“It is finished.”
Hurry, Jesus. Hurry to the appointment
you have made to duel death. Hasten
the darkening sky, that a false dawn may break
early; that you may fell the great destroyer.
The soldiers come with mallets and spear,
we hear them marching, breath
charging up the hill. Hurry, Jesus.
Finish it.
Caiaphas, the High Priest to whom Judas betrayed Jesus: Caiaphas had determined that it would be better for one man to be put to death for the sake of appeasing the Romans, for the sake of keeping the peace; for the sake of his own skin. He, being a High Priest, was accustomed to making sacrifices that were not his own.
He was wrong. Jesus was not the only one to die out of that betrayal and arrest. Judas found that he could not live after all without Jesus.
Caiaphas’ strategy did not keep the peace, either. Pilate, renowned for his ruthlessness, was hardly going to turn soft at the offering of one Jewish rabble-rouser. In 70 AD, thirty-some years after the crucifixion, the city of Jerusalem was routed, and the Temple razed. The seat of the High Priest was gone forever.
Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate: they all chose the wrong path. The thought that by means of power, money, cunning or bribery, that they could save their own skins; that they had no need of the salvation that comes from God.
They were all wrong. Rome itself would fall soon enough.
What survived from that night was much more humble, more simple, more durable. What survived was the humility of Jesus, washing the feet of his disciples. What survived was his body and blood, endlessly recreated of the sacrament of bread and the wine. What survived was his word, his commandment.
“Love one another,” he said, “as I have loved you.” Not by your power, still less by your sacrifice of others; not by your cunning or your cleverness or your wealth or your might will they know you. “If you have love for one another, all will know that you are my disciples.”
The temptation to fix Jesus’ plan, to hurry it along or to improve it with an extra boost of power, or to discard the unlovable parts; to make sacrifices of others, or to sacrifice what is not our own; that temptation is with us all, whether we are on the side of Caiaphas or of Judas, Pilate or Peter.
But it does not have the final word. Only love endures.
As the frog seeks its spawning ground,
I yearn for the waters of new life.
As the child wails for its mother’s breast,
I crave your loving tenderness.
As the hunger striker is starved of a reprieve,
I cry out for justice, or at least for mercy.
As one whose eyes are forever dimmed,
I thirst for the glory of God.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Life shines in the dark lens of your countenance.
When you hide your face, all die, and return to the earth.
Was it dust or grief, guilt or love that made you turn away?
A thousand years in your sight pass like yesterday;
three hours in but the blinking of your eye.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciples, “Here is your mother.”
There is no changing one body for another. It is not the case,
Jesus, that because you die, another will take your place.
He will not grow into your clothes, your skin, your lungs
tested lustily in that barn when, at your birth, she wept for joy to hear your cry.
As though to prove your sheer, fallible humanity you try
to make it all better, when it would be better, Jesus,to leave them to their grief.
They will find out one another if need be; there they will agree
it is but empty labour you offer with your wasting breath.
If you had raised up children from the very rocks for Abraham,
after Isaac and that funeral pyre,
Sarah would cover her face, and her breast.
send them away hungry; the Lord will provide,
but there’s no taking back your sacrifice. Like your hands, your feet, your side,
their hearts would never mend, not quite, after you died.
“Today, you will be with me in paradise…”
I went to paradise once, before it was washed away. The Flood that was never meant to happen again consumed the golden sands, devoured the prayers of Allah’s faithful people. Their floating village sank beneath the perfect azure waters.
I saw a show – one of those ancient biblical types, pretending archaeology will dig up a God, instead of only his old bones. They found the Garden of Eden under the ocean, buried in silt and the forgetfulness of the sea.
Perhaps there is more to fear from rising sea-levels than first we thought. We made no such promise, after all, never again to destroy the earth by a flood. Instead, we drown our sorrows.
…”I tell you truly.”
Father, forgive them
– not yet, Jesus. Give us time.
We are in no hurry for new life.
Give us time to think about what we have done,
to consider how we might compensate
you and one another. Give us time
to find the perfect sacrifice,
scapegoat or self-immolation,
either way, give us time to reach a settlement,
God, for, you see, we do not want to owe you,
but rather, to own you
– for they know not what they do.
Every Palm Sunday we start off well enough, praising God and waving palms in the air, waving at the passing traffic, throwing blessings around like confetti. Within the hour we have become the baying pack hounding Jesus to the cross, and to his grave.
If only we could keep the palms for today, send the Passion to its place on Good Friday, celebrate next Sunday the joy of Resurrection, scattering our blessings again, waving to the neighbours passing by, praising God with loud hosannas. We could almost pretend it didn’t happen. Even Jesus wanted to skip this part if it were possible.
We are in no danger of crucifixion. For us, the worry is becoming the baying crowd. We can blame mob mentality, peer pressure. The thing is, we know that those things do not absolve us from morality. In evolutionary terms, our social instincts were designed to promote safety, happiness, health and wellness: to support our goodness to one another. If those influences have turned malignant, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
While the very stones would resound hosanna if we were to fall silent, they would not call out for his blood. Stones don’t do that. Only we do that.
I heard an author interview on NPR the other week. Alex Abramovich wrote about finding his childhood bully, all grown up, running a bike club. It’s a California bike club called the East Bay Rats, so the material is not necessarily suitable for a Sunday morning at church. I won’t describe for you the violence that took place: suffice to say, an outsider, a gutter-dweller crossed the bikers. One man decided to punish him. Abramovich says,
[it was] very horrible to watch and horrible to think about and horrible also to think that I could’ve done something to stop it in real time. And I didn’t realize that in real time and didn’t do anything to stop it, so not a proud moment for me.
DAVIES: And the recycler survived, got up and walked away?
ABRAMOVICH: You know, I turned around and I thought I was going to throw up when I saw them ride over the recycler’s body. And when I turned back around, the recycler was gone. I was expecting him to be lying on the cement with broken bones, but he had scampered away. The next time I saw Trevor, Trevor said, you’d be surprised. Crack heads are surprisingly resilient, and I said I wish I could’ve done something to stop it, and Trevor said you could’ve. All it takes is someone saying stop. [emphasis mine]
All it takes is someone saying, “Stop.”
It couldn’t be the victim of the violence: he was voiceless; his humanity, any moral influence he might have, had already been dismissed in order for the attack to take place. It couldn’t be the biker: his brakes had already failed.
All it takes is someone saying, “Stop:” that someone would have to be a bystander. It would have to be one of the crowd. It would have to be one of us.
Peter failed to show up at the Pavement. He was lost already in his own spiral of shame. What of the others? What of the people cleansed of leprosy? What of the parents whose children had been wrenched from the jaws of death, of the people who had cast their cloaks on the ground, singing praises and welcome a week before? They all were silent now in the face of partisan power plays, the cry for a sacrificial lamb, a scapegoat, innocent blood in which to wash the hands of the guilty. Did they think the stones would cry out for them?
Our bishops met a week ago, and they released this “Word to the Church”:
On Good Friday the ruling political forces of the day tortured and executed an innocent man. They sacrificed the weak and the blameless to protect their own status and power. On the third day Jesus was raised from the dead, revealing not only their injustice but also unmasking the lie that might makes right.
In a country still living under the shadow of the lynching tree, we are troubled by the violent forces being released by this season’s political rhetoric. Americans are turning against their neighbors, particularly those on the margins of society. They seek to secure their own safety and security at the expense of others. There is legitimate reason to fear where this rhetoric and the actions arising from it might take us.
In this moment, we resemble God’s children wandering in the wilderness. We, like they, are struggling to find our way. They turned from following God and worshiped a golden calf constructed from their own wealth. The current rhetoric is leading us to construct a modern false idol out of power and privilege. We reject the idolatrous notion that we can ensure the safety of some by sacrificing the hopes of others. No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, we must respect the dignity of every human being and we must seek the common good above all else.
We call for prayer for our country that a spirit of reconciliation will prevail and we will not betray our true selves.
That we will not betray our true selves.
That is the danger of the Passion for us today, on this day. We are not – that is to say, most of us are not – in danger of crucifixion. We are, with Peter, with the silent shame of the lepers in the crowd: we are in danger of betraying Jesus. We are in danger of betraying ourselves.
We cannot change the path of the story that lies before us during Holy Week. That crowd has spoken, and we will walk with Jesus to the cross, into the tomb. We will, at the end, find resurrection.
We can still change the path of the story that lies before us this Holy Week. We can be the voice for the voiceless, crying, “Stop.” We do not have to betray Jesus; we do not have to betray our true selves.
We are not in danger of crucifixion. Grant then, everlasting God, that this day we fall into no sin, nor run into any [other] kind of danger; but that we, being ordered by thy governance, may do always what is righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 57)
He returned.
I can’t get over that: he got away, he got free, he came home. Then he returned,
to the scene of his slavery, to the landscape of his discontent, to the house of his enemies.
He returned,
not for revenge, but to drive out the poison which had imprisoned him,
to run off bloody oppression,
to lance their guilt with love; with prayers for his persecutors, vipers though they may be.
As though Eve were to return to absolve the serpent;
Adam to glue the apple back on to the tree.
God grant us the grace to love those who persecute us; to persist in love when hatred seeps its poison into the very ground upon which we stand. Give us the patience to rest in the knowledge that you will, in time, make all things new, even us, even our enemies, even so. Give us the passion to make a difference while we wait, waging prayer against despair, outliving death, outdoing cunning and guile with the innocent wisdom of the gospel. Amen.
over the water 