Good Friday of the Lord's Passion

 We Call this Friday Good

Good Friday is when we recall that even Jesus' closest disciples fled into the night and sought refuge away from the Roman and Temple authorities for fear that they too would be arrested. What a spectacular failure of faith.

Today is a day we move deeply into meditating on our need to tell God, like Jesus, hanging on the cross to pull off another miracle, save yourself and save us! No? We’re out of here! I’m not going to end up like that!! 

     Peter’s famous denial three times echoes Jesus’ earlier query, also three times: “Do you love me, Peter?” Peter responded then: “You know that I love you!” Now, fearful of his life, he replies “I know nothing of this man you refer to!” This person is the disciple upon whom the Church is built: Peter, called “Rock” by Jesus, crumbles into sand at the crucifixion. 

     The cross is a spectacle of human folly, failure, and faithlessness. "Yet, in spite of that", as T.S. Eliot wrote, “We call this Friday good.” Its goodness lies in God’s total submission to his love for humanity in the person of Jesus. It is the goodness inherent when we willingly suffer for another person, perhaps a stranger, or even an enemy. Today, we contemplate how we respond to being asked to suffer for another, or whether or not the possibility of suffering sends us scurrying into the night, renouncing God. 

     “How could God allow such suffering ?” many ask and imply this is the cardinal weakness of Christianity. Perhaps the better question is “Why would God be willing to enter into our world of suffering?” The mightiness of God isn’t a lifeboat dropping out of the sky for survivors floating in a tempest; it is God falling into the water next to us to show us the way to dry land. 

     God with us, “Emmanuel”, means God suffering for and with us. God does not want to “save” us as much as he intends to be with us. We want to be “saved”, just as Jesus wanted to escape suffering; it's only natural. No one suggests that to follow Jesus we should seek out pain, but rather following Jesus we will enter the suffering of a suffering world with a resounding affirmation: “Yes” to being with the poor and hopeless, the excluded, imprisoned, tortured, and sick. “Yes” to the suffering of the world, and all its messiness and dysfunction. The Cross’s affirmation is entering into the heart of the suffering world and walking with those who suffer to find God calling us into his embrace, arms stretched out on the cross, now embracing us in all of our horror and pain, failure, and humiliation. Today we come to the cross to be embraced by Jesus’ crucifixion and to be resurrected with Christ.

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

 

A Passion for Humanity

Today we begin Holy Week. We see the Passion from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to rolling the stone to seal the tomb. On Monday we rewind to six days before Passover, followed Tuesday and Wednesday with the Passover meal and Jesus' subsequent betrayal by Judas. Holy Thursday is Jesus washing his disciple's feet and telling them "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet." Good Friday, we, once again, meditate on The Cross. So today and Friday, we speak of the Lord's passion, of God's love of His creation.

Passion.  The word evokes reckless adventure, impulsive romance, gestures too big to fulfill, and the brief but intense relationship of Romeo and Juliet.  This word places Jesus in the tradition of the foolish Romantics—an itinerant preacher from the margins schooled by his radical cousin (John the Baptist) and led to make one final, dramatic gesture to get his message out: die as a martyr.  But Jesus’ death was unlike the death of many of the martyred faithful to come.  His death wasn't for a cause, but a relationship.  God fell hopelessly in love with humanity and inserted Himself to be with His own creation to deliver this message of healing, love, and forgiveness.  God’s power isn't the power of Zeus with lightening-bolts from the heavens, but God’s message is now simply “Return; I love you”.

Throughout Holy Scripture, God has struggled and seemingly failed many times, just as His people have.  It has been an on-and-off-again cosmic love story between the Creator and His creation since humanity was first created and was given a choice not to love God.  This dance between Creator and created culminated in His great and defining act of love: self-sacrifice on the cross.

Today’s gospel reading recounts this journey to the cross with Jesus as God leading the way, experiencing the pain and abandonment of His creation, the physical pain of a gruesome, ignominious death, giving into the abyss of his own un-created end-all for love.  But in this remarkable journey, he found a few responding with courage: Simon of Cyrene shared some in your suffering, the women who gathered at the foot of the cross and stayed there long after the men had scattered for fear of being arrested, the felon who believed because he, of all people, responded to the suffering of an innocent man, and finally the Roman centurion who saw in this suffering man God’s love.  This is pretty intense stuff

Rather than struggling to believe, many struggle to disbelieve because God’s affirmation of his creation, of saying “yes” to the cross, is the ultimate folly for a world seeking safety over communion.  God as Jesus, crucified, dead, and buried.  Stay tuned.

Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Way of the Heart

Jeremiah is a prophet for God's people in exile.  They broke the covenant of the Law established in the exodus from Egypt.  In short, they had lost that intimacy of God taking them "by the hand to lead them forth from Egypt".  As famous as Jeremiah is for his prophetic message of doom, it is today's reading from the prophet which reveals God's desire for a new covenant, one that will no longer be subject to the difficulties of written text as the sole foundation of a relationship with His people.  Now God announces to Jeremiah "I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts . . . . No longer will they have a need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord."  God's placement of this law "within" prefigures the presence of the Holy Spirit which is the dynamic, existential element of our faith that makes us a people first and foremost on a journey of the heart rather than the head.  As arduous and demanding as the exiles of Egypt and Babylon were, and the subsequent exodus back into the Promised Land, the Christ Event reveals through the journey to the cross as the greatest exodus of them all.


William Sloan Coffin, a pastor for years at the Riverside Church in New York, expressed this notion so well when he wrote "The longest, most arduous trip in the world is often the journey from the head to the heart.  Until that round trip is completed, we remain at war with ourselves.  And, of course, those at war with themselves are apt to make casualties of others, including friends and loved ones".


The authority of the priests, Temple, and God's precepts written in stone was not enough to sustain a relationship with God.  The revelation of Jeremiah's proclamation of a new overture of intimacy did not do away with priests, Temple, and the written Law; but what was added was a sense of God that transcended text, Temple, and priests.

Christ's presence as the non-Levitical high priest becomes that complement to the Law and Prophets.  For Christ proclaimed he did not come to abolish the Law and Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17).  The high priestly function of the Christ, in the letter to the Hebrews, is to suggest that Christ's sacrifice was himself in an act of pure love.  This sense of God's atonement, developed so well by Abelard in the 11th Century, expresses Christ's mission to win hearts by an example of reconciling love.  This pivotal shift from a primarily substitutionary atonement (God sacrificed Christ to atone for humanity's sins) to exemplary ("Come and follow me") moves us from simply another Temple sacrifice, albeit grand in scale, to a personal journey that involves sacrifice for all true followers of Jesus as the Christ.


The followers of Christ before the term "Christian" was coined, as people of "the way".  Early on, there was a sense that being a disciple was more than a function of intellectual assent, that being a follower of Christ involved a process, the give-and-take of a relationship with oneself, God, and a community of like-minded pilgrims.  Fulfillment of the Law now is fulfilled in its entirety in our relationship with God made possible by Christ's outpouring of God's love on the cross.  Stony hearts can read and follow directions, but hearts of flesh and blood seek communion.  Our Lenten journey is especially focused on the cross because it reveals so well the humanity of God in Christ, the spectacular overture of our God to win our hearts.

Fourth Sunday in Lent

 Seeing is Believing: Living a Transparent Life

                 In today’s gospel reading from John, we have the rather remarkable statement comparing from Jesus “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” suggesting that like Moses’ raised staff, simply by looking at the crucified Jesus, we will be saved; a very compelling theory of atonement that is often overlooked. It reminds me of the devotional response to the elevation of the host after consecration taken from the Apostle Thomas at realizing the body before him was Christ: “My Lord and my God”. 

              Sometimes witnessing a great act of faith can lead us to faith itself; that is why reading Scripture and biographies of holy men and women are equally powerful to strengthen faith, and for some, lead them to the Faith for the first time. Great works like Augustine’s Confessions, Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain, and other stories of faith are a rich source of illumination and sustenance. Devotions such as Adoration, prayer before icons, or simply being fully present in a beautifully designed sacred space can lead one to a deeper communion with God.

               However, not only the works of others can shine the light of faith into the world, but we ourselves can live in the light of faith when we allow others to witness our failures and also the faith that sustains us in the hope of living in a perfect relationship with God while we are yet sinners; living transparently before God and the world allows the world to witness our humanity in our failings and our relationship with the Divine in the grace we have received. We can live in God’s presence as sinners because through Christ we have been redeemed.

               Perhaps this week we can more fully appreciate our gift of sight as a great source of faith, not only in what we see but live fully in the light so that others may witness not only our crucifixions but also our resurrections. As John says in today’s gospel, “But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,  so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”

Second Sunday of Lent

 

"No Cross, No Crown"

We Catholics seem to love suffering, or so my Protestant friend is fond of saying.  I often retort, "No cross, no crown," which brings a raised eyebrow and suggestion to change the topic.  But, I must admit that it is as easy for Catholics to mistakenly evolve a spirituality of suffering for suffering's sake as it is for Protestants to evolve a "gospel of prosperity" where financial gain and material wealth are the goals of being a Christian.  Both views are distortions of Jesus' mission.
     In the first reading is Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Isaac.  Of this parable, early Judaism focused on the element of God testing Abraham, but with time, shifted focus to see the sacrifice in light of Isaac's willingness to submit to the will of his father and offer himself as a type of sacrificial lamb, a theme later picked up by the early Church's understanding of Jesus' Christhood.  The Pascal Lamb, as you recall, was the sacrifice for the deliverance of the Jews in captivity from  Egyptian oppression; where the blood of the lamb was sprinkled across the lintel of the door as a sign for the Angel of Death to pass over and spare the household.  What began as an understanding of Isaac's sacrifice simply as an act of blind compliance evolved into a deeper, more mature meaning of giving of oneself for the sake of others.
     This notion was picked up in Isaiah's Suffering Servant and is the character Jesus most closely aligned himself and his ministry around.  This understanding of Christ's mission as a servant who suffers for humanity is the foundation of Mark's gospel, which sought to counter the tendency of the early Gnostic-Christian communities' focus on Jesus' divinity revealed in the Transfiguration as the pinnacle revelation of God to humanity, not the suffering on the cross and resurrection; for the Gnostics, Jesus' divinity eclipsed his humanity and made the cross a distraction on the way to the crown.  That is why in Mark's gospel, Jesus continually cautions his believers not to reveal his Christhood because it is only in light of his suffering and resurrection that his mission is significant; he is the Suffering Servant Messiah, not the Warrior King messiah portrayed in Isaiah.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, 
he was bruised for our iniquities; 
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes, we are healed."

Christ's suffering was in the service of reconciling us to God, of bringing everyone into communion.  Jesus didn't seek out this suffering; he prayed, "Let this cup pass from me," while his disciples slept in the Garden of Gethsemane.  But Jesus also added to his prayer, "Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."  To some extent, suffering is always a mystery; however, some suffering is beyond our comprehension.  If we suffer and cannot discern its origin, or it is out of our hands, we should pray for the trial to pass and include our willingness to submit to God's will.  We must, however, also not shy away from suffering in the pursuit of justice and love.  In the face of injustice, ours is not a retreat into Quietism, into a passive acceptance of the suffering of ourselves and our neighbor, but to face the suffering that will come when we face the oppressor and the rejection that will come when we give our hearts away to the love of our enemies.  The Crown only has ultimate significance in light of the love from the Cross.

First Sunday of Lent

 Follow Me.  I Know the Way Out.

Hunger, powerlessness, and inadequacy:  These are the weak spots Jesus struggled with.  Very often, we focus on the battle and Jesus’ subsequent victory and overlook the temptation of the desert itself.

For us, going into the desert for forty days would involve a backpack full of food and an ample supply of water. Jesus had no such store of supplies. He was alone and fasting.  Fasting allowed him to experience need.  On a deeper level, Jesus experiences the profound understanding that, though the Son of God, he needs other people, and that centering one’s life around physical desires is a great deprivation (Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God). Bread is a figure for the communion of friendship and community. This deprivation of human contact is a crucial part of his “desert experience”. He could turn those rocks into bread, but he would eat alone. Notice Satan does not want to give Jesus bread (communion), he simply is tempting Jesus to assuage his physical hunger.

 Jesus’ next vulnerability was his feeling of powerlessness.  Exploiting this, Satan offers Jesus complete domination over the world’s countries in exchange for devotion.  Look at what being submissive to God had gotten him: hunger pangs and loneliness. Milton’s Satan would have whispered into Jesus’ ear: “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven”.  He replies to Satan, quoting again from Deuteronomy: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”   How often our fear of being powerless leads us to believe that getting power is the answer rather than seeking the Kingdom and serving God. Too often, even “good causes” can become soiled with the ego of creating a utopia.

 The final temptation came in the form quite unlike all the others.  It was the showdown.  In the desert of despair, with no visible sign of God’s presence and Satan close at hand, the desire to experience God’s care and concern in some manifestation becomes Jesus’ greatest vulnerability.  Just give me a sign of your love!  Everyone feels this, especially when things are not going well.  Satan’s answer was to call God’s hand and turn Jesus’ test into God’s test.  Now it is Satan who is quoting Scripture:

“He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,”
and: “With their hands, they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Satan quotes from Psalm 91, and Jesus responds with a third passage from Deuteronomy: You shall not put your Lord God to the test”.  The very source of his reasoning---Holy Scripture—was turned against him.  How often do foes of God’s love and unconditional grace bend scripture to turn it from a source of healing love to a weapon? 

This round of Bible Darts over, Satan departs “for a time” suggesting that the tenacity of Satan grows, not diminishes, with defeat.  Being holy and being hounded has a long tradition of being paired. But like Jesus, we may be for a time in the desert; however, simply because the journey gets tough doesn’t mean we walk it alone.  At every turn, the community, animated by the Spirit, joins us and reminds us that we follow Christ into the desert. Consider the well-known story among those in recovery from addiction:

A man had fallen into a pit and could not escape. The first person who passes by offers him comforting words and moves on. The second person writes a prayer for the man and drops it into the pit, and also leaves. The third person jumps into the pit with the man. Astonished, the man in the pit yells, “How is this supposed to help?! Now we are both stuck here.” The man replies, “Yes, but I have been down here before, and I know the way out”.  

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

 Sacrament, Not Magic

We continue this week with the healing ministry of Jesus, but with Mark’s focus on Jesus not as a wonder-worker, but on Jesus the preacher of the Good News.  These last few Sunday’s we have seen the miraculous healing power of Jesus as the Christ as an extension of himself as the Word of God, spoken to humanity and proclaiming the Kingdom. We have also seen Jesus admonish those he has healed to keep the secret that he is the long-awaited Messiah; so how do today’s readings complement and further our understanding of Jesus’ ministry and mission?

The passage from Leviticus provides a background for Jesus sending the leper to the Chief Priest to attest to being healed and declared ritually pure and fit for worship.

What is fascinating is how blatantly Jesus’ command to tell no one is disobeyed. Mark’s emphasis on the element of secrecy suggests that there is a time when the conditions would make this revelation understandable. Healing may be a sign of the Kingdom, but the one, final act of healing of Jesus’ victory over death that heals the entire world has yet to take place, so there is a concern that people will not fully grasp that their healing is more than a personal triumph over disease, by a skilled physician/wonder worker, it is a preview of the eternal healing of God’s sacrifice of Himself. 

 This universal act of salvation is what we partake of through the sacraments.  The sacraments that have a healing dimension are the Anointing of the Sick, Eucharist, and Reconciliation.  Our healing, like the lepers, is God’s reaction to a suffering world.  Jesus wasn’t a messenger, Jesus is God among us in history as a man in a particular place and a particular time, but God is also forever Spirit sent by Christ to continue animating the People of God in the Church.  The sacraments, then, become the special places of contact where this grace is bestowed upon us.  Sacraments are not magic; they are animated by the Church's faith of which we are a part.  That is why people who have not been baptized do not receive the sacraments, not because they are being rejected from God's grace, but because the sacraments work off of a faith they have yet to experience.  A desire for a sacrament, in and of itself, always points first towards baptism.  In extreme cases, baptism followed by the Sacrament of the Sick is a great grace and the person's faith is strengthened by the faith of the Church to which they now belong. 

 If the sacrament was really a magical incantation, no faith would be required.  The Body of Christ, the Church, into which we are baptized, becomes our great source of strength when our individual faith waxes and wanes as it does in the course of our spiritual journey.  We can approach God and the sacraments that the faith of the Church and the Spirit which animates our community will always provide the supplement to my faith when it is weak. 

The leper in today’s story approaches Jesus with the words “If you wish, you can make me clean”.  Christ’s will is exemplified in the ways God touches us and offers healing as part of the Body of Christ in the sacraments.  Today’s Anointing of the Sick becomes our response to our need of healing in body and soul, and the power of God’s love through the community of the Church announces “It is my will.  Be healed".