Sermon for Tuesday in Holy Week
“Thou art the man”
It is an ugly scene. The continuation of the Passion according to Mark sets before us the scene of Jesus being hauled before Pilate who then hands Jesus over to be crucified. He has acquiesced to the mob, to the madness of crowds. “Why what evil hath he done?”, he even asks while giving in to their will. “They hated me without a cause,” as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 35.19; 69.4) which John in turn references (Jn. 15.25).
The continuation of the Passion in Mark portrays us as the persecutors of Christ in its different modalities: the religious leaders of the Jews, the Roman authorities, like Pilate, the callous violence and mockery of the soldiers. Even in leading him out to be crucified, they have to “compel one Simon a Cyrenian” “to bear his cross.” There is no good to be found in ourselves. “Thou art the man.” We confront the forms of human evil in the figure of the crucified.
He is crucified with two thieves. “They that passed by railed on him” mocking and insulting him. Words of evil intent. Such is the viciousness of the madness of crowds; we are united only in our evil. We are meant to see ourselves in that crowd. But how can anything good come out of this?
Only by contemplating the one and only word from the Cross which Mark and Matthew alone provide. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It captures our attention. What is he saying? To whom is he calling? Elijah? We don’t even get that right. It is a prayer from the Psalms, Psalm 22, a prayer to God out of the depths of human sin and misery. It is Israel’s prayer out of the experiences of suffering and hardship, a prayer which gathers into itself the whole range of human sin and suffering in the feeling of abandonment, of desolation and aloneness. Yet as a prayer it looks to God; not as Father, a name which takes on a specific meaning of identity in the Christian faith, but simply as God. In this word, we confront ourselves in the radical meaning of sin which is nothing less than our alienation from God. “Thou art the man.” This is us in our sins.
But in confronting ourselves in our sinfulness made visible in the crucified Christ, we confront the truth of God which our sins attempt in vain to deny. Christ dies on the cross, crying out with a loud voice, and giving up the spirit, Mark tells us. Yet that is the moment when the Centurion seeing all of this says “Truly this man was the Son of God.” This is the good of the Passion in all of its violence and evil. To see the goodness of God in Christ precisely through the madness of crowds.
“Thou art the man”
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday in Holy Week, 2022
