Love Unswerving

Good Friday

John 19:16b-42

For me, kind Jesus, was thine incarnation,

thy mortal sorrow, and thy life’s oblation;

thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, 

for my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,

I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee;

think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,

not my deserving.

- “Ah, Holy Jesus”

  Evangelical Lutheran Worship

  Hymn #349, Stanzas 3 & 4

When we share Holy Communion, we hear the words:

“The body of Christ, broken for you.”

“The blood of Christ, shed for you.”

What ghastly things to say.

As people come forward and I hand to them these Communion gifts, gifts of grace, almost no one looks up.  Few look at me, few look at the Body of Christ, though it comes to them in the form of bread.

And I can’t blame them.  

When we are presented with images of broken and bleeding bodies, we all feel the need to look away.

There was a lot of controversy about Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ, when it came out some years ago.

Some of his anti-semitism was injected into the story, just as Christians have injected theirs into the Bible for hundreds of years.

The gore was a little over the top, as though Superman were being tortured, instead of a real life human being.

Some of the theological undertones of the film were questionable.

But there is one thing that the movie did right--it impressed upon us the utter brutality that Jesus suffered.

Christians today, I think, have an all too clean and sanitized--a romanticized--picture of Jesus’ death and the torture he suffered both on the cross and on the way to the cross.

Most Protestants even prefer gold crosses on gold chains, instead of the crucifix.

The crucifix has the image of Jesus’ body hanged on the cross.

Even the crucifix displays an image of a clean and fit body of Christ.

But life is not without sweat, life is not without its broken bones, life is not without blood.

Life is not without tears.

I think of my time volunteering as a chaplain at a local hospital...

The many patients who have come in with injuries from motorcycle accidents.

They were often the ones who were following the rules of the road, who were driving carefully; but even if they were reckless, no one deserves injuries like those you only see in motorcycle accidents.

I remember, long ago, a patient at another hospital far away who had fallen off of a high stool.

He landed in such a way that he would never walk again.

Why?

Broken bones, torn flesh.

People bruised beyond recognition.

This is the way Jesus looked on the cross.

I remember seeing my first dead body.

At least, it was the first one that hadn’t first been cleaned and prepped by morticians at the funeral home.

Gouges still open that no longer bled.

A bone in the arm that was obviously out of place...that would never be put back.

The chest no longer rose and fell with the breath of life.

There was a stillness surrounding the body...the presence of absence that drew your attention to that spot in the room immediately.

A person should be there...but wasn’t.

Now there was a void that sucked and drew your attention.

The eyes of Mother Mary, and those of the disciples were caught up in the same gravity as they stood beneath the cross...

They could not help but look.

Where there should be presence, there was absence.

Who could look?

Who could turn away?

Why do we have at the center of our faith such a horrid image?

It is offensive.

It is at the center of our faith because it is offensive.

Because when our bodies are broken, we can’t look away, we can’t ignore it.

When we are in pain, we cannot run from it.

When we are about to die, we can’t avoid it.

Since we cannot be spared these tragedies, these gruesome things of life,

neither will God be spared.

If God were to run, how should we be expected to endure?

I will reference another movie.  Schindler’s List.

It is a movie that causes me to look away, it is so difficult to stomach.

But my looking away does not change what happened, my looking away cannot prevent the same things happening in the world today throughout the world.

God sees the torture and death that human beings perpetrate on one another.

God does not look away.

He saw his Son endure similar things.

During the Holocaust, Jesus was crucified all over again...and Jesus was still Jewish.

James Cone, theologian, author and social justice advocate compares the cross to the lynching tree.

And he is right to do so.

Because Americans crucified black bodies for their own purposes.

For a long time in America, Jesus was black...and most white Christians didn’t realize it because there wasn’t a cross--we couldn’t make the connection--we had lost the point.

A body hung on the cross.

A broken and bleeding body hung on the cross.

We turned away, couldn’t look, at the body on the cross, and so we were able to disassociate the suffering of black bodies with the suffering of the body of Christ.

We could just turn and look away...

thinking the cross was empty now.

Jesus Christ, lives, indeed.

Jesus lives in all of those who are tortured, in all of those whose bones are broken, in all those who are bleeding, in all of those who suffer, in all of those people in conditions that make us turn away because it is too horrifying.

Jesus doesn’t live in those lives to glorify their suffering.

He lives those lives, suffering the crucifixion all over again...because we--humanity--we keep doing it to him...we keep doing it to ourselves.

And we all keep dying.  

So Jesus keeps dying.

Because Jesus conquers death every time it shows up.

When we die, we die in Christ.

Why is death at the center of our faith?

Because that is the crisis.

That is the point in life when we need God the most.

God knows it.

And God doesn’t turn away.

What makes us look at that body in the center of the room?

What makes us look at that body on the cross?

God’s presence in what looks and feels an awful lot like absence.

If God can be present on the cross, God can be present in my misery and trauma, whatever it may be.

Look!  That is unswerving love.  Given for you.

Amen.