Good Friday Homily 2005
The cross has long been a scandal
to a rational world,
a world of strategic thinking and problem solving.
What is asked of Jesus
just doesn't seem fair.
So some people empty the cross of its meaning
by saying it is a "guy" thing;
a male God requiring this brutal sacrifice of the Son.
Others take a more Monty Python-like approach:
Jesus goes up to Jerusalem to give a course
of lecture-sermons on the reign of God,
gets caught up in the political conflict between the Romans and Jewish leadership
and becomes a victim of an unfortunate miscarriage of justice.
The problem, of course, is what to make of the shameful,
horrific way in which the life of Jesus of Nazareth comes to an end.
It is not a new problem.
We hear the problem expressed by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
"We hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel."
Nothing in their experience prepared them
for a Messiah who would die a brutal death on a cross.
Some have said that the cross is an example of redemptive violence,
that God uses violence to overcome sin and death.
This is really turning the New Testament evidence on its head.
We, not God, are the authors of violence.
The Father does not bully, manipulate or threaten Jesus.
He does so peaceably,
to a humanity that is solely responsible for his crucifixion.
On the contrary, the cross is a definitive example
of God's rejection of the use of coercion and force.
Jesus defeats sin and death
by submitting freely to them.
He tells Peter to put his sword away.
In sparring with Pilate,
he refuses to respond to taunts that urge him to use force.
Saint Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians
when pondering the mystery and paradox of the cross,
that God's weakness is more powerful than human strength,
and that weakness of God's love is stronger than human violence.
On the cross,
his arms outstretched,
Jesus embraces humanity in all of its misery and grandeur,
giving himself fully to God and to humanity.
He excludes no one from his sacrificial love.
He doesn't just die.
He dies for our sins, for us.
Jesus redeems us, purchases us for a great price,
makes a sacrifice in which he is both priest and victim.
We live in a world of 6.5 billion people
and especially in the aftermath of the tsunami
we are aware of the enormous suffering in our world.
Daily the news reports show us
another group of men, women and children in Iraq or Israel
or closer to home, at Red Lake, injured or killed.
We hear reports of young girls
who are sold into the slavery of prostitution;
of women and children who are regularly beaten;
of millions of men, women, and children in Africa who are HIV positive;
of old people who are forced to the edge of our economy;
or of those who are facing incurable diseases.
We have our own share of wounds as well.
Christianity is the only world religion that confesses
a God who suffers.
It is not that popular an idea, even among Christians.
We prefer a God who prevents suffering
but that is not the God we have.
The cross teaches us that God's power is not the power
to force human choices and end human pain.
It is instead the power to pick up the shattered pieces
and make something holy of them,
not at a distance but right up close.
By entering into the experience of the cross,
God took the human-made wreckage of the world inside himself
and labored with it —
a long labor, almost three days.
He did not let go of it until he could transform it
and return it to us as life.
That is the power of a suffering God,
not to prevent pain but to redeem it
by going through it with us.
This can only be the logic of love.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
March 25, 2005
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