9th April 2004
Have you been to see Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ yet? Did you find yourself sitting there with tears rolling down your cheeks as many have done or like me are you still not sure you want to endure the full gore and horror that was crucifixion? There have been a number of television programmes recently too which have spelt out just what Jesus endured on that Good Friday two millennia ago. I caught the last half hour of a programme on Channel 4 a couple of weeks back about the Turin Shroud. This included some of the graphic details and seeing these reflected in the shroud. At the end a doctor said that if he had to write out a death certificate for Jesus he would have put down something like hypervolaemic traumatic shock. That had me reaching for the medical dictionary.
Hypervolaemia is an increase in the volume of blood circulating perhaps caused by the increased heart rate that crucifixion would bring and the shock comes from the sheer pain of what was done to him. As the nails were driven in the body would have gone into shock and that would probably have been enough to kill most of us. So Jesus was no wimp and Mel Gibson, with his Braveheart pedigree, knows how to show strong men dying with style. Whether it is the gospels or a film depiction, as we look at Jesus on the cross we see a strong man showing great endurance when subjected to such cruelty.
The cross has become so familiar that it can lose its horrific power and we live in a generation that probably needs the shock tactics of Hollywood and a clinician’s almost sterile diagnosis to make its passion, its suffering which is the root of that word, confront us. And we have come here today to venerate this grotesque instrument of murderous torture, to stand at its foot in awe and wonder.
This is a sobering commemoration, but we remember more than a tragedy today. Unlike the first disciples we know how the story ends or even begins. We know that in two days time we will celebrate Easter and it is in the light of Easter that we call today ‘Good Friday’ and not ‘real bad Friday’. We look beyond the cross, but we also stay with it. If we sit in the side chapel and look at the depictions in the window there we can find our eyes darting between Christ in majesty and the scenes of Christ’s passion. We find ourselves caught in their strange embrace. It is both/and not either/or: we need to hold both the Passion of Christ and Christ in Majesty if we are to understand him at all.
Past generations who knew the reality of war, who knew the presence of death and the brutality of public executions, who knew the fragility of being invaded at any moment by foreign powers and raiders would understand the cross more readily than perhaps we do today. War is now largely fought between highly trained professionals, often with a technological distance. We have to work a bit harder to arrive at the starting blocks to enter the mystery that is Good Friday.
But there are experiences that break into our protected world views. There are the shattering experiences of violence and abuse, the experiences that make us feel crucified, taunted and victim to the indifferent cruelty of others. There are the moments of endurance where pain stacks up on pain and we wonder if we can bear any more. The moments when one way of seeing the world, even living has to die so that a new way can be born, even re-born. There are the times when an image on TV news manages to cut through our compassion-fatigue and we are moved by pictures of suffering and violence.
These are dark moments when we wonder at God’s apparent absence and begin to see him present in the vulnerability and brokenness of life. This is true redemption at work. What we think has been lost or is out of reach of love’s redeeming work we find to be held all along. It is in this spirit that we can venerate a cross and begin to behold its glory.
We can join in the Psalmists song of praise:
From the cross, Jesus cried in agony and anguish ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’. That cry not only gives us permission to admit the moments we feel he is absent, that we or others have been forsaken, but in a strange way shows that the cry is understood. The Good Friday moments make us feel forsaken. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be Good Friday moments. But there is a hope in them; a hope that has Jesus give his spirit into God’s hands at the moment of death. It is the glimpse of the presence of God in apparent absence.
Good Friday allows us to enter into the mystery that somehow embraces the suffering as well as the glory. The glory of Easter comes to us through Good Friday. With that in mind we can kneel before the cross with awe and wonder at the love that holds us in the embrace between Christ’s passion and Christ in Majesty.
© Ian Black 2004