“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all unto me”
The office readings for Tuesday in Holy Week offer interesting insights into The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark and thus to the spiritual meaning of Christ being lifted up and our being drawn to him. At Matins, we have the first of the four suffering servant songs of Isaiah which signals the purpose of Israel’s mission as “a covenant to the people,” “a light to the nations,” “to open the eyes of the blind, and to bring out from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” These images all belong to the idea of human redemption and divine revelation recapitulated and made visible in the figure of Jesus Christ. The suffering mission of Israel for the world is fulfilled in Christ, too. This suggests complementary universalities rather than simply competing ones. The servant songs in Isaiah have contributed greatly to the Christian understanding of the person of Christ. The reading points to the sense of mission and purpose.
The first lesson at Vespers from Wisdom reflects profoundly on the nature of human sin in the forms of envy and resentment that are so prevalent in our world. The righteous man is inconvenient to us in our unsound reasoning. “He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us.” Therefore “let us condemn him to a shameful death.” The passage highlights our sinfulness which is visited upon him, ultimately upon Jesus who is made sin for us. In Wisdom our sins are about our reasoning as having gone astray and thus blind to the secret purpose of God, for we have forgotten or denied that “God created man for incorruption” and that we have been made in “the image of God’s own eternity.” Once again we confront the sad parody of the truth of our humanity; such is the twisted nature of our sinfulness.
The readings at Matins and Vespers from John’s Gospel, chapter 15, highlight the deeper communion between God and man that God seeks and makes for us. Such is redemption in our abiding in Christ as the branches in the vine. How? Through his word abiding in us, making us his friends and reminding us that we are not of the world but of Christ in his service and sacrifice.
These readings along with the lesson at Mass, the third suffering servant song of Isaiah, contribute to the deeper meaning of the Passion according to Mark. Christ is lifted up before our eyes on the Cross. We hear his agonizing word of desolation, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” only to realize that he voices the desolating, despairing and contradictory nature of sin itself. It is made visible and audible in him. All of the forms of human injustice and the betrayal of all that is good and holy are concentrated in the figure of the Crucified and in his death. Nothing much good can be said of us in the events of Mark’s account of the Passion. But a great good comes out of this spectacle precisely in terms of what is lifted up before us. It is found in the words of the Centurion who beholding these things grasps its deeper meaning and purpose. “Truly this man was the Son of God,” he says. We behold Christ crucified bearing the wounds and marks of human sin, having been made sin for us, embodying all of the sufferings of our wounded and broken humanity, and yet we behold God. Sin and love are lifted up before us in the spectacle of the Passion.
“And I, if I be lifted up will draw all unto me”
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday in Holy Week, 2024