What or When is Enough, Enough?

What or When is Enough, Enough?

Using two verbs that appear to ask the same thing regarding an elementary theme must have a similar reason.  When Jesus came to us through the Incarnation the question would be how will his presence make a difference?  As we followed him in his ministry, and understood through his own words, the answer to the why, a thought of the use of suffering began to make us shudder.  

If any one of us is attempting to reach a goal, weather in sports, academics, research in scientific endeavors, or politics, the thought of finally achieving our goal can be a relief from the agony it took.  At times we may look back in retrospect and see how even the first struggle might have been enough.  Why, we may ask, did I spend all the unnecessary time when one mode of effort would have arrived at the same result?

Go back to the mission Jesus encountered and discern how many times he performed miracles and then stopped, relying on his disciples to tell the world about himself?  Would the incident with the woman at the well been enough?  No!  He needed this action for the people of Samaria to start the knowledge of the Messiah in just one area.  Who knows how far their encounter began to spread throughout their land.  

But, here we must look at the many times and places Jesus was rejected.  The constant abuse by the Scribes and Pharisees, which became the most abusive condemnation leading to his Crucifixion.  Even here it was not enough.  Remember when the angel of death went through the city killing everyone under two years whose house did not have blood on the doorposts and across the lintel of the doorway.  The precursor to the Cross at Calvary.  Was that blood on the cross enough?

We are told that one drop of his blood, shed via hate and the total rejection of his Father’s will would have been enough.  But, by just one drop of his precious blood without it culminating in a severe punishment would not be enough.

How many people would remember that tiny loss of blood without an actual sign of a more acute result that would register in the minds of those who witnessed the injury?  

As we refer back to the original statement of someone seeking to reach their goal using just one hurdle, that person would not really believe his final goal was that great.  It didn’t take much effort to arrive and perhaps the final goal may not mean as much as he thought it would be.

So it is with our Lord Jesus, the success of his crucifixion became the answer to the Incarnation.  One drop of blood wouldn’t do it.  The scourging at the pillar, the crown of thorns, and all the blasphemy before the Last Supper, and the very dismissal of his being God in flesh were not enough.  These could be passed over as something that many others endured.  

“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?  Why so far from my call for help, from my cities of anguish?  My God, I call by day but you do not answer, by night but I have no relief.  Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the glory of Israel.”  (Ps 22: 2 - 4).

Who among us and those who stood at the cross can forget?   What and when is answered now.  This was enough!  It will take more than a dream and human effort to answer those very words as you and I struggle in life to find and follow Christ as he did.  Without suffering, disappointments, and a similar scenario that Christ took to his victory, we will never find that answer.

Ralph B. Hathaw