John’s
Passion is full of people making exchanges, swapping something heart-breakingly
brilliant, fragile in its tenderness for something dull, insubstantial and
ridiculous. Friends, sin is dull, insubstantial and ridiculous. And Jesus
dreams more daring dreams than that for us.
Take
Judas. He comes at night, with lamps and torches. He had walked out on the Light of the World
incarnate, to live in darkness. He’d
exchanged the Light of Salvation for lamps and torches, meager hope to illumine
a cold, dark world. Jesus had longed and
had acted to set his heart aflame with burning zeal and fiery love, and he
couldn’t take it. It was too much, too
daring: to entrust one’s heart to a love that would love unto death, a love the
darkness could not overcome, but could not comprehend either. So he trades it in, for lamps and torches,
barely enough to put the darkness at bay long enough to stumble to the garden
of betrayal.
Peter,
at least Peter would be loyal! But he
seeks to make an exchange too, a subtler one, and maybe even more dangerous
because of that. He would have his Lord
shirk the cup the Father has poured him, refuse obedience to being His loving
Son, turn away from Love, resorting to violence in place of loving self-gift,
refuse to be the Lamb to be slain for us.
And his choices make choices, as so often choices do. He finds himself confronted in the courtyard
by a relative of his victim. Jesus can’t
be justly convicted of anything, but Peter can.
So, he evades. He lies. He exchanges the truth for a lie. He exchanges a relationship of Love with
Truth incarnate for violence, cowardice, temporary safety and a lie.
The
crowd make their exchange too, making their request for Barabbas in place of
Christ: an insurgent in place of true liberation. Pilate cares more about being a Friend of
Caesar, a political honor he’d connived his way to, than the one who “calls us
friends.” Does he have an idea who this
is, when he insists that Jesus’ titulus be inscribed “King of the Jews”? If so, he, and the crowd he lets himself be
beholden to, replace the king who could save them with Tiberias Caesar. A despot.
A despot who in the short term promises temporary safety, but won’t be
able to do much about that a few years later when he’s murdered by his heir
Caligula. They trade flimsy short-term
safety for Eternal Life as beloved friends of the King of Kings.
And how
about us? What exchanges do we
make? And how do we let Jesus bring us
back from them? Because he is acting to
do that. We’re here because we don’t want to make exchanges. We want our world illumined by Christ, not
replacement torches and lamps. We want to
embrace the Father’s Love and Truth that Christ is, but we do what we
don’t want to do, and find lies tempting our lips. We want to pray “Thy Kingdom Come!” and mean
it with all our hearts, but we still find it within ourselves to hold back, to
not want Jesus to reign in our hearts, to rule us.
At his
last supper, Jesus told us where he was going, to heaven to prepare a place for
us. For the last thousand years, our Jewish sisters and brothers have been
singing a song at Passover, Dayeinu, “that would have been enough for us,”
that piles up grace upon grace God has bestowed on us, each of which is
world-changingly enough. To go to heaven, to prepare a place for us, to not just
show us the Way, but be the Way, Dayeinu, that would have been enough
for us, but we keep turning away, trading that Way for something that seems
easier. So, on the cross Jesus acts.
He
speaks to Mary and the Beloved Disciple. They must have felt so alone at the
foot of that cross, however physically close they were to each other, or to
Christ. So, from the cross, he forges
communion. He bids them behold each
other, and behold each other as kin. And
they receive one another. The Word of God
came into the world, but his own did not receive Him. Now, the world has changed. Now, these two receive each other. And we’re called to too. We’re called to behold each other, behold
each other as kin. Because that’s what
Church is. We’re given to each other to
be the sacrament of Christ’s presence in the world. Dayeinu, that would
have been enough for us.
But it’s
hard, because we still have it within ourselves to hold back. We are still plagued by fear, isolation,
enmity, sin, turned in on ourselves. So,
Christ keeps acting to draw us out of that and into communion, and in his very
death he hands over the Spirit. It is
completed. We are filled with Christ’s
own Spirit, his breath, that he gave up that we might learn to breathe anew,
closer to us than we are to ourselves. Dayeinu,
that would have been enough for us.
And from
his side flows water to cleanse us, water poured out in baptism, water that
gives us life.
And with
the water, blood. Blood poured out for
us. Blood present to us every time the
sacrifice on Golgotha is re-presented to us in the sacrifice of the Mass. He is not distant from us! This act of love becomes a banquet to which
we are invited every day of the year; every day but this day. This day, when our Lord offers himself, body,
blood, soul and divinity, in the reserved sacrament, the fruits of yesterday’s
Mass, the Mass of his Last Supper, when he got down on his knees, washed our
feet and bids us rise.
And it
works. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus
come out of the darkness of secret discipleship and act courageously for
Christ. It works! What is Christ working in us? Come back tomorrow or Sunday to celebrate
even more, but the good news needn’t wait till then. The good news is what wonders he’s wrought
from the cross; how, in his death, he restores us to the fragile brilliance of
love-filled life. That’s why my community, the Congregation of Holy Cross,
takes as our motto: Ave crux, spes unica! Hail the Cross, our only hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment