I Go to Extremes

I Go to Extremes
by Billy Joel

And if I stand or I fall
It's all or nothing at all
Darling I don't know why I go to extremes

Tomorrow we celebrate Palm Sunday, when Jesus rides into Jerusalem as a King. A short five days later, He is being crucified between two thieves, and his followers are running for their lives and hiding in fear. But just two days after that, we have the most joyous news ever announced. We are beginning a week of extremes. This is a roller-coaster week of proclamation and denial, of love and betrayal, of “Hosanna!” and “Crucify Him!”, of despondency and elation, of death and new life.

Billy Joel’s song today offers words that I find applicable to this week. I recall all those who have gone on before us, who ran the good race, “fought the good fight”, and gave it their all. Think of John the Baptist, the “voice crying in the wilderness” whose head ended up on a platter. Or Mary the Mother of Jesus, who from the time Jesus was born “treasured all these things in her heart” and then this week witnesses grief and pain that we can only begin to grasp. There’s Peter, who told the Lord he would be right there for him, who with bravado cut off the soldier’s ear, who then denied the Lord three times, and then who later still became the Rock on which Christ built His church. And then there’s St Paul, who ran at full throttle after his conversion and who was “already being poured out like a drink offering” when the time came for his departure (2 Timothy 4:6).

Call me a joker, call me a fool
Right at this moment I'm totally cool
Clear as a crystal, sharp as a knife
I feel like I'm in the prime of my life
Sometimes it feels like I'm going too fast
I don't know how long this feeling will last
Maybe it's only tonight

Darling I don't know why I go to extremes
Too high or too low there ain't no in-betweens
And if I stand or I fall
It's all or nothing at all
Darling I don't know why I go to extremes

In his book Orthodoxy, G K Chesterton looks at differences in the art of two different religious traditions: “No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. . . Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards.”

Sometimes I'm tired, sometimes I'm shot
Sometimes I don't know how much more I've got
Maybe I'm headed over the hill
Maybe I've set myself up for the kill
Tell me how much do you think you can take
Until the heart in you is starting to break?
Sometimes it feels like it will

Darling I don't know why I go to extremes
Too high or too low there ain't no in-betweens
You can be sure when I'm gone
I won't be out there too long
Darling I don't know why I go to extremes

But what if Jesus is not the extreme at all? What if we, all of us through history, are the extremists and He is the center, as He invites us in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”? Mr Chesterton sets forth this very intriguing proposition, also in Orthodoxy: “Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation . . . would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. . . Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad--in various ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. . .”

Out of the darkness, into the light
Leaving the scene of the crime
Either I'm wrong or I'm perfectly right every time
Sometimes I lie awake, night after night
Coming apart at the seams
Eager to please, ready to fight
Why do I go to extremes?

C S Lewis in Mere Christianity leaves no middle ground when it comes to the options that are open to us: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Darling I don't know why I go to extremes
Too high or too low there ain't no in-betweens
And if I stand or I fall
It's all or nothing at all
Darling I don't know why I go to extremes

And as we begin this Holy Week of extremes, Mr Joel leaves us with these words of reminder and comfort:

You can be sure when I'm gone
I won't be out there too long
Darling I don't know why I go to extremes