Tag Archives: the cross

April 2, 2010 · 01:07

Good Friday…Ecce Homo! Behold the Man

“God is nowhere greater than in his humiliation. God is nowhere more glorious than in his impotence. God is nowhere more divine than when he becomes man” Jürgen Moltmann Trinity and Kingdom


“So they took Jesus; 17and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew* is called Golgotha. 18There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.” John 19: 16b-18

4Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
5But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:4-6

“My God my God why have you forsaken me?”

Today is Good Friday, the Altars are bare and we simply “Behold the Man.” The picture that we have today is paradoxical, it is the picture of a suffering man betrayed by a friend, abandoned by his closest followers and executed in a barbaric fashion under the orders of a man who washes his hands of his own responsibility.  It is a picture that is troubling because of its unpleasantness it is not the kind of picture of God that we want.  While we gladly acknowledge God’s grace and God forgiving our sins through Jesus we want to stay on this side of the resurrection. But like it or not we are confronted with questions about why do the innocent suffer and how could God do this to me or the one that I love.  Much of the problem is that we often buy in to a God untouched by human suffering a God who is arbitrary, unfeeling and cold no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that he cares.  A God incapable of suffering is a cold comfort when we or a loved one suffers. This is not the Christian God even if we try to baptize this “god” in our theology.  “In Christianity the cross is the test of everything that deserves to be called Christian” so writes Jürgen Moltmann in “The Crucified God.”

The Cross and the Passion of Christ is the center of how Christians come to understand God and if we attempt to regulate it to the background we do the message of the Gospel violence.  This is very apparent in the number of churches that do nothing to acknowledge the event on Good Friday even as they adorn their churches for the Easter celebration. It is as if the central event in God’s revelation to humanity and means by which he reconciles humanity to himself is a stepchild to the resurrection, but without the Cross there is no resurrection. It is also seen by some who find the symbol of the Crucifix offensive often derisively saying “Jesus isn’t on the Cross anymore, I worship the Risen Jesus.” While we worship the Risen Christ he also remains the Crucified God who in his human flesh bore the sins of the world. It is as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes:

“The figure of the reconciler, of the God-man Jesus Christ, steps into the middle between God and the world, into the center of all that happens.  In this figure is disclosed the mystery of the world, just as the mystery of God is revealed in it.  No abyss of evil can remain hidden from him through whom the world is reconciled to God.  But the abyss of the love of God embraces even the most abysmal godlessness of the world.  In an incomprehensible reversal of all righteous and pious thought, God declares himself as guilty toward the world and thereby extinguishes the guilt of the world.  God treads the way of humble reconciliation and thereby sets the world free.  God wills to be guilty of our guilt; God takes on the punishment and suffering that guilt has brought on us.  God takes responsibility for godlessness, love for hate, the holy one for the sinner.  Now there is no more godlessness, hate, or sin that God has not taken upon himself, suffered, and atoned.  Now there is not longer any reality, any world, that is not reconciled with God and at peace.  God has done this in the beloved son, Jesus Christ.  Ecce homo!” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6, edited by Clifford J. Green and translated by Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Scott (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 83.

In addition to its salvific value the Cross of Christ is also relevant to all who suffer as “the deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.” In the Cross God identifies himself with all of humanity especially those afflicted or persecuted.

Today we take the time to reflect and remember this event. Many people will have a day of fasting and accompany it with prayer or service.  My prayer is that in the midst of the various crises that we face in the country and the world that we will take the time as Christians to ponder the depth of God’s love and identification with his all people and the ramifications for how we treat others, even those that we view as our opponents or even enemies.  If God can condescend to love us while we were at enmity with him, just how can we fail to treat others with the same love? To again quote Bonhoeffer with whom I have walked this Lenten season:

“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”

Ecce Homo! Behold the Man!

Peace

Padre Steve+

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April 10, 2009 · 18:55

The Long Good Friday

Lent is over and today is Good Friday and I have the duty at the Medical Center that I work at.  Yesterday I celebrated a Maundy Thursday Liturgy here, and today we had our Good Friday service.  Since I am a Priest, but in a more Anglo-Catholic type church, I get to do the “Protestant” services.  Both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were very meaningful to me this year.  It is the first time in a long time that I have had chapel responsibilities during Holy Week and good for me to be able to share in those sacramental acts. I make sure that like Bishop Blackie Ryan, that I look at the person receiving the sacrament and give them a smile.  It may be one of the few good things that happens to them during the day or week.

In my previous posts about surviving Lent I noted how that I was going to try to be happy.  I altered a few things to do this and found that instead of being an ordeal like past years that this Lent was not too bad.  In fact with the exception of stuff that was PTSD related this was a pretty good Lent.  I actually think that I had some spiritual growth.  Kind of way cool that the Deity Herself would give that grace to me this year.

Getting back to today, Good Friday.  For some people Good Friday is simply another day, even for those that observe it.  It comes and goes, just a speed bump on the way to Easter so we can all get happy.  But those for those who live in my world, that of the Intensive Care Unit and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Good Friday is a year round event.

How is that so?  Well since you asked, let me tell you.  Here we live in the constant shadow of life and death.  We have flesh and blood people who suffer.  People who find out suddenly that they have an illness that will kill them. They are people who face their own mortality in what often is a long and painful ordeal.  Sometimes they face this alone and even if they have friends and family present may still feel very much alone.  In fact, they may even feel God Forsaken.  The cry of Jesus uttered from the Cross can be their own.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”   For some this is an incredible burden, the pain which is not simple physical, but spiritual and emotional as well.   Here at our medical center, and thousands of others, we live at the intersection of life, death and eternal life.

Today has been a busy day already, multiple calls and visits with people going through various ordeals, both patients and staff. We have a number of people on our wards who may be with Jesus by Easter Sunday. Many I have gotten to know over multiple stays here.

There are those also who spend this Good Friday like Jesus’ mother, and the others gathered with her at the foot of the Cross. These are the families and friends who can do nothing more than watch and pray, comforting their loved one and each other.  There are those who patiently and lovingly care for people, the doctors, nurses, Corpsmen and technicians all hours of the day.  There are some who think that medical professionals have an easy life.  Some may, but those that I know do not.  They are in a combat zone without the bullets knowing that every day that they come in to work that there is a good possibility of dealing with death, and certainly with the pain and suffering of those who feel forsaken.

Among the crisis there was the homecoming of a number of our Corpsmen returning from Iraq. There are babies being born and people getting well.

At the same time there is joy.  There are those rays of hope where somehow beyond all expectation someone recovers. There are the patients who despite their suffering constantly look out for other patients and the staff.  They have overcome by reaching out to care for others, and they radiate joy.    There is also joy in seeing someone have a “good Christian death.”  You know, the kind like the movies, where the dying person knows it is there time, gathers the family and friends around and gives them his or her blessing, shares stories, laughter and tears at the same time and when everyone is done, the Priest says a prayer, maybe the person is anointed, the Our Father is said and the person passes to the next world.

Today in the Good Friday Liturgy I had a short homily.  And it focused on this understanding that God is with us.  That God who entered time and space in the Incarnation is with us in life and in death.  Good Friday is they way that God puts flesh to the words of the  23rd Psalm, “even though I walk though the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.”  Jesus enduring this death, is not a God who is distant or uncaring.  He knows what it is to not only feel, but to be God Forsaken.  The Cross is that portal by which we know God, the portal by which we come to know the mystery of the Trinity, the place where a simple Roman Officer, a Centurion gets what almost no one else gets. “Surely, this is the Son of God.”

Here at the hospital I will walk the halls, and spend my time in my ICUs, watching and waiting throughout the night.  For many here, this Good Friday will not end tonight, but Easter will come.

Well I have eaten my pea soup and bread, taken my short break and time to get back out on the floor. Pray for all who labor tonight in hospitals, those who care for the sick and dying, those who deliver babies, those who maintain vigils in ICUs and await crisis in Emergency Rooms.

On Monday I’ll be doing the memorial service for a young 4th year medical student who was killed in a motorbike accident this week.  He was just weeks from graduating and entering our Surgical internship program.  He was a good officer and promising physician.  Pray for me a sinner.

Peace, Steve+

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