God is here, He is hanging from the gallows

Good Friday 2017

One of my all-time favourite books, though not an easy one to read, is the first volume of a trilogy by the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, entitled ‘Night.’ Though the names of the characters therein are fictitious, it is clear to the reader that the book is a thinly veiled autobiography of the horrors the author personally endured in the Nazi death camps. The story raises the ultimate and overwhelmingly difficult question with regards to faith – the presence of God in the midst of inhuman horrors, death and suffering.

I’m going to fast forward to a particular scene in the book that describes the execution of a young boy. Even though thousands are killed and incinerated on a daily basis in the human ovens and others hanged, the unspeakable hanging of a child takes cruelty to another level. The Nazi camp commanders seem to have crossed the line. Three gallows were set up. Finally, at the signal, the three chairs were tipped over. Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. The child, too light, was still breathing and so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death.  The protagonist heard a fellow prisoner from behind, asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ After a moment of silence, a voice from within answered; ‘Where is He? This is where (He is) – hanging here from this gallows…’”

What I find most compelling about this story is how closely this scene parallels the death of Christ on Good Friday.  Although Elie Wiesel was Jewish, he has perfectly captured what Christians have been trying to say about Good Friday and the cross. The incredulous world constantly challenges us with this question in the face of human suffering, “Where is your God?” The question accuses God of abandoning this duty. And our answer is found here on Good Friday, “He is here. He is hanging on the cross.” For us, the cross is not proof of God’s absence. On the contrary, it is the sign of His redeeming presence and love.

Good Friday is the day that we must look once again to this horrific scene of execution, this terrible picture of injustice and innocent suffering. We look intentionally and deliberately at the suffering and death of Christ. We see His pain, we hear His cries. We listen to the story of His Passion. It is because we must remind ourselves of all that Christ went through and we do so believing in faith, that He did this for us.

Of course, many of us do not have the stomach for blood and gore. We want to skip ahead to Easter after the quiet sedated and sanitised meal in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday. We want to censor the inexplicable painful scenes of Good Friday and go straight to the glorious story of Easter with its stirring Alleluias. In fact, the cute Easter Bunny may be something most appropriate to distract me from all the terrible things that are going on in the world.

No, but our Journey pauses here on Good Friday. Our Journey pauses before the cross and we must take it all in. It is clear that we can never edit out the scene of Good Friday, as if it was even possible to do so with the morally questionable scenes in the movie, ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Why don’t we jump ahead to Easter? Why do we pause at the cross? What is the purpose of all this talk about the cross? Can’t we focus on something positive: the uplifting parts of the story, the loving grace of God, the mercy and forgiveness, the acceptance and the pardon? We would like to.

Of course, all Christians know how the story ends. We know that Good Friday gives way to Easter Sunday and the Resurrection. It gives us hope, courage and confidence to know that death does not get the last word. But I suspect that the crowds that turn up for the services today have come for a different reason. Easter still seems far away. They feel, as you do, that there is an important lesson to be learnt from the space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Deep down, most of us live with the reality that our lives don’t always make sense. Life often feels unfair. God can feel far away. Cruel things happen. Many of us experience the pain of Good Friday and the mystery of suffering or walking in the fog, more often than we care to admit.

This, is where Good Friday makes sense. In all the senseless, bloody and horrific violence of Good Friday, suffering finally makes sense. Today is the day when despair meets hope, senselessness finds meaning and suffering encounters a soul mate. The truth is that human life is inextricably bound up in paradox: ugly and beautiful; marked by hatred at times and marked by love at others; a strange and mysterious combination of birth and death, hope and fear, joy and sorrow.

That is the paradox of faith that is answered by the Cross. We are often reminded that we are an Easter People and ‘Alleluia’ is our song. But we must also accept that we are a Good Friday People and too often our experience mirrors the experience of the Psalmist, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” God knows that struggle. He knows that life is sometimes crushing. But He offers us this answer. The death of His Son and the events of Good Friday are apparent defeats, but in reality they are moments of great victory. Sin is being borne on the cross for us. Satan is being defeated on the cross for us. Hate with love, evil with good and war with peace, is being played out on the cross for us. Paradoxically, the day that seemed to be the greatest triumph of evil was actually the deathblow in God’s gloriously good plan to redeem the world from bondage. The cross is where we see the convergence and culmination of all human suffering. But the cross is also the place where we would find the answer.

Here, then, is the paradox of faith. It is we who watch what happens on the cross to those who were dead. Christ, as he dies, brings life to us, who are already dead. As we watch this defeat, we are actually seeing a great victory. The very thing that carries the stench of death, Christ’s crucifixion, is the source of our new life. As Christ dies our sins are lifted from us. Our separation from God is removed forever. Our failures are replaced by His accomplishments. Our weakness is replaced by His strength. Our dead lives are given life by His dying. Our victory is never ‘our victory’, it is His victory given to us. We have failed but He has not. We are weak but He is not. We have often been overcome by evil; He has not. This is the reason why we must pause here on Good Friday and stand beneath that cross.

Today, we certainly want an answer to that perennial question, “Where is God in the midst of our sufferings?” And in the cross, we find the answer, “He is here hanging from the gallows.” Christ’s death means that we do not suffer alone. We will never be abandoned. We cannot be abandoned. God will raise us up precisely because He did it to His Son. And so, on this day where many would commemorate the hateful darkness of an innocent being executed, we can only see Goodness in the eyes of the Lord, and it is that very goodness which breaks the seal of our hearts and opens the floodgates of our tears and in an instant everything around us shifts and on this day of darkest sin, We see only Light, We feel only Love- for this was done for us.

God stoops down

Holy Thursday 2017

Several years ago, when I was 50 kilogrammes heavier, attempting to bend over, squat or kneel were monumental tasks akin to climbing Mt Everest. So, as the days grew closer to Holy Thursday, I would be filled with trepidation and much anxiety over the prospect of not being able to complete the entire line of feet to be washed. And if through sheer luck, the above task was accomplished, I then had to contend with the additional conundrum of having sufficient stamina of getting through the rest of the Holy Triduum. One (liturgy) down, three more to go! Sigh. I am thankful that the considerable weight loss has certainly made the physically challenging rituals of the Holy Triduum a little more attainable. In truth, I shouldn’t be whining at all. My ritualised ‘passion’ seems like a spa experience in comparison to the Lord’s suffering.

Tonight, we accompany Our Lord and Saviour as He approaches the climax of His life’s mission. The pace quickens as our Saviour hastens to the events that are so familiar to us: today, the dinner, but tomorrow the trial, the scourging, the haggard procession with the cross, and the brutal crucifixion itself.  The Church speaks of an end, but now as the end of this week draws near, we must also speak of the beginning, and understand both.  What is old and coming to an end, and also what is new and coming to life.

On this Holy Thursday, our attention is drawn to numerous themes, but the Church pays special attention to two in particular – the institution of the priesthood and the institution of the Mystical Supper, the Eucharist.  However, there is one part of our liturgy that stands out both in the gospel text as well as in the ritual to follow, the humbling posture of washing feet. In a way, this little action summarises both the Priesthood as well as the Eucharist. After hearing in the first reading from Exodus, how the children of Israel stood during the Passover meal to eat the slaughtered lamb in front of them, we listen to the account of the washing of the disciples’ feet from the Gospel. Jesus, the Son of God, does something that even the lowliest slaves of that time did not do. He ties a towel around His waist, stoops down in front of each of His disciples, and washes their feet.

To stoop down means to bend down, to lower oneself, to condescend, to yield, to submit. It is to willingly become small in order to provide another dignity. That’s it! Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, literally stooped down to flawed human beings and sinners, to teach them and free them, and to not condemn. Can you imagine Him squatting on the ground, allowing you to stand above Him as He speaks, or simply listens to what you have to say? In this passage, as throughout the Gospels, out of love God lowers himself in Jesus to restore the dignity that sin has stripped from us. God stoops down to us, allows himself to be broken and shared among us, so that we who are so broken may together become the whole Christ, blessed and shared with all. His is the “chastisement that makes us whole.”

This single movement could be a summary of the entire mission of Christ. Our Incarnate God debases Himself, becoming an infant sleeping in a feeding trough, a man crucified as a common criminal, and is seemingly ordinary bread to be broken and eaten. In all of these savings deeds, God stoops down to His people. All that the Scriptures say about God’s walking, descending, bending down, being with, helping, bringing to birth, carrying, and so on, are simply different ways of describing God’s gracious condescension. Because man will not bow down to God, God, in His infinite humility, bows down to man. On the night He was betrayed, Christ sets aside His garments, and stooped down to wash the feet of a man who would deny him three times (Jn. 13. 4-6). That’s how God was with the people of Israel. That’s how He is with everyone.

On this day, we are given a vision of God’s new creation.  By this humble act, as He washes away the filth and grime from the feet that trod upon the dusty paths of Palestine and the alleys of Jerusalem, He will create something new. Ordinary men are transformed. Earthbound men with feet of clay will now soar to the heavenly heights of virtue and will keep company with the angels in the presence of God. This is why the washing of the feet and Baptism are closely linked, because the results are the same: we put on Christ, who is our Lord and Teacher, and we strive to be all that He is, by doing what He has commanded.  For all of us who live in this new creation, “washing one another’s feet” means giving ourselves to one another in all humility, service and love.

Make no mistake; even now, “foot washing” is not an easy task in our world with all the benefits of modern hygiene.  The extent of our Lord’s love for us can be seen precisely in this, as He takes the filthy, dirty feet of His disciples and washes them clean.  The dirt and grime are precisely what makes this act so beautiful.  In that soiled water, our Lord has called forth new life, a life purified and clean.  He has called forth life that proclaims power in weakness, the triumph of humility and service, the victory of love, and the death of selfishness.  Out of these waters, just like the waters of baptism, He has called us to emulate Him.  If we have called Him our Lord and King at our baptism, we ought to “wash one another’s feet,” just as our Lord and Teacher has done.

One can do no better than reflect on the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “When the Lord of the world comes and undertakes the slave’s task of foot-washing—which is an illustration of the way He washes our feet all through our lives—we have a totally different picture. God doesn’t want to trample on us, but kneels down before us so as to exalt us. The mystery of the greatness of God is seen precisely in the fact that He can be small. Only when power is changed from the inside, and we accept Jesus and His way of life, whose whole self is there in the action of foot-washing, only then can the world be healed and the people be able to live at peace with one another.”

Tonight Jesus waits upon His friends. It does seem to be the calm before the storm. Tomorrow He will do the same in another way. He is the servant who comes to wash and to cleanse; today with water, and tomorrow with blood. Both will be one. We are washed through water and blood. We are purified through Baptism and Eucharist. Today, bread is broken and wine is outpoured. Tomorrow a Body will be broken and Blood will flow. The two acts will not be divided in the end. The one shall become the other as God’s love in Jesus Christ expands and enlarges.  The today and tomorrow of God with us and for us, God near to us in Jesus Christ, is but one revelation coming from the loving heart of the Father and shown forth in the compassion and kindness of His Son. Tonight is tender and tame. Tomorrow will be callous and cruel. But love would prevail, love would conquer, love would emerge victor!

The King has returned to die

Palm Sunday 2017

I love the trilogy written by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and the movies based on them as well.  I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in my early twenties, but little did I suspect then, that this epic saga would become a cinematic blockbuster in the new millennium.  Mysteriously, perhaps even with my dormant Catholic sensibilities, I have always felt curiously at home with The Lord of the Rings.  I eventually learned that JRR Tolkien was a passionate Roman Catholic. From the transforming journey and sacrificial heroism of Frodo and Sam, to the death and resurrection imagery surrounding the Wizard Gandalf, to the myriad lessons about fidelity, honour, courage, sacrifice, virtue and vice, the deeply Catholic sensibility of Tolkien pervades this fantasy world with all its fantasies, quests and creatures.

The last book, The Return of the King, has a pivotal scene. Aragorn, the rightful king of the west, has long laboured in obscurity, forgoing kingly comforts to serve his subjects and fight their battles, repeatedly risking his life for them. At last he prevails over the forces of the dark lord, Sauron, and is poised to enter the city where he will rule at last. This is a scene that had been omitted from the movie version, which I honestly believe to be a major loss because it is an integral part of the story - Aragorn enters the fortified city of Minas Tirith for the first time as king. The city’s steward proclaims Aragorn’s royal pedigree for all the citizens to hear: “Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dunedain of Arnor, Captain of the Host of the West, bearer of the Star of the North, wielder of the Sword Reforged, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, the Elfstone, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur's son, Elendil's son of Numenor. Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?” In my critical analysis, there is no doubt that Tolkien had Jesus in mind when he wrote those words.

Palm Sunday is also about the return of another King who has long laboured in obscurity: unheralded, humbly serving the people over whom He had every right to reign, laying down His life for them. Back then and today, He claims the throne of your life and mine. Today we celebrate the return of our true King. The prophecies are fulfilled. The years of longing are over. Now every wrong would be made right, amidst shouts of praise, and tears of joy, the pleadings for justice, and the cries of enemies defeated. The King has returned to the land of His birth.  He was driven from His land as a refugee, and had spent His first years as a refugee in a foreign land.  As such, He is a King who understands pain and suffering. But, this King is not the sort of King many were expecting. This King brings justice, not over our enemies but in the midst of our enemies. He brings peace, not in our lands but in our souls. He is the answer to the prayer, we did not even know we were praying for. The King has returned!

Here is our true King. He is Jesus the Christ, the Second Adam, the Bright and Morning Star, the First and the Last, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, Mighty Second Person of the Trinity, Son of David, Son of Man, Word of God Incarnate, the Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. He is Emmanuel – God with us. He is the King who has returned not to seek the adulation and praises of His people, which He truly deserved, but He is the King who willingly returned to be subjected to humiliation and rejection and finally, to accept death on the cross so that we His people may have life. This is what Palm Sunday is all about.

Everything about today’s liturgy has a regal air about it. Beginning from the humble king who rides a donkey as He enters the city, heralded by cheering crowds waving their palms to the other scene which we just heard in the Passion gospel, which climaxes with this Mighty King humbled on the throne of His glory, the cross that looms over Good Friday. Though Jesus’ triumphal entry was the climax of His public ministry, the pinnacle of His earthly popularity, it was one of the most misunderstood events of His life. The crowd assumed that Jesus and his movement would serve their cause, but Jesus’ failure to satisfy their expectations leads to a cry for His crucifixion a week later. They sang “Hosanna, Hosanna!” when they thought that Jesus was going to give them what they wanted; but they shouted “Crucify! Crucify!” when He broke their expectations.

The Lord’s actions at the triumphal entry show what kind of a king He is and isn’t! The triumphal entry shows us Jesus’ kingship is not political or military, but a spiritual one. Jesus is no one’s political advocate or military conqueror; He is a humble but all-powerful Saviour who gives us salvation for our souls. Just as Jesus did not serve the crowd’s political interests at the triumphal entry, He does not serve our political interests today. It would certainly be travesty and a lie if we were to reduce Jesus to the role of a political reformer, a provocateur, or even align Him to ideological positions on the left or the right or even in the centre. He didn’t come to choose sides, He came to die for the sins of everyone. He is a Saviour for the left, right and centre. Our privilege is simply to love Him, to obey Him, to serve Him and finally to worship Him. It is we who must conform to His agenda and not the reverse. The Lord does not need to fit into our neat ideological categories. 

Neither is He a military conqueror, but He does lead us, the Church Militant into battle. It is not a battle of swords, spears or chariots. It is not a war of tanks, ships or missiles. But it is a war where we struggle and strive with temptations, sin, evil, suffering, death and the Devil. It is not a war that could be won by power or might or strength of arms, but it is a war that can only be won through humility and obedience to the Father’s will. And it is a war that has already been won by the sacrifice of the cross. He was the perfect sacrifice that has atoned for all of our sins - past, present, and future.

We began our liturgy with the magnificent procession of palms and have now concluded the lengthy Liturgy of the Word, a foretaste of what to expect in the days to come. We will soon be moving to the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where our experience of our Lord and King would reach its natural climax. It is here, that we are invited to stand with Him, not only to bask in the glory of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem but also to share with Him and take it into ourselves, His redemptive sacrifice on the Cross. Tolkien underscored this in a letter he wrote to his son near the end of his life: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: The Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth...”  Indeed, this is what you would discover in this and every Holy Week. If we had accompanied Him into Jerusalem, let us accompany Him to the cross. There you would find the culmination of every “romance, glory, honour, fidelity and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” Let us go forth to greet Our Lord, the King who has returned to die.