One of the most amazing track and field events, in my mind, is the high jump.  People taking a running leap, and clear a bar that is set at 8 feet tall.  Amazing!  A champion high jumper was once asked how he was able to catapult his body across the bar and set the world’s record.  Thoughtfully, the athlete responded, “I threw my heart over the bar and the rest of me followed.”  What a wonderful description of the hours of training and work and technique, weight lifting and running and preparation that led to the world record: “I threw my heart over the bar and the rest of me followed…” 

I was thinking about that line as I approach the end of the Lent and the beginning of Holy Week – reflecting on the sufferings of Jesus.  If you asked the Evangelists to describe in rational terms the suffering of the cross, I think they’d be stuck.  What kind of God asks for that kind of sacrifice?  And what kind of masochistic son agrees to it?  When you stay in the realm of the head, - of logic, of reason, of calculation, you end up with all sorts of untenable results, don’t you.  Jesus pays our ransom.  To whom?  The Devil?  So the devil has more power than God?  Jesus bears the price of Adam’s sin.  Again, who is he paying that price to, the Father or to someone else?  And why did Adam’s sin demand such an response?  Most of the answers that begin in our heads stay right there.   

So how do you make sense of it?  John the evangelist draws, as we heard last week, on that story from the book of numbers, about Moses lifting up the serpent in the desert.  Today he repeats that theme: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  In these few but poignant words, our Lord tells us that the heart’s way of sacrifice and love is the way of life eternal. The words that he uses are words of attraction, words of love.  I will DRAW people to myself.  With his eyes turned to the human family, he throws his heart across the bar of history to suffer and die for the likes of you and me.  Why?  Because it is only in a love that sacrifices that we can truly know that it is love and not something else.  When there is a price that is paid, we know it is not about self seeking, but truly about the other.  Suffering has a way of purifying love.  Jesus throws his heart over the bar of our human sinfulness, enters the world of our sin and suffering, and bids the rest of us, his body, to simply follows.   

That got me to thinking:  “Where did he learn to do that?  And where can WE learn to do that?  All this week, our eight of our college students at the Newman Center have been on a spring break service trip.  I have been thinking about them constantly.  The slightly cynical part of me wonders:  Why do they have to drive all the way to West Virginia to serve the poor?  But every year, I watch them come back changed human beings, on fire for love and service and justice.  And then I realize that for them, this week is their moment of “throwing their hearts over the bar” of humanity’s suffering, and letting the rest of their bodies follow along.  It is their moment for letting their hearts imprint upon them THE PATTERN of sacrificial love.  “Those who love their lives lose them.  The first shall be last.  The greatest must be the servant.  Unless the grain of wheat die…  Wherever I am, there my servant will be.”  All those metaphors point to the same truth.  The pattern of our living, if we are to be true disciples of Jesus, somehow has to get caught up in sacrificial, self giving love.  That is where Jesus is – where He lives.   

How do we learn that? It is what our Newman Center students teach me every spring service trip.  We learn sacrifice by doing it.  We can’t think our way to that truth.  It is so counter-intuitive.  You simply have to throw your heart over the bar and let the rest of yourself follow.   

This week – put the rosaries and novena and prayer cards away.  And just for this week throw yourself into some act of service for SOMEONE.  It could be visiting the shut in neighbor.  Or bringing a home cooked meal the family who just put a loved on in hospice.  Or inviting that awkward student in your class to sit down for lunch with you in the Nosh.  Or volunteering to help tutor a child who needs reading help.  Or stopping by one of the nursing homes and visiting someone who has no regular visitors (the nursing staff will know…)  Or… and you get the picture.   

Like Jesus in the gospel, might we ‘throw our heart over the bar’ of human need and suffering in service and lets the rest of our body follow.