by CCW | 27 March 2018 21:00
Somehow out of the spectacle of violence and cruelty a good and great word emerges. Not from within Israel but from the centurion present at the awful events of the crucifixion itself. Christ, in Isaiah’s words “neither turned away back” but “gave [his] back to the smiters”. He endures the shame and the spitting, the cruel actions that belong in one way or another to all of us. He does so in Isaiah’s vision out of trust “for the Lord God who will help [him].” Not us, it seems.
At this point in The Passion According to St. Mark, we can only behold what human sin and wickedness accomplishes, on the one hand, and what comes out of that spectacle, on the other hand. We go through the gruesome charade of his trial before Pilate and Pilate’s betrayal of his own truth and conscience, being “willing to content the people,” the mob, that is to say, and so releasing the murderer Barabbas and delivering Jesus into our hands of vicious violence. We witness the mocking and the scourging of Christ at the hands of the Roman soldiers in the Praetorium. Thus Jews and Romans have their hand in this outrage but only to make us realize our place with them.
There is no one to help. No one to stop the horror. Even the cross bearer, Simon a Cyrenian, is compelled to carry his cross. And even as crucified, we cannot let him alone, but are in the crowd of the passers-by who mock and deride him along with the chief priests. It is an ugly, ugly scene which reveals the ugliness of ourselves both in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. And that is the point.
Out of the intensity of this scene comes one word from Christ, the great and troubling yet profound word, the cry of dereliction. At once quoting the very first verse of Psalm 22, it is a prayer. Not to the Father, but to God. It is as if the horizons of our lives have narrowed down and there is an eclipse of any personal relationship. In the agony of the crucifixion, he cries out “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It is the only word from the Cross that is a question. Yet questions belong to our acknowledgement of truth. His word is a prayer to God, a prayer that as a question reveals the utter intensity of the Passion and its truth. This is not play-acting. It is suffering in its truest and deepest form: the sense of utter abandonment and loneliness.
Christ voices what belongs to all of the lonely sufferings of our world and day. But he voices it to God and that makes all the difference. The Centurion senses and knows this, seeing somehow a great good that emerges out of such a great horror. His word becomes our word; “Truly this man was the Son of God.” He gets it. Will we?
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday in Holy Week, 2018
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/03/27/sermon-for-tuesday-in-holy-week-8/
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