by CCW | 18 April 2014 20:15
This is Luke’s word to us, too. And on this day especially, it is our challenge to hang upon the words of him who hangs upon the Cross for us and for our salvation. Only so can this day be in any sense Good Friday.
“He borrowed a body so that he might borrow a death,” Athanasius famously observes. He borrowed, too, a tomb, it seems, which becomes the womb of new life, the radical new life of the Resurrection.
Luke gives us three of the seven words of Christ from the Cross. In the traditional understanding, the words of the Cross begin and end with the prayer of the Son to the Father from St. Luke: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” and, as we just heard, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” And, as Luke tells us, “having said this, he breathed his last.” Christ dies. Then, and only then, are we left with the intriguing picture of “all the multitudes” having “assembled to see the sight” and “return[ing] home beating their breasts.” The sight of Christ crucified and the words of the Crucified are meant to affect us, indeed, to convict us and move us to acts of contrition and confession, even “beating our breasts.”
Holy Week is a week of contrasts where the contradictions of our humanity in all of its disorder and disarray are on display. We are in the story. We are in the crowd, the multitude, which cried “Hosanna to the Son of David” in praise and exaltation only to change our song to the hideous violence of “Crucify, Crucify!” And now it seems, having had our way and having seen and heard, we can only return home beating our breasts.
But the story doesn’t end with us just returning home and beating our breasts in sorrow and sadness leaving Christ hanging on the Cross. No. Something of the fuller meaning of our hanging upon his words is captured in what follows. It is an act of compassion, an act which will come to be known as one of the works of corporal mercy, the work of burying the dead.
Joseph of Arimathea “took [his body] down and wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever yet been laid.” There is something poignant and powerful in the attention to detail in the accounts of the Passion. The story speaks to our hearts and minds in our quest for understanding. The words of Christ himself on the Cross compel our attention; the words of the Passion in the accounts of the Evangelists contribute to the understanding of human redemption. The body matters; it is not left out of the picture of salvation.
The forgiveness of sins, the commending of his spirit to the Father, the burying of his body – all of these speak to the reality of the divine love which moves our hearts. We have had our way. The way of sin is death. Now God has his way, the way of love and life. And his way compels us to care for one another in the body of Christ. Joseph of Arimathea’s act is an act of love; it is love that triumphs and makes the Vale of Misery a well of blessings. It is love that makes a tomb a womb of new life. How shall this love rule and move in our hearts? Only by our hanging upon the words of the Crucified.
Fr. David Curry
Meditation
Good Friday Ecumenical Service 2014
Windsor United Baptist Church
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2014/04/18/sermon-for-good-friday-1100am-ecumenical-service/
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