Good Friday
7 Apr 2023
Matthew's Passion Gospel
The first time I walked into Santiago de Compostela it was foggy and a light rain, more of a mist, was falling. I walked past a very long fence, to which numerous crosses had been affixed. There were also countless spider webs, visible only because they were covered in dew. I thought of all the late summer, early fall mornings when the earth is covered with dew. Just as the sun comes up, the grass suddenly glows with spider webs, moisture clinging to them and reflecting the golden morning light. Soon the earth warms, the dew evaporates, and the webs disappear, hidden until the next morning. Had I not come to Santiago in the mist, I would never have seen the intricate webs among the crosses.
On Good Friday we see the cross, we watch as Jesus is crucified. But how do we see it? I have my own “theory of atonement”, which has evolved and changed just as I have. Over time the church has made room for many answers to the question of why Jesus died on the cross. No council was ever called to “settle” the question and decide there is only one orthodox, true reason for this act. You are free to decide for yourself.
It is, perhaps, like the spiderwebs that can only be seen when it is misty and foggy, or the ones on the grass which can only be seen in the early morning dew. They are real; they are very much a material thing, but not everyone can see them.
Back to my question: how do you interpret Christ’s death on the cross? So often we interpret it as a bloody sacrifice for our intrinsically evil selves, so that if we believe (however you may define belief) in Jesus, you will experience salvation. We then cut ourselves off from the world in which we live, looking to a time and place where we will rest in peace because we held the correct beliefs. We were/are “orthodox”. At one point I subscribed to that theory or belief.
Jesus called himself The Human One. He became one of us. So in one sense when Jesus was killed, we killed ourselves, a sort of bizarre suicide. John Donne tells us never ask for whom the bell tolls; we are all part of one another as Jesus became part of us, one of us. This is what poet, philosopher, and essayist Wendell Berry says. We interpret Jesus’ message as one of spending our time pursuing what happens to us beyond our earthly existence; the creator is removed from creation. In our pursuit of this so-called heaven, we can then abuse the earth and one another. This is an affront to God.
But what if on Good Friday we see the spider webs? What if we see both a piece of ourselves, as the collective humanity, on the cross? Self-inflicted violence. We kill our own collective selves. We also kill God, the Logos, the bread of life, the essence of all creation.
Look, then, upon the cross and see not only the mercy of God but the mirror of God, a mirror that shows us all that is wrong with the world and with us. But do not stop there or the cross becomes nothing. Instead, the cross will become a Way for us to move to a different path, the path of life, calling us to our divine purpose of being fully human and take up the cross ourselves, the cross which leads us to love one another and the entirety of creation.
It is the destruction of the world in our own lives that drives us half insane, and more than half. To destroy that which we were given in trust: how will we bear it? It is our own bodies that we give to be broken, our bodies existing before and after us in clod and cloud, worm and tree, that we, driving or driven, despise in our greed to live, our haste to die. To have lost, wantonly, the ancient forests, the vast grasslands in our madness, the presence in our very bodies of our grief.
Wendell Berry, Sabbath II 1988
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