Good Friday Meditation, 4/10/09

Last night, after our Maundy Thursday service, we went out to eat. I was wearing my collar, which I rarely do. I noticed that it drew some attention when I entered, which is why I usually don’t wear it. Shortly after we sat down, a man sitting near us said, tomorrow is Good Friday isn’t it? The other responded, “Yes, I guess it is, though there is no reason for me to know that.” The implication seemed to be that he had nothing to do with church and should not be expected to know about Good Friday. I had the sense that he was speaking so I could hear, making a kind of statement of his own, a contrast to the statement my collar had made. But, I might have been overly sensitive.

Then, when I turned on my computer this morning, after checking the weather and looking for email messages, I scrolled down to see what news there was and who was leading in the Masters tournament and how my Minnesota Twins had done against Seattle, (they lost) and then to check on the Markets. Of course, there was no news about the markets as they are closed on Good Friday. I don’t know how long it will be before the markets are open on Good Friday, but that time will come. That man who seemed to want to distance himself from my collar is increasingly symptomatic of our age, and probably an indicator that the markets will be open 24/7/365 in the not too distant future.

Most of us have seen someone on an urban street corner holding up a picture of the crucifixion, or a small cross and asking by way of an attached sign, “Is it nothing to you who pass by?” Increasingly it seems, it is nothing and raises for us the question, “Why is it something for us?” If we do stop by the church on this day and meditate on the cross, what does it mean to us?

Clearly it means something, since many meanings are written into our liturgy. Our creed says that “For our sake he was crucified…”

After the Absolution in Rite 1, the minister may say some of what in the 1928 Prayer Book were called the comfortable words.

- God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…John 3:16

- If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not only ours, but for the sins of the whole world.”…1 John 2:1-2.

From the Great thanksgiving in rite 1, “…for that thou of thy tender mercy didst give thine only son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption….”  “…a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world”

The celebrant may deliver the bread to the communicant with these words, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee…”

In Eucharistic Prayer A of Rite 2 the celebrant prays, “He stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.”

We could find many more examples. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who began his ministry as a Catholic Priest and then became an Episcopal priest renounced his ordination because he said he could no longer make sense of this theology of sacrifice. His dilemma is the subject of much theological writing these days and more and more do I hear from everyday Christians who puzzle over it. Some just flatly reject it, others just wonder what it might mean for them, for after all the central theme is that he did something for us.

That clue is key, if it is for us, how so? I would think that if we can figure it out for ourselves, then the part about for the whole world becomes easier. We simply have to assume there is something like us about others.

The earliest christian writings offer several different theological insights into this so-called atonement theology.

St. Paul put it most classically, perhaps. In summary, if God is just and has made us for love and we have used our freedom not to love but to seek personal reward, then God, in judging us, must either regret giving us freedom or, in the face of our sins, impose the death penalty. God, however is merciful, and so, being unwilling to see us all die, he substitutes his own Son, a story which calls to mind the aborted sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, except that this one is not interrupted. Jesus does indeed become the lamb.

Further, Paul seems to have believed that it freed him and others from death, even from literal earthly death, as they expected shortly to meet the Lord. I think the notion has made sense to those of us who, like Peter and some of the other disciples, have seen ourselves clearly as failing to carry out the command of love. We will have more to say on that at Easter, but it still may seem odd to imagine that God had to make such an offering in order to carry out his mercy. And, we still wait, hopefully, but wonderingly, for that time when Christ will return. And we are not, at least I am not, persuaded by the Tim LaHays of the world that that time is anytime soon.

Furthermore. Paul saw this as making the whole world new, a new creation. One searches vainly for any notion that the 20th century was any better than its predecessors; it is, seemingly, very much the same old creation.

But the core of Paul’s idea, that we certainly deserve a harsh judgement at times, while not grounds for a penal code, is grounds for genuine confession and openness to becoming for however short a time, a new creation in some small way.

St. Mark, wrote later than Paul, and his Jesus speaks of giving up his life as a ransom for many, supporting the Pauline theory, but he adds a new note. Speaking to his disciples, Jesus asks them to take up their crosses and follow him. So, we now have many crosses rather than just one. And so, there is a new layer of meaning in this Gospel. In the same way that Jesus did this for us, we might do it for those who come after us. The Dietrich Bonhoeffers and Martin Luther Kings and Joan of Arcs of the world carry on the highest ethical tradition of humankind, by which there is no greater love than to give up one’s life for others. Such willing sacrifice is perhaps the greatest of the good works that we thank God for “preparing us to walk in” as our Post-communion prayer of Thanksgiving puts it.

Of course, as Canon William Donovan, to whom I am indebted for calling this to my attention says, our temptation is to refer to any little inconvenience as our cross to bear, thus cheapening the idea. But he also points out that while we don’t all carry the ultimate cross of painful, lingering death, we do all see that as a possibility and that such painful lingering death becomes ever more possible in our medically sophisticated society. And, so the example of courage may be added to the idea of unworthiness as a meaning of the cross, for us.

Matthew adds yet another, that we know that a time will come when we will die and if we see that as a time of judgement, we  have fair warning to get ready. I doubt that this moves many people today. Perhaps it should, but it doesn’t. As a young man I felt some of that fear, enough to keep me off the golf course on Sunday mornings and in church. But the golf courses seem increasingly filled on Sunday, only limited these days by the price of the sport, not the fear of God. In retrospect, I may have been much more frightened of my mothers rebuke, had I suggested that someone else might acolyte while I played a round of golf. But, in short, Matthew, who wrote even later than Mark, knew that there would be time because time had passed and so he added an ethical dimension to the purpose of Christ’s death.

Luke, who is almost universally thought to have written the book of Acts also, extends the “for us” notion even farther into the future. For Luke, time was divided into three periods, the time up to the cross, then the time from the cross to the receipt of the Holy spirit at Pentecost, a time for them to reflect on the meaning of what they had seen, and finally a time when they went on mission to carry out  Christ’s work in the world. For Luke the reflection seems to explain the period when the disciples were in some kind of hiding, before regaining their own sense of resurrection and meaning. That makes a certain amount of sense.

We can personalize that also. We take for granted the presence of those with whom we live. We eat and play and argue and work alongside them mostly unconsciously, until they are gone from us. Then we come to realize what their real meaning was to us. The fullest assessment seems to come in their absence rather than their presence. And so Jesus, by his absence, made it possible for them and us to see him in each other and to anticipate the time of grief, thus increasing the possibility of earthly joy by the best use of this time.

We could discuss the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews and the later works of Anselm and Abelard and Aquinas and modern day theologians, but the essential point, again drawing from Canon Donovan is this, the cross is a profound mystery, open to many meanings and much discovery.

Each of us can take a few minutes to sit and look at it and wonder. It is not the only harsh death in the history of the world. Why has it such a hold, even, at least so far, on the stock market? And why is it losing its hold for some, perhaps many, in our world? Perhaps the answer to that lies within us, each of us? Perhaps we see but don’t really see, as St. John would say. Perhaps the problem is not that we cannot agree completely with Paul or Mark or Matthew or Luke or John or the writer to the Hebrews, because we don’t see ourselves as clearly as they saw themselves. Perhaps what the cross exposes is not only morally and intellectually difficult but personally challenging. In any case, there is just that symbol and then there is us. And how the two meet is indeed a mystery.

–The Rev. Jay Hanson