April 22, 2011

“There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.” (Jn 19:18).

We come today to remember the death of Jesus Christ almost two thousand years ago. It is part of the central drama of our faith that takes us to the heart of our human existence and to the heart of God. We come here to hear the story again, to reflect, through word, music, and gesture, on the meaning of that event; meaning that eludes us after all these years. For us, as Paul says, the cross is stumbling and scandal, the foolishness of God.

It was a crucifixion, one of thousands performed by the Roman Empire throughout its centuries of power and throughout the vast geographic territory it controlled. From the empire’s perspective, it was so insignificant that it didn’t merit mentioning in the historical record. From Rome’s perspective, Jesus was just one more Jewish revolutionary who was captured before doing any real damage, and destroyed. Was it even noticed by Jerusalem’s residents? We would like to think so, but even there, the evidence is quite slim.

That solitary death has become the occasion for endless speculation, countless attempts to give it meaning and still that meaning and purpose continues to elude us and challenge our imagination. Part of our problem is the challenge it presents to our faith. How could the one whom we proclaim to be the Son of God and Lord, how could someone who is very God as well as human, how could such a one die, and in such an ignominious way? How can we answer that question for ourselves and for those who scoff at the notion—who ridicule the scandal and stumbling block of the cross?

The suffering of God on the cross is an affront to every attempt to make meaning of it; just as all human suffering eludes our efforts to understand it. All of today’s readings reflect the Church’s attempts to understand and to interpret Jesus’ death. In the lesson from the Hebrew Bible we heard one of the Servant Songs of Isaiah, “He was despised and rejected of others, a man of suffering and acquainted with iniquity; … he was wounded for our transgressions, … and by his bruises we are healed.”

In Hebrews, there is the majestic language of that letter’s presentation of Jesus as the Great High Priest. In the Gospel of John’s version of Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus dies serenely, willingly, as the Passover lamb. But none of these is more powerful than the words of Psalm 22. Did you notice the words as we said it together? Jesus says them on the cross in Matthew and Mark, “my God, my God why have you forsaken me?” If you noticed the words, what were you thinking as you said them? Were you wondering what they meant? Were you imagining Jesus as he said them?

Psalm 22, and the way Christians have used it, invites us to do just that, to identify with Jesus, but as the Psalm continues, we begin to do something else, to make a connection between our own experience, our own suffering, and that of Jesus Christ.

There’s a temptation, even a tendency, to wallow in that suffering, to focus on Christ’s suffering as the only, the central message of Good Friday. It was certainly true in medieval devotion. It is reflected in the hymn we just sang, although the English translation already downplays it. The original German reads literally: O Head, full of blood and wounds. It’s also true in our own day. We see it in a film like Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” which depicted the crucifixion in all of its gory details. Gibson embellished, he seemed to revel in the horror. But Gibson is hardly unique. I’ve heard many people say that Jesus suffered more than any human has ever suffered.

That is not how Christ’s suffering is understood in the New Testament. Indeed, when we read the accounts of the passion in the gospels, one of the noteworthy things is how little emphasis the gospel writers place on Christ’s suffering. In the gospel we heard today, there is in fact, no mention of Jesus’ suffering. Matter-of-factly, John writes, “When the soldiers had crucified Jesus…” A couple of verses later, there is the interchange Jesus has with the Beloved disciple and with Mary. Then he says, “I thirst.” And then, after he receives the wine, he says, “It is finished,” and dies.

In the gospel of John, in fact, it is not Jesus’ suffering that is the point of the crucifixion. The emphasis lies elsewhere in two important themes. First of all, that Jesus is in charge of what is happening. Earlier in the gospel, Jesus said, “It is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” Throughout John’s account of the passion, it is Jesus who is in control of things: at his arrest, during his trial, and especially, in his appearance before Pilate. There we see Pilate running back and forth between Jesus and the temple authorities, and finally washing his hands. Even at the end, Jesus seems to decide when to die: “It is finished” could better be translated, “It is fulfilled, it is accomplished.”

But the second, and perhaps more important theme has to do with the why. In Jesus’ last conversation with his disciples, he says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. The cross is about suffering, yes, but we should never lose sight of what stands behind that suffering, God’s love for us, Christ’s love for us. It is love that brought Christ to us in the incarnation, love that he showed his disciples and those to whom he ministered, and love he shows most profoundly on the cross.

The mystery of the cross, the mystery of our salvation, is the mystery of God’s love for us. But it doesn’t stop there. Even at the cross, when we recognize and experience Christ’s love for us, we need to realize something else, that the love of the cross is not just between ourselves and Christ. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” At the foot of the cross, we see not only how much Christ loves us, we see a model, a sacrament of our love for one another. We see what it truly means to love Christ. Among Jesus’ final words to his disciples was the new commandment of love, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

That too belongs to the mystery of our faith, the mystery of Good Friday. To know, to hope, to pray, that Christ’s love be also our love—our love for one another, our love for the world. That may be the greatest mystery of all.