“All the people hung upon his words”
It isn’t really a very pretty picture. There is very little good that can be said about our humanity in The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark. We are forced to contemplate the hideous realities of human sin in a variety of forms ranging from the miscarriage of justice by Pilate, giving into the machinations of the chief priests who manipulate the crowd, to the mockery of Christ by the soldiers in the Praetorium and, then, to the cruelty of his Crucifixion, reviled at once by those who looked on and even by the two thieves who were crucified with him. Perhaps, Simon the Cyrenian might serve as the only counter to this negative picture of ourselves but even he has to be compelled to bear Christ’s cross to the place of crucifixion. This stands in stark contrast to Christ’s freely willing our redemption.
In this picture of Christ we behold the spectacle of the ultimate good and righteous man whose very goodness is the occasion of our rage and spite as the lesson from Wisdom suggests. Yet, as Isaiah indicates in the Matins’ lesson, “this is my servant, my chosen … in whom my soul delights,” the one who “bring[s] forth justice to the nations,” the one who is “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,” the one who “open[s] the eyes of the blind” and “brings out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison.”
Here in the continuation of Mark’s Passion, we see the meaning of another one of the servant songs from Isaiah, the meaning of Christ as the one who wills to bear all of the injustices of our sinfulness, the one who gives his “back to the smiters” and who “hid not [his] face from shame and spitting.” We hang upon the words of Scripture which present the unvarnished picture of human cruelty and meanness, on the one hand, and the picture of the suffering Christ, on the other hand. Nowhere is that image of the suffering of Christ more disturbingly presented to us than in the horrifying cry of dereliction. “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?”
It is the cri de coeur of the human heart but even more it is the prayer of Jesus to God in the intensity of his pain and suffering. The point is that it is a prayer, a prayer offered in the bitter agony of pain and desolation where even the element of the personal relationship of Son to Father seems to be hidden or eclipsed. “My God, My God,” not my Father. And yet, it is a prayer and not simply a complaint. It expresses eloquently and simply the essence of the suffering of Christ on the Cross. The challenge is to hang on this word and to learn from it.
Learn what? Learn the full horror and meaning of sin. Sin alienates us from God and from one another. Matthew and Mark give us only this word of the Crucified; the other Evangelists provide us with other words to hang upon. It marks the intense agony of the Passion. We shall not understand anything about the Passion of Christ without taking thoughtful measure of this word, especially as seen in the light of the other Scripture readings of this day.
John’s Gospel serves as the New Testament lessons for the Offices of Holy Week. He offers an intense theological understanding of the Passion seen in terms of our being incorporated into Christ and into the divine life of the Trinity. Powerful stuff but wonderfully captured as well in the vivid and disturbing events of the Passion in the other gospels. “I am the vine, ye are the branches,” Jesus says to the disciples in what is the last of the so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel, sayings which offer images and metaphors for our incorporation into the life of God. But this last image is explicitly connected to Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you” and to the grand theme of heavenly friendship. “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” This is the reality that we contemplate in the Crucified Christ. He gives his life for his friends who are also his betrayers and persecutors. Such are the hideous confusions of our disordered loves.
This word from Matthew and Mark take us into the heart of the suffering Christ. It is, perhaps, the closest we can come to some sense of the cost of love. It helps us to understand something of the hideous reality of sin. Here is the heart of darkness made visible in the heart-felt suffering of Christ. The heart of darkness is sin and evil. And yet, out of the suffering heart of Christ comes this heart-felt and agonizing prayer, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Sin alienates and destroys all sense of connection and relationship. And yet, the Crucified One prays.
There is something more and something greater than the spectacles of human sin. In the midst of the scorn and mockery of all who reviled him on the Cross a word hangs above his head, “the superscription of his accusation … written over, The King of the Jews.” It is one of the rare times where, in the received texts of the New Testament, certain passages retain the full capitalization signalling the importance of certain terms and phrases. It seems paradoxical and almost a kind of hideous parody – for that is the truth of our sinfulness – but it expresses something of the deeper and greater truth of Jesus. He reigns from the tree in the face of our rage and spite.
In spite of ourselves it says something good and true and says it in the midst of all that is harsh and horrible. But there is one final word upon which we must hang; the word of the Centurion, the word of one who observing all that is said and done is moved to proclaim the great truth and ultimate goodness of the Passion just at the moment of his dying. “Truly,” he says, “this man was the Son of God.”
Out of the horror of the Passion of Christ, out of the horror of human sin and wickedness in all its cruel disarray, comes this great and redemptive word. His word expresses what it means to hang upon the words of Christ. He sees and hears the Crucified and gives voice to its meaning that “truly this man was the Son of God.” Nowhere is the doctrine of the Incarnation in relation to human redemption more concisely expressed. His word brings out what underlies the Passion – the spiritual identity and community of the Son and the Father in the bond of the Spirit. That this can be born out of the hideous spectacle of human sin and evil testifies to the truth of the Gospel. Only God can make something good and beautiful and true out of the evil ugliness of our false lives. We can learn this, too, but only if we, like the Centurion, hang upon his words.
“All the people hung upon his words”
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday in Holy Week, 2014