Parts four and five of Good Friday reflections: look at what is before our eyes!
Wood and Words
[John 19:16-27]
Sonnets from John Donne's series La Corona
1.
Then Pilate handed him over to be crucified.
They took Jesus - he’s carrying the cross by himself.
He went out.
Handed over.
Taken.
Carrying the wood.
2.
The one who came to reveal love, peace and abundant life is led out of the city; to face the suffering of hatred, rejection and condemnation; to suffer and to die.
The one admired for his teaching; the one who revealed God’s love in signs.
This one had brought new life; he’d restored our vision; he’d abided with us.
This one is now ridiculed for failure; publicly bearing the weight of shame and humiliation.
He walks this way to Golgotha. To the place of the skull. To a place of desolation.
3.
He takes up the weight of the wood.
He walks alone.
He walks through crowds: those who’d cried hosanna or crucify; those who weep or howl; those who’re attracted to a cruel spectacle; those who are helpless now to stop this.
He walks through the places in our world where people are dehumanised and abused; condemned and killed.
What we see as he shoulders the weight of the wood is the weight of suffering; he shoulders the lost dignity for perpetrator and victim.
Behold the wood on which the saviour of the world was hung.
Behold its weight which would break down barriers.
Behold the wood by which God reconciled all things to himself; reconciling us to each other.
Behold the weight of witnessing to the depth of love and truth.
4.
Golgotha: this place stands at the heart of human history.
Here the Son of Man is lifted up: this is the moment when all things are drawn to the love of God.
And he is raised up alongside two others. We know not their crimes or convictions; their stories of loss, injustice, intent or desperation. This is the depths of human desperation and despair. Are we looking at the end?
All humanity is here: the guilty and condemned; those doing their jobs; the gamblers, the curious and the passers by; the family and those who mock.
The horror of human cruelty is a swirl of darkness: unimaginable yet all too visible.
The light that shines in this final hour is embodied in the one who gives his life freely.
5.
Pilate is challenged about the words he uses. They are intentional.
Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.
We know not how much he understood; did he know himself to be held in the gaze of a heavenly king?
Whatever the limits of his earthly power, he refused to give in, to deny who he thought this man was.
In Hebrew, Latin and Greek: this inscription proclaims a truth to all the world.
Pilate colluded with fear yet in his own way uses the limits of his power to make a prophetic power declaration of love.
Do we kneel before this king?
The source of truth and love at the moment of self-giving, at this moment of glory which judges the world of condemnation?
6.
Humiliation continues.
At the foot of the cross, this unlikely wooden throne, they are busily casting lots and dividing garments.
They are preoccupied with their own desire to gain in the face of loss: all that we have and acquire we will lose, yet we can at least bequeath things to others; here is the loss of dignity and dispossession; naked and humiliated.
The Word is laid bare: and this Word speaks of being with us at the limits of human endurance, indifference and cruelty.
7.
Yet there is another moment if we dare to lift our eyes.
A moment of a son speaking to those he cherishes.
A moment when the truth and love our kinship is also laid bare: the tenderness of concern for our intimate acquaintances. The one who’d given birth to him and nursed him at her breast stands alongside the beloved disciples. He was the one who at the last supper reclined next to Jesus in an intimate bond of love echoing the abiding of the Word with the Father.
Yes this is an act of practical care - formation of a new household; sharing all that we have and all that we are.
The eloquence of the silent word turns again to speech. He can make not physical gesture, save perhaps to look on those he loved.
In this moment of entrusting disciple and mother we see not finality but unity.
Oneness of Father, Son and Spirit is reflected in the oneness of a household; Mary and John reflect a new bond of love. The momentum of self-giving is extended and our vision of kinship is expanded - the giving of life to mother and friend, to share in love and communion.
8.
With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
The Word has spoken: in eloquent silence with confronts power and invites self-reflection.
The Word has spoken: in words of compassion which draw others into his self-giving love.
He exceeds the power of man: he knows our woes and weakness deeply.
He bears all this: in wood and words.
Hyssop and Spear
1.
Jesus knew that all was now finished: I am thirsty, he said.
Thirst: perhaps the most fundamental human need is for water. The physical sensation of being ‘parched’, dried up and running out of strength and energy.
In this heat; in this pain; the agony and isolation is intense.
He has entrusted those whom he loved into mutual care: their consolation is a lens onto this devastating physical suffering.
Dignity, capacity, autonomy, vitality and companionship: all the things we cherish have evaporated.
In thirst and anguish, life ebbs away.
2.
His cry is heard.
There’s a jar of sour wine: a hint of humanity by those who pass by, those who’ve seen this scene oh so may times before; those who mock.
Sour wine to quench thirst with bitterness: a touch that humanises or a means of extending this agony?
3.
A branch of hyssop is dipped in it.
It’s an herbaceous plant with antiseptic properties; a sign of medicine or balm in distress.
It’s woody stem and straight branches; it’s dark green leaves and fragrant flowers.
Here in human hands creation speaks of healing.
4.
And they soak the sponge: they raise it up to his mouth.
An act of compassion.
He receives it.
The crowd is silent: no taunts that the one who saved others is unable to save himself.
Hyssop and wine.
Received on parched lips.
And then he spoke.
5.
And then he spoke: It is finished.
He bowed his head.
He gave up his Spirit.
Finished. Fulfilled. Accomplished.
Words we associate with success; with completion; with our human achievement.
Here is sounds final.
And yet, maybe, a new work is begun.
This breathing out is a giving up of his spirit.
But this last act, Jesus breathing out… does it foreshadow his breathing out of Spirit?
He gave up his spirit.
He will give the Sprit.
Breath. Ruach. Life. Pneuma. Spirit.
6.
Human activity does not cease at this moment of finality or of breathing out.
We are taken back to the practicality: what is seemly on the day of preparation?
Humiliated and degraded bodies, stretched out and agonised are not to be left on the cross. Not on the day of solemnity.
Pilate from his position of power understands this custom. He asks that the legs of the condemned men be broken. Already exhausted and in excruciating pain, to hasten death by asphyxiation is brutal.
When the come to Jesus he is already dead. They pierce his side with a spear.
Cold metal pierces flesh.
Blood and water flow.
What do we see?
They will look on the one they have pierced. And so do we.
7.
We look on as water and blood flow. As love and life pour out.
It may seem too soon as we stand and gaze: and yet life is being transmitted to us.
This self-giving becomes of us a sign of rebirth: healing, cleansing, forgiving.
At this very point of finality - when cruelty has cried its last - there is a glimpse of something else.
Water a sign of spiritual thirst being quenched, perhaps?
Blood a sign of reconciling love, may be?
Dare we hope that in the midst of pain, the blood of Jesus, which will become a source of life?
Grain of wheat dies to bear much fruit: grapes crushed to produce wine.
The Word made flesh confronting hate, violence and all that separates us from God and each other.
The Word made flesh bears the weight of this sin and cries out, empties himself. For love.
He’d given us a sign of this: brokenness and healing; bread and wine.
8.
On the night that we was betrayed; at supper with his friends.
He took, blessed, broke and gave.
This is my body - and we gaze on him who was pierced.
Blood and water; bread and wine: given for heath and healing and reconciliation.
Our wounded hearts find her compassion and hope.
Our dry souls cry out for one drop of his blood.
What do we see before our eyes?
Our Saviour bears the weight of ambitious hate and the weakness of our will; he bears the times our compassion turns blind and cruel.
Condemned he bears the cross: lifted up he draws us to him.
The infinity of God’s love and life; held in this brief span; poured out.
This exceeds the power of sinful humanity.
© Julie Gittoes 2017
