Behold!
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on Good Friday, April 7, 2023.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:5-11; John 18:1-19:42
We gather on this most holy day to enter into the meaning of the passion and death of Christ. That meaning is, in its way, profoundly simple. We’ve heard it before.
“Behold!” says John the Baptist as he sees Jesus coming toward him for the first time. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29-36).
The crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, the very Lamb of God, redeemed the world from sin. In so doing, it brought the immeasurable love of God to “the farthest and darkest place in which humanity has been trapped in its flight from him . . . death [in all its forms].”[1]
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 (Isaiah 53:5).
These, of course, are the prophetic words of Isaiah that began the liturgy of the word. They speak of an unknown man despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).
The Gospel account that follows makes clear who this unnamed man of sorrows truly is, Jesus of Nazareth:
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness (Philippians 2:6-8).
Father Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Pontifical Household, notes both the universality and the specificity of Jesus’ redeeming work.
Through the event of the Incarnation of the Son of God, God made himself man and united himself to all of humanity, but through the manner of his Incarnation he made himself one of the poor and rejected and embraced their cause. He took it upon himself to ensure that when he solemnly affirmed that whatever we do for the hungry, the naked, the incarcerated, the outcast, we do to him, and whatever we omit doing for them, we omit doing for him.[2]
It is significant that Jesus, the Christ, came as one despised, disinherited, and discarded. And it is important that we spend time considering Jesus’ specificity even while honoring his universality.
Jesus is the prototype of the disinherited; he occupies what many consider to be the edges of society, oppressed and marginalized, a victim of state-sanctioned violence and capital punishment.
By a perversion of justice, he was taken away (Isaiah 53:8).
Throughout his life he identified in this way. Born to lowly parents as a vulnerable baby. Presented at the temple where his parents offer “two turtledoves or two young pigeons,” the offering meant for those who could not afford to offer a lamb. During his public life, he had nowhere to lay his head. Unhoused he moved from place to place paying special attention to those on the margins.
When he is brought before Pilate at the time of his Passion he is ridiculed and tortured. Hands bound with rough rope, he stands in solidarity with all prisoners –all who are at the mercy of the privileged and the powerful.
Howard Thurman, in his book Jesus and the Disinherited, speaks of the impact of Jesus’ specificity –his choice to identify in this way –particularly for those enslaved in the South. Thurman writes:
In [Jesus] was life; and the life was the light of men. Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.[3]
Yes, Jesus is the prototype of the disinherited –those on the edges of society being most specifically reflected in the son of Mary and Joseph, those parents who could not afford a lamb for an offering raising up the Lamb of God for us all.
Jesus offers solidarity in all suffering. He does not observe it from a distance but is somehow in our suffering, with us and for us. After all, he took on our suffering flesh and redeemed it, even as we nailed him to the hard wood of the cross.
Jesus offers solidarity in suffering, of course, but he also goes further, offering the hope and promise of resurrection. The Crucified One is risen. Again, in the words of Cantalamessa:
In him a total reversal of roles has taken place: the vanquished has become the victor; the one judged has become the judge, “the stone which was rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone” (see Acts 4:11). The final word is not and never will be injustice and oppression.[4]
We, the people of God, the church, must act as if we believe this –we must orient ourselves around the cross of Christ, being present to human vulnerability and aware, always, of our call to care for those around us. We must work to make conditions right for deep human flourishing with the understanding that each of us, all of us, is in bondage to sin but that, through God’s great mercy, we have been invited into a world where sin and death no longer has dominion.
Jesus’ passion situates all who are imprisoned at the center of the cross of Christ –in the words of our concluding collect, “setting His passion, cross, and death between judgment and all of our souls.”
Because the message of the cross is not just for the oppressed and the marginalized. It is also for those on the other side of the equation. For we are all bound to the same fate and subject to the same human limitations. As Saint Paul reminds us none is righteous . . . there is no distinction; . . . all have sinned (Rom. 3:22-23).
The universality of Christ addresses this sin once and for all. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: All 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 53:6).
On the Cross, Jesus, in communion with God the Father, bowed his head willingly under “the power of Sin and the curse of God.” Fleming Rutledge writes:
That is one of the most important reasons –perhaps the most important reason –that Jesus was crucified. No other mode of execution would have been commensurate with the enormity of the dark powers holding us in bondage. Jesus’ situation under the harsh judgment of Rome was analogous to our situation under Sin. He was condemned; he was rendered helpless and powerless; he was stripped of his humanity; he was reduced to the status of a beast, declared unfit to live and deserving of a death proper to slaves –and what were we if not slaves to sin?[5]
“Behold!” says John the Baptist as he sees Jesus coming toward him for the first time. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29-36).
On the cross he who knew no sin became sin and overcame sin for love of us, not in judgment but in an act of perfect mercy. Because, for whatever reason, God the Father knows us perfectly in our suffering and wills solidarity with sinners like you and me.
Sin and death may have a fierce hold on us, but it is no match for the fierceness of God’s love for us. The cross of Christ has set us free. Does this mean that we are now perfect? Of course not. We all fall short of the glory of God. And yet, in Jesus the Christ, God has come down to show us who we were meant to be and is, even now, working in us, remaking us –despite ourselves—into his very image.
Amen.
[1] This is a quote I’ve had written down for ages but cannot source. If I had to guess, it’s Fleming Rutledge.
[2] Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Pontifical Household, “He Was Despised and Rejected by Men,” a sermon preached for the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord, Good Friday, St Peter's Basilica, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-04/homily-of-fr-cantalamessa-for-good-friday-full-text.html.
[3] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949; repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
[4] Cantalamessa, “He Was Despised and Rejected by Men.”
[5] Fleming Rutledge, The Seven Last Words from the Cross (Eerdmans, 2004).