his eyes in death.

   In similar fashion, Jesus saw the 'live-grenade' of God's wrath against sin and our love of sin.  We are like those other men who were oblivious to the presence of the explosive waiting to go off.  Jesus, like the soldier in the movie, didn't hesitate and threw himself on that wrath by willfully allowing evil men to condemn him to the cross in our place.   He took the full impact of that wrath on himself and once that wrath was expelled it no longer posed any danger to us who deserved it so much.

   Why did he do this?

    Jesus said,

"No greater LOVE can a man have than to lay down his life for his friends!"

    He loves you right now!
 
    Not after you respond to his love!
    Not after you reach a certain level of goodness! 
    Not after you  can wrap your mind around why or how!

    He simply wants us to receive his love and follow him.

     But unlike the soldier in the story, Jesus story doesn't end here.  We don't follow a dead person.  We follow Jesus who was raised from the grave as "proof" that God has accepted his payment for our sins.  He is with us today as we make our way through this life.  He is with us to help us to complete the mission the Father first sent him and now sends us as well.

WHY

   The word "why" seems to be one of the first words children seem to learn, right after "momma", "dadda" and "no".    This word can drive a parent to near insanity on long car rides.

Why is the sky blue?
Why is the grass green?
Why can't I drive the car?
Why do we need to go on vacation?
Why can't we stop for ice cream?

The questions seem unending to a young parent.  This line of questioning would put a CIA operative to shame who must resort to water-boarding to inflict higher levels of pain and mental distress.

Some questions of "why" we can answer, but the child is too young to even understand our answer if we gave it to them.   We know that such answers would only be open to 10 more "why" questions that we don't have the time or energy to answer.  To this, we often resort to our simple answer:  "Because it just IS!",  This answer will hold a 5 year old for about 10 seconds before they bellow out a loud "WHY?" from the back seat of the car.

On Good Friday, while Jesus is hanging on the cross he screams out a question for God the Father to answer:

"My God! My God!  Why have you forsaken me?"

Christ, suspended on a cross between two worlds: earth and heaven.  Rejected by the earth and forsaken by the Father.

Why?

Why is often the hardest question to answer in stories like this.  Journalists can give you the Who, What, Where and How, but often they struggle to come up with the WHY.    When a crazed husband shoots his wife at her school and 2 other children we are left empty when we search for the reason of WHY.  Or when a soldier sees his friend take on heavy fire from the enemy and dies so he can crawl to safety we are left empty as we search for the answer to WHY.

The answer to Jesus' question comes to us earlier in the book of John

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life"

The answer is because he loves us.

All to often we get too caught up in answering the other questions that we overlook (or maybe we just don't want to face it) the most important of questions.  Knowing HOW Jesus died, WHERE Jesus died, WHEN Jesus died won't bring you any closer to God.  Today we are blessed with great cinematography and actors who can portray Christ's suffering in great detail and almost make you feel like you are standing right there under the cross.  But that won't save anyone.  Only when they come to face the question of WHY... are lives changed.   When we see that it was for US that Christ died.  He acted as the mother stepping in front of her child to shield them from the oncoming bullet to protect them.

I have often found it amazing that the one thing you can say to a child that you will never get a WHY question for is this:   I LOVE YOU!

Children just get it.  They accept it.   They know they are not perfect, but they accept the love of their parent as irrefutable and will often immediately respond with "I LOVE YOU DADDY!"

God loves you too and all he asks us to do is to accept it and not ask WHY.