Category: Sermons

“Thou art the man”

We have used Nathan’s words as the interpretative text for the Passion of Christ throughout Holy Week. “Thou art the man,” Nathan says to David even as Pontius Pilate says to us, Ecce Homo, “Behold the man,” pointing to Christ wearing a crown of thorns and a purple robe, being scourged, mocked, reviled and scorned before being handed over to the madness of crowds to be crucified. We behold ourselves in beholding Christ. “They shall look on him whom they pierced,” as John’s account of the Passion (Jn. 19.37) concludes recalling Zechariah (12.10). The ‘they’ are ‘we’. We are not the victims but the persecutors who confront our evil in the crucified Christ, the one whom we have pierced and nailed to the cross. We behold our sins made visible in him. Why? To be convicted in our hearts of our sin by beholding in Christ the love which bears our sins. Only so can they be overcome. “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”

The scapegoat mechanism of blaming others for our sufferings and fears is completely inverted. We are not the persecuted but the persecutors. The scapegoat is the Lamb of God. “Behold the Lamb of God.” “Behold the man.” Behold ourselves at once as sinners and as redeemed in Christ but only if we can say with David “I have sinned against the Lord.” For that is the good of Good Friday, the good of our atonement.

“It is finished” is the sixth word from the cross in the tradition of the preaching on the seven last words of Christ. This devotion was established in Peru by the Jesuits in the 17th century after several devastating earthquakes in Lima and from there carried back to Europe. It has shaped some of the great choral works of the Baroque period; for instance, Haydn’s Seven Last Words. The third, fifth and sixth words of Christ come from John’s Gospel which is read along with the lesson from Hebrews on Good Friday. Here is the love that is “the propitiation for our sins,” that is to say, the atoning sacrifice which makes us one with God and with one another. It means beholding the crucified and beholding our sins in him. “Thou art the man” is about confronting ourselves in the one whom we behold on the cross. “It is finished” refers to the overcoming of all sin that separates us from God and from one another.

It also means beholding ourselves in one another. Thus the third word from the cross bids Mary, his mother, to “behold thy son” in John, the beloved disciple, and bids John to “behold thy mother.” In other words, Mary is to see him in John, and John is to see her as his mother in Christ. It is a form of love, a form of mutual indwelling or coinherence grounded in the eternal coinherence of God as Trinity. Beholding one another in loving care means beholding one another in Christ. He gives John to her and he gives her to John. It captures wonderfully the unity of the love of God and the love of man in Christ. It is the meaning of Christ’s atonement. Our being one with God through Christ’s sacrifice unites us to one another in loving service.

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“Thou art the man”

“A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another,” Jesus says. But what is new about that? Haven’t we heard the commandment “to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” from Deuteronomy (6.5) to which Mark has added “and with all your mind”? Haven’t we heard from Leviticus (19.18) “to love your neighbour as yourself? How then is this a new commandment?

Because of the service and sacrifice of Christ which gives a new meaning to our lives and our loves. They are intensified in the Passion of Christ. What is given a more intense meaning is the depth of human sin, on the one hand, and the greater love of God towards us precisely in our sins, on the other hand. The new commandment to love is about service and sacrifice undertaken in a myriad of ways as the rites and ceremonies of Maundy Thursday indicate.

The washing of feet, the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the stripping of the altar, the going to Gethsemane in prayer and vigil, the traditions of the Sovereign giving alms to the poor, are among those rites and ceremonies. In a way, they are all about opening us out to a new and deeper understanding about the love of God and the love of man because they are concentrated in Christ, true God and true man.

Holy Week immerses us in the Passion of Christ. The rites and rituals of this day serve to bring us to ourselves as sinners and as beloved of God. We confront ourselves in order to find ourselves in the deep love of Christ for our humanity. “Thou art the man,” our Holy Week text, takes on a fuller significance in the Triduum Sacrum.

Perhaps no ritual is more intriguing than the Judas Cup ceremony instituted by the monks of Durham Cathedral in northern England in the 14th century. Following Holy Communion, a large cup or bowl called a mazer was placed before the monks. As Douglas Davies explains, “it was once called the Judas cup because the face of Judas was worked into its bowl so that when the monks drank from it they could see, as it were, the face of Judas looking at them and, in a sense, mirroring their own face.”

We are meant to confront ourselves as the betrayers and the persecutors of Christ. To see ourselves in all of the events of the Passion is the purpose of this week. It is profoundly counter-culture because it is not about pointing fingers of blame at others or about wallowing in the competing forms of victimhood. It is about confronting ourselves as the persecutors and betrayers of God, the principle of all truth and goodness.

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“Thou art the man”

Luke’s account of the Passion has a certain literary quality and a certain inner intensity to it. It takes us into the heart of Christ, on the one hand, and reveals to us our hearts, on the other hand. With Luke we see Christ’s interrogation of Peter at the last supper, itself a scene in which Luke provides a deeper understanding of the new covenant that his Passion and Resurrection accomplish. The interrogation of Peter serves to highlight the more dramatic form of Peter’s betrayal at the end of today’s Gospel reading.

With Luke we feel something of the intensity of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane, the real struggle of the will of man with the will of God, “nevertheless not my will but thine be done.” The prayer of Christ is pictured in its intensity with the graphic image of his sweat being “as it were, great drops of blood.” The heart of Christ is opened to view.

But our hearts too are on display in the kiss of Judas – our betrayals of Christ, graphically signalled in Christ’s gentle but firm and haunting words, “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?” Our hearts are on display in the smiting with a sword of the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear – our violence in the intensity of the moment which is immediately countered by Christ’s word and act, “suffer ye thus far” and “he touched his ear, and healed him.” The contrast is powerful and telling between the disorders and violence of our words and deeds and the gentleness of Christ’s words and deeds.

The drama reaches a crescendo in Luke’s account of Peter’s betrayal and most especially in terms of how Peter confronts himself in his betrayal. In a masterly and almost painterly touch, Luke tells us that after Peter’s third betrayal not only does the cock crow but “the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.” With Luke, it is the look that convicts Peter; “and Peter remembered the word of the Lord.”

What is that look? In keeping with the inner intensity of Luke’s portrayal of the agony of Christ and the gentleness of Christ, it is a look of compassion and love. Such a look convicts us far more than words of angry condemnation, far more than looks of judgement. “Thou art the man,” Christ’s look says to Peter, a look that recalls us to the truth which we have betrayed. In so doing, we are being recalled to the truth of ourselves as found in Christ’s love. It is over and against our sins but is accomplished through our encounter with ourselves. “Thou art the man,” indeed.

Such is the light of Christ which illumines us even in the shadows and the darkness of our sins. And such too is the meaning of Tenebrae in the intensity of the Psalms. They call us to account. They call us to Christ.

“Thou art the man”

Fr. David Curry
Wednesday in Holy Week, Tenebrae, 2022

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“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

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“Thou art the man”

Nathan’s words to David seek to convict his conscience about his sins. So, too, the accounts of the Passion present a compelling picture of our humanity in all of its sin and disarray, in all of the confusions of our incomplete loves. At the center is Jesus in his encounter with us. The Passion according to St. Mark begins with the encounter between Jesus and an unnamed woman “in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, and as he sat at meat,” as Mark tellingly notes. It begins with Jesus in the company of the afflicted; in short, with us in our afflictions. As Isaiah puts it in the lesson, “in all their affliction he was afflicted.”

The unnamed woman – identified by John as Mary of Bethany and later in the commentary tradition as Mary Magdalene – breaks open an “alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious” and pours its contents on his head. She anoints him. Why? Is she acknowledging him as the Messiah, the anointed one of God? Her action excites indignation, anger and division as if she has done something wrong. Jesus responds “let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me: for ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good. But me ye have not always. She hath done what she could; she is come to aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.” He names his death, his embrace of the realities of human sin. Yet he acknowledges the good in her action even as he convicts our consciences about our neglect of the sufferings of one another. Her act belongs to one of the acts of corporal mercy with respect to the burying of the dead. Her act, too, is an act of sacrifice, an act of love towards Jesus.

“The poor you have with you always” does not mean our neglect of them. Jesus is challenging us about whether we make any effort to do good towards those in need. There is no illusion that we can solve all the problems of inequality and poverty and suffering in our world but there is no mistaking the idea of an obligation to do whatever we can. This goes to the logic of Christ as “the mediator of the new covenant” and so to the meaning of his passion as the ultimate reconciliation and restoration of our wounded and broken humanity. It means encountering ourselves in our dealings with one another. No sooner does Jesus say that what “she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her,” then Judas Iscariot goes to the chief priests to betray him unto them.

What unfolds is Mark’s account of the supper in the Upper Room where Jesus says to his disciples that “one of you which eateth with me shall betray me.” It excites a questioning on the part of each. “Is it I? Is it I?” It is the point of the accounts of the Passion to excite in us self-examination about the ways in which we have betrayed the truth and goodness of God in one way or another. Jesus takes bread and takes the cup; he identifies himself with the bread and the wine of the Passover. It signals the sacramental ways in which we participate in his Passion. “This is my body.” “This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many.”

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“Truly this was the Son of God”

“The dogma is the drama,” the novelist and theologian Dorothy L. Sayers once wisely noted. Nowhere is that idea more concentrated than in the liturgy of Palm Sunday. It begins the one long liturgy of Holy Week which culminates in Easter. It is the drama of salvation but only if we learn what the liturgy of Palm Sunday and Holy Week teaches us in and through its intensity.

We are not the victims in this story apart from the being the victims of ourselves in our judgements and vilification of others. In a strange way, there is a kind of reversal of the “scapegoat mechanism”. For the scapegoat of all our discontents, our hatred, and our fear of others is transformed, first, by Isaiah in the Servant Songs, and, then, in the Gospels  into the Lamb of God. “Behold, the Lamb of God,” John the Baptist proclaims in the Gospels read at the end of the Trinity Season and in Advent, and so in the intensity of the Passion in the Good Friday sentences (BCP, p.173). But in him we confront ourselves not as victims but as persecutors. Palm Sunday and Holy Week confront us with ourselves in the disarray, the chaos and the evil of human sin which wreaks such havoc in our world and day.

As the sociologist, philosopher and literary critic, René Girard, observes, major social and political crises, such as the Black Death in the 14th century (not unlike the Covid-19 pandemic), result in the dissolution of all cultural distinctions, the things which belong to our individuality within a community of order. The resulting confusion and fear leads to fixing blame for this confusion and break-down of order and life; hence, the scapegoat figure, someone or some group who stands out as different in some way or another becomes the target of our discontent, our fear, and our hatred. Thus in mythology and history, scapegoat stories are really persecution narratives.

This is inverted in the biblical understanding, especially in the Gospels. We confront ourselves as the persecutors in a radical internalizing of sin. The spectacle of Holy Week which begins with the drama of Palm Sunday is the spectacle of our humanity in all of the forms of its disarray, on the one hand, and the figure of Christ, on the other hand, in whose presence we are revealed to ourselves. Paradoxically, in the sense of a profound yet dialectical truth, that is the mercy, the good, if you will, of the Passion.

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“For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant”

The Letter to the Hebrews is a very rich and demanding theological text. It is intriguing to see when passages from Hebrews are read in the classical lectionary. Hebrews is read at Christmas – the thundering words about the pageant of God’s word culminating in the Word and Son of God (Heb.1.1-12; BCP, p. 105). It is read today on Passion Sunday, the beginning of deep Lent, and, indeed, the end of the Epistle reading this morning (and our text) is the beginning of the Epistle reading for Wednesday in Holy Week (Heb. 9.15-28; BCP, p. 163). Hebrews is read on Good Friday (Heb. 10.1-25; BCP, p. 174). Hebrews is read in the Octave of All Saints for the commemoration of “Founders, Benefactors, and Missionaries” (Heb. 11.13-16; 12.1-2, BCP, p. 302), reminding us of our heavenly citizenship, at once “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses” and “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”  It is read on Ascension Day at Evening Prayer and throughout the Daily Offices of Ascensiontide, thus informing our understanding of the Ascension as the culmination of the Resurrection. Such things suggest the theological significance of Hebrews.

And it is not by accident that Hebrews 9.11-15 is read today just after a thematic selection of readings from Leviticus on Friday evening and Saturday morning and evening just past. In a way, Hebrews is the Christian re-working of the forms of reciprocity in worship that belongs to Leviticus and especially in terms of the ethical demands that the worship of God entails with respect to our dealings with one another and the land; in short, the love of neighbour, which includes the stranger and the sojourner, and our  respect and care for the land. Such considerations speak to the idea of atonement, to our being at one with God and through God with one another in God’s creation. This is the significance of Jesus as “the Mediator of the new covenant.”

The idea of mediation assumes conflict, a division between parties. But the Mediator here is not about seeking some sort of compromise between competition over partial goods, trying to find some sort of consensus which we agree upon and make. The issue of mediation here is about the yawning and unbridgeable gap between God and man owing to human sin and evil. The divide or opposition which we have caused cannot be overcome or mediated by us. The Book of Leviticus, with all of the rigour of its proscriptions about ritual and sacrifice, takes seriously the relation between Israel and God as grounded in God’s own holiness. “You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19.2). “I am the Lord your God” is a constantly repeated refrain in Leviticus, a constant reminder of the holy otherness of God as the ground for our actions towards one another and towards the created order. But such things presuppose our separation from both God and nature and from God and one another.  What Leviticus seeks is atonement, actions commanded by God that seek the reconciliation of our humanity with God and with one another and with the created order.

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“Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”

It should be the mantra for our divided and fragmented world in the attempt to reclaim the spiritual and intellectual principles that give meaning to human life. We are in the wilderness in a flight from the world, a flight from reality; the very opposite of the wilderness of Exodus and of Lent. For we are scattered in the confusions of our minds, scattered in the pride of the imaginations of our hearts, as Mary’s Magnificat suggests.

This Sunday looks back to the Exodus and to the other Sundays in Lent and looks ahead to Holy Week and Easter. It is simply about what is learned in the wilderness journey, our journey to God and with God as the principle of all reality. The Exodus was about a journey from slavery into freedom. What enslaves us is more than something external, more than the restraints and limits that belong to the natural world and to human life. The deeper forms of enslavement have to do with the realities of sin which are about a denial of God and of the goodness of creation. The modern gnostic flight from reality sees the world as something fearful and evil yet assumes a human freedom from the world through the fantasies and illusions of our control over nature; a flight into a technological future away from the limits of the world. It is no longer God’s world to be engaged respectfully and with care. It is an evil from which we assume we can escape. The movie ‘Interstellar’ is, perhaps, one illustration of this theme – a flight from an earth which we have made inhabitable to other planets but with the realization, perhaps, that the one thing we cannot escape is ourselves.

Lent is about facing the reality of ourselves. The good news, paradoxical as it may seem, is the knowledge that we are all sinners. Good news?! Indeed, because we can only know ourselves as sinners through the realization of what is prior to our sins and follies, namely, our own created being and our place within the created order.

Lent began on Ash Wednesday with the imposition of ashes signaling the acknowledgement of ourselves as sinners. Turning to God in repentance, however, is not an act of human pride and ascetic accomplishment; in other words, a work of man. It is our response to the grace of God moving in us in the deepening awareness of ourselves as sinners. It belongs, in other words, to that twofold sense of freedom from what enslaves us and our freedom to God; “to decline from sin, and incline to virtue,” as The Penitential Service rather beautifully puts it, “that we may walk with a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore” (BCP, p, 614). Such a movement is about our being gathered to God.

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