“All the people hung upon his words”
There is hanging and there is hanging. What exactly does it mean to hang upon the words of Christ? It means at the very least to ponder the wonder and mystery of the readings of Scripture in the pageant of the Passion. Today we begin the reading of the Passion according to St. Mark, and what a powerful and poignant beginning that is!
We begin with the woman who “having an alabaster box of ointment, very precious” breaks that box and pours the ointment upon his head. It is a powerful image and the reading ends with what pours out of Peter when “he called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him.” Tears. Tears of compunction. Tears of contrition. Tears that signal the beginnings, perhaps, of confession. Tears flow as plenteously and as efficaciously as the precious ointment from the broken alabaster box. There are few images more compelling and touching than this: the conjunction of the broken alabaster box of precious ointment of spikenard and the precious tears of Peter when he recalls the words of Christ.
That is what it means to hang upon the words of Christ. It is to be effected by what we hear and by what we remember of what we have heard. Therein lies the wonder and the power of the liturgy. We are constantly exposed to the words of Scripture. In a deeper theological understanding of things, they are all the words of Christ; that is to say, they all belong to a theology of revelation, however neglected, ignored and utterly absent from the mind of the contemporary church such a concept may be.
And in between this unnamed woman and her broken alabaster box of precious ointment and the tears of Peter? First, Jesus’ absolute statement about the meaning of the broken alabaster box. Not only do “ye have the poor with you always” with whom “ye may do as ye will” but what she has done is to “come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying” and what “she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” Secondly, Judas’ betrayal of Christ; then the entry into Jerusalem; the institution of the Last Supper; Peter’s touching protestation of absolute loyalty to Jesus; the agony in Gethsemane; the capture of Christ in the garden and the ever so striking and telling story of the young man who fled from them naked; the trial before Pilate of Jesus with Peter looking on from a distance; Peter’s threefold betrayal of Christ and the tears which flow when he remembered the word that Jesus said. What was that word? “Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.” The effect is tremendous. “And when he thought thereon, he wept.” Tears like precious ointment flow down from the face and eyes of Peter.
And yet, in hanging upon the words of Christ in his Passion, we begin to realize that the broken alabaster is equally an image of the body of Christ broken for us on the Cross and that the precious ointment is like his blood out-poured. And all for our salvation.
This brings into the picture the wonderful readings from the book of the prophet Hosea read at Morning and Evening Prayer. In the latter, we are told to “take with you words and return to the Lord.” That is exactly what we are doing in Holy Week. Our hanging upon his words is about our taking those words into our understanding.
Hosea is the great love-prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures. His life is an enacted parable of God’s redeeming love – God taking back his sinful and wayward people even as Hosea forgives and takes back his wayward wife. Redemption, it is being hinted at, is something greater than creation! And yet in the Morning Lesson, we are meant to feel the absolute sense of opposition and distance from the righteousness of God. Hosea provides the Old Testament basis for Paul’s famous hymn: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Nowhere is human sin more fully rebuked than in the words of Hosea about God’s reaction: “compassion is hid from my eyes.”
A troubling thought, it nonetheless catapults us into the deep love of God for our humanity, the theme of which is explored theologically in the Gospel according to St. John read at Morning and Evening Prayer throughout Holy Week. He challenges us about words and their power. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or believe me for the sake of the works themselves.” It is a marvelous thought and yet where does it leave us? It forces us to consider the close nexus between what is said and heard and what is thought and done.
Hanging upon the words of Christ in all of their rich fullness is the challenge of this week. In a way, the point and purpose of hanging attentively upon the words of Christ is abundantly clear. It is meant to challenge and to change us and to make us open to the radical nature of Christ’s word. We are meant to be like Peter – moved to contrition and confession by recalling the words of Christ. Tears r’us! We hang upon his words, the words which teach us that “in all their [our] affliction, he was afflicted.” You see, the full glory of our grandeur and our misery have to be named and felt. Ultimately we learn the lessons of sin and love by hanging upon his words and even more, by contemplating him who bears all the afflictions of our sins. He hangs upon the Cross for us. At the very least, we can hang upon his words.
“All the people hung upon his words”
Fr. David Curry
Monday in Holy Week, 2014