Good Friday Homily 2004
This Lenten season has been dominated by the release
of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ on Ash Wednesday.
I am sure that many of you have seen the film
and have a full range of responses,
from being deeply moved to being repelled by the unrelenting violence.
The film provides an occasion to reflect with each other
on the meaning of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus for us.
Gibson surely made a theological mistake
by focusing only on the Passion of Jesus.
It would have been far better,
and less easily distorted
to film the life of Jesus
and let the ministry and teaching of Jesus
provide a lens to orient the multiple meanings
of Jesus' dying and rising.
It was the life and work of Jesus
that gave meaning to his death
and the resurrection that ultimately ratified his ministry.
A strength of the Passion of the Christ
is that it forces us to face the pain and anguish of the crucifixion.
A Roman citizen could not be crucified.
It was considered too horrible a thing to do to a Roman citizen.
However, by focusing only on the physical dimension of Jesus' suffering,
Gibson is unable to attend to the emotional and spiritual costs.
We are shocked with the force of the first blow.
After twenty minutes of such blows we are absolutely numb.
Standing twenty centuries away from the death of Jesus
what kind of meanings do we take from the dying and rising of Jesus?
Jesus is first of all the Just One, the Innocent One.
He has done nothing to warrant this death.
Jesus suffers for and with all innocent people,
men, women, and children who have been harmed by others
through no fault of their own:
children destroyed in war, women who are beaten and raped,
men who falsely accused and spend years on death row trying to clear themselves.
The suffering of Jesus does not make these situations intelligible
but portrays God's Beloved as facing the same situation.
Jesus suffers for and with all those who know the pain of ongoing illness,
who are going through the fear and anxiety of cancer treatments,
who live every day in fierce, relentless pain;
the poor and hungry, those who live in cardboard boxes,
those who cannot find work.
Jesus suffers for and with all those who endure psychological pain,
ranging from different phobias to bipolar conditions,
those who endure depression, crippling anxiety,
those who are addicted to drugs and seem unable to stay in recovery.
In the Gospel of Mark,
Jesus is denied by Peter
he is betrayed by Judas with a kiss,
abandoned by the disciples,
and he is no longer sure of the presence and care of his Father.
He is alone and knows the terror and despair of such isolation.
Jesus suffers for and with all those who are in spiritual pain,
all those who really cannot surrender to God's mercy,
who are not sure of being held in God's hand,
who do not know Christ as loving shepherd,
whose ability to trust and love were never given the conditions to mature
or whose ability to trust has been seriously damaged along the way.
As the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews tells us,
precisely because he was Son
Jesus learned obedience from what he suffered.
We frequently suffer but we don't necessarily learn obedience to God from it.
I keep on working on ways to get out of it.
I am looking for the escape hatch;
there must be one somewhere.
The artist Marc Chagall created the painting White Crucifixion.
In it Christ's relationship to the world
differs entirely from that in typical Christian representations.
In the past all suffering is concentrated in Christ;
it is transferred to him in order that he may overcome it by his willing sacrifice.
In the White Crucifixion though all the suffering of the world
is mirrored in the crucifixion,
suffering remains the lasting fate of human beings.
Suffering is not abolished by Christ's death.
It has meaning because it is directly related to Christ's love for us and for the world.
And we must never forget that the suffering and death of Jesus
were followed by resurrection,
by release from suffering and death.
On this Good Friday,
one hand extends to the Eucharist of Holy Thursday,
the other to the resurrection of Easter.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
April 9, 2004
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