WHY BELIEVE IN CHRIST'S RESURRECTION

Why should I believe in Christ’s resurrection?It is a fairly well-established fact that Jesus Christ was publicly executed in Judea in the 1st Century A.D., under Pontius Pilate, by means of crucifixion, at the behest of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The non-Christian historical accounts of Flavius Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Maimonides and even the Jewish Sanhedrin corroborate the early Christian eyewitness accounts of these important historical aspects of the death of Jesus Christ.  As for His resurrection, there are several lines of evidence which make for a compelling case. The late jurisprudential prodigy and international statesman Sir Lionel Luckhoo (of The Guinness Book of World Records fame for his unprecedented 245 consecutive defense murder trial acquittals) epitomized Christian enthusiasm and confidence in the strength of the case for the resurrection when he wrote, “I have spent more than 42 years as a defense trial lawyer appearing in many parts of the world and am still in active practice. I have been fortunate to secure a number of successes in jury trials and I say unequivocally the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.” The secular community’s response to the same evidence has been predictably apathetic in accordance with their steadfast commitment to methodological naturalism. For those unfamiliar with the term, methodological naturalism is the human endeavor of explaining everything in terms of natural causes and natural causes only. If an alleged historical event defies natural explanation (e.g., a miraculous resurrection), secular scholars generally treat it with overwhelming skepticism, regardless of the evidence, no matter how favorable and compelling it may be. In our view, such an unwavering allegiance to natural causes regardless of substantive evidence to the contrary is not conducive to an impartial (and therefore adequate) investigation of the evidence. We agree with Dr. Wernher von Braun and numerous others who still believe that forcing a popular philosophical predisposition upon the evidence hinders objectivity. Or in the words of Dr. von Braun, “To be forced to believe only one conclusion… would violate the very objectivity of science itself.” Having said that, let us now examine several lines of evidence for Christ's resurrection. The First Line of Evidence for Christ's resurrection To begin with, we have demonstrably sincere eyewitness testimony. Early Christian apologists cited hundreds of eyewitnesses, some of whom documented their own alleged experiences. Many of these eyewitnesses willfully and resolutely endured prolonged torture and death rather than repudiate their testimony. This fact attests to their sincerity, ruling out deception on their part. According to the historical record (The Book of Acts 4:1-17; Pliny’s Letters to Trajan X, 97, etc) most Christians could end their suffering simply by renouncing the faith. Instead, it seems that most opted to endure the suffering and proclaim Christ’s resurrection unto death. Granted, while martyrdom is remarkable, it is not necessarily compelling. It does not validate a belief so much as it authenticates a believer (by demonstrating his or her sincerity in a tangible way). What makes the earliest Christian martyrs remarkable is that they knew whether or not what they were professing was true. They either saw Jesus Christ alive-and-well after His death or they did not. This is extraordinary. If it was all just a lie, why would so many perpetuate it given their circumstances? Why would they all knowingly cling to such an unprofitable lie in the face of persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death? While the September 11, 2001, suicide hijackers undoubtedly believed what they professed (as evidenced by their willingness to die for it), they could not and did not know if it was true. They put their faith in traditions passed down to them over many generations. In contrast, the early Christian martyrs were the first generation. Either they saw what they claimed to see, or they did not. Among the most illustrious of the professed eyewitnesses were the Apostles. They collectively underwent an undeniable change following the alleged post-resurrection appearances of Christ. Immediately following His crucifixion, they hid in fear for their lives. Following the resurrection they took to the streets, boldly proclaiming the resurrection despite intensifying persecution. What accounts for their sudden and dramatic change? It certainly was not financial gain. The Apostles gave up everything they had to preach the resurrection, including their lives. The Second Line of Evidence for Christ's resurrection A second line of evidence concerns the conversion of certain key skeptics, most notably Paul and James. Paul was of his own admission a violent persecutor of the early Church. After what he described as an encounter with the resurrected Christ, Paul underwent an immediate and drastic change from a vicious persecutor of the Church to one of its most prolific and selfless defenders. Like many early Christians, Paul suffered impoverishment, persecution, beatings, imprisonment, and execution for his steadfast commitment to Christ’s resurrection. James was skeptical, though not as hostile as Paul. A purported post-resurrection encounter with Christ turned him into an inimitable believer, a leader of the Church in Jerusalem. We still have what scholars generally accept to be one of his letters to the early Church. Like Paul, James willingly suffered and died for his testimony, a fact which attests to the sincerity of his belief (see The Book of Acts and Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews XX, ix, 1). The Third and Fourth Lines of Evidence for Christ's resurrection A third line and fourth line of evidence concern enemy attestation to the empty tomb and the fact that faith in the resurrection took root in Jerusalem. Jesus was publicly executed and buried in Jerusalem. It would have been impossible for faith in His resurrection to take root in Jerusalem while His body was still in the tomb where the Sanhedrin could exhume it, put it on public display, and thereby expose the hoax. Instead, the Sanhedrin accused the disciples of stealing the body, apparently in an effort to explain its disappearance (and therefore an empty tomb). How do we explain the fact of the empty tomb? Here are the three most common explanations: First, the disciples stole the body. If this were the case, they would have known the resurrection was a hoax. They would not therefore have been so willing to suffer and die for it. (See the first line of evidence concerning demonstrably sincere eyewitness testimony.) All of the professed eyewitnesses would have known that they hadn’t really seen Christ and were therefore lying. With so many conspirators, surely someone would have confessed, if not to end his own suffering then at least to end the suffering of his friends and family. The first generation of Christians were absolutely brutalized, especially following the conflagration in Rome in A.D. 64 (a fire which Nero allegedly ordered to make room for the expansion of his palace, but which he blamed on the Christians in Rome in an effort to exculpate himself). As the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus recounted in his Annals of Imperial Rome (published just a generation after the fire): “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.” (Annals, XV, 44) Nero illuminated his garden parties with Christians whom he burnt alive. Surely someone would have confessed the truth under the threat of such terrible pain. The fact is, however, we have no record of any early Christian denouncing the faith to end his suffering. Instead, we have multiple accounts of post-resurrection appearances and hundreds of eyewitnesses willing to suffer and die for it. If the disciples didn’t steal the body, how else do we explain the empty tomb? Some have suggested that Christ faked His death and later escaped from the tomb. This is patently absurd. According to the eyewitness testimony, Christ was beaten, tortured, lacerated, and stabbed. He suffered internal damage, massive blood loss, asphyxiation, and a spear through His heart. There is no good reason to believe that Jesus Christ (or any other man for that matter) could survive such an ordeal, fake His death, sit in a tomb for three days and nights without medical attention, food or water, remove the massive stone which sealed His tomb, escape undetected (without leaving behind a trail of blood), convince hundreds of eyewitnesses that He was resurrected from the death and in good health, and then disappear without a trace. Such a notion is ridiculous. The Fifth Line of Evidence for Christ's resurrection Finally, a fifth line of evidence concerns a peculiarity of the eyewitness testimony. In all of the major resurrection narratives, women are credited as the first and primary eyewitnesses. This would be an odd invention since in both the ancient Jewish and Roman cultures women were severely disesteemed. Their testimony was regarded as insubstantial and dismissible. Given this fact, it is highly unlikely that any perpetrators of a hoax in 1st Century Judea would elect women to be their primary witnesses. Of all the male disciples who claimed to see Jesus resurrected, if they all were lying and the resurrection was a scam, why did they pick the most ill-perceived, distrusted witnesses they could find? Dr. William Lane Craig explains, “When you understand the role of women in first-century Jewish society, what's really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women as the discoverers of the empty tomb in the first place. Women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in first-century Israel. There are old rabbinical sayings that said, 'Let the words of Law be burned rather than delivered to women' and 'blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female.' Women's testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren't even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of Law. In light of this, it's absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women... Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb - Peter or John, for example. The fact that women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb is most plausibly explained by the reality that - like it or not - they were the discoverers of the empty tomb! This shows that the Gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened, even if it was embarrassing. This bespeaks the historicity of this tradition rather than its legendary status." (Dr. William Lane Craig, quoted by Lee Strobel, The Case For Christ, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998, p. 293) In Summary These lines of evidence: the demonstrable sincerity of the eyewitnesses (and in the Apostles’ case, compelling, inexplicable change), the conversion and demonstrable sincerity of key antagonists- and skeptics-turned-martyrs, the fact of the empty tomb, enemy attestation to the empty tomb, the fact that all of this took place in Jerusalem where faith in the resurrection began and thrived, the testimony of the women, the significance of such testimony given the historical context; all of these strongly attest to the historicity of the resurrection. We encourage our readers to thoughtfully consider these evidences. What do they suggest to you? Having pondered them ourselves, we resolutely affirm Sir Lionel’s declaration: “The evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”

TREE OF LIFE

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   THE TREE OF LIFE: THE CROSS AS A SYMBOL OF MERCY, WISDOM, LIFE AND LIBERATION 13 April 2017 | by Frances Young

Language and words alone will never be enough to enable us to understand the mystery of Christ’s brutal death and Resurrection. Only if we explore its symbolism will we recognise the Cross as a symbol of mercy, wisdom, life and liberation

Scratched into a stone in the servants’ quarters of the old Roman Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill is the earliest known image of the Crucifixion – a cartoon, a graffito discovered in 1856. A person is sketched raising his hand towards a crucified figure which, towering over him, has a donkey’s head.

The rough lettering below it reads when translated, “Alexamenos worships his god”. It is a striking reminder of the shame and ridicule the Cross would evoke, and perhaps the reason why no early Christian depictions of Christ on the Cross have been found: it was a symbol of disgrace and defeat.

Or was it? To my amazement, reflection on early Christian material suggests that from the beginning the Cross, celebrated in cryptic signs and symbols, signified not suffering and death, but wisdom, life and liberation. And it was symbolic meanings that mattered, not the literal depiction of that most cruel form of public execution.

Many years ago on a cycling holiday in France, I wandered into an old church, partly tumbledown, and there I saw an extraordinary modern crucifix: a couple of flat pieces of wood, one a cross shape, the other forming a distinctly sinuous figure – a sort of “serpent-Christ”, I thought. And few days later I nearly ran over a snake basking on the tarmac in the sun. It set me thinking about John 3:14-15: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” The allusion is to Numbers 21:4-9, recalling the Israelites in the desert, who, bitten by snakes, poisoned and dying, received healing and life by gazing at the bronze serpent that Moses was told to set up on a pole.

That, I realised, is a highly symbolic story. For across the ancient Near East the snake, or serpent, symbolised wisdom – in the Greek world it was the sign of Asclepius, the god of healing; in Egypt a magician’s staff had a serpent’s shape; the Cretan goddess of wisdom had snakes in her hands. So the snakes who bit the Israelites were the snakes of human wisdom: “Why continue struggling and starving in the wilderness?” they seemed to say.  “Let’s go back to the stewpots of Egypt – it’s only commonsense!” And how were the Israelites healed? By the antidote, the sign of divine wisdom: the serpent-sign that anticipated the Cross.

Very occasionally, the serpent-Christ is found in Christian art, but it is rare. For the ambiguity of the image of the serpent meant embarrassment soon set in. The serpent in Genesis is, after all, the tempter. To make it worse, some early groups, now described as “Gnostics”, read Genesis upside down: they venerated the serpent, the bringer of knowledge and wisdom, for this serpent enabled escape from the clutches of the Creator-God who had trapped their true spiritual selves, sparks of the divine world, in material flesh. In response the serpent was firmly put in its place as the embodiment of the Devil.

But opposing the Gnostics meant that the Genesis-story became the “type” in light of which the meaning of the Cross was discerned. Paul had described Adam as a “type of the one to come” (Romans 5:14), and had written, “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:22). By the end of the second century this had become the key, and at the heart of this re-reading of Genesis 1-3 was the symbol of the tree. In Genesis there are two trees, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life – knowledge and life being divine prerogatives, both ultimately intended for God’s representative on Earth. But, as a fifth-century bishop would put it: “Adam was set a trial with regard to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, whereas the tree of life was proposed as his prize for keeping the commandment.”

Adam failed, of course; but according to the second-century anti-Gnostic writer, Irenaeus, in hiding himself he showed repentance, and so he was driven out of paradise and removed far from the tree of life because God pitied him – otherwise he would be a sinner for ever and evil would be irremediable. Exclusion from paradise was an act of God’s mercy. But, explains Irenaeus, “by means of the obedience by which he obeyed unto death hanging on a tree, Christ undid the old disobedience occasioned by the tree”. Irenaeus explains that he did this by becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8) – that is, by obedience shown on a tree. Our debts were fastened to the Cross (Colossians 2:14) so that “as we were debtors to God by a tree, by a tree we might receive the remission of our debt”.

Later writers soon identify the Cross, not just as the tree of obedience, but also as the tree of life, to which there is now access because the disobedience of Adam has been reversed. That the Cross could be assimilated to the trees of paradise was facilitated by the Greek word, xylon, used for the trees in paradise in the Greek translation of Genesis, and also in general use for a gallows-tree or Roman cross. Through this association the Cross was understood symbolically: the Cross imparted both the knowledge and the life originally meant for humankind but forfeited by Adam.

Why does all this old stuff excite me? No doubt partly because I have learned to gaze at trees with my profoundly disabled son, for whom trees have an endless fascination. But also because attending to symbols provides a salutary contrast to thinking and writing about the Cross as if it represents a kind of transaction – in other words, it is something of a reaction against so-called “theories of atonement” that tend to characterise Christ as somehow mercifully making up to the God of judgement for our faults and taking the punishment in our place.

Exploring the symbolism of early Christian reflection on the Cross makes one thing very clear. God’s mercy is fundamental. It was God who took the initiative to heal and restore what was lost, to make good the ultimate divine purpose. It surely is Good Friday if the Cross is itself the tree of life – there is not just lament, but joy … especially as trees burst with new life in the spring.

Yet in this day and age how on earth do we make sense of this overarching story of Fall and Redemption, given both our individualism and our evolutionary understanding of human origins? These are huge questions, but if we do not learn from the Christian past about becoming part of something bigger than ourselves, about human solidarity in sin and redemption, about being incorporated into Christ so that we are freed from self-obsession to love God and others, then our version of Christianity is surely too much conformed to current cultural norms.

And if we do not relearn the importance of symbol for discerning fundamental truths, then our literalising take on language will eventually destroy all possibility of religious thought or expression. For no language is adequate to the transcendent God, and it is symbol, even myth in the technical sense of a transcendent, symbolic, unverifiable story, that gives meaning to existence, which allows us to speak of the inexpressible.

So the Cross becomes a symbol of wisdom, life and liberation. The earliest way of understanding the Cross, one that surely goes back to Jesus himself, was through the Passover. The slain lamb set up the Israelites for their escape from Egypt, its blood protected them from the angel of death, and the rescue was commemorated in the Passover meal year by year. Thus it prophetically anticipated the Eucharist, a meal commemorating liberation from sin and death through the Cross. Again the emphasis is on community, not discrete individual, salvation and also on God’s initiative to save, and so fulfil the divine promises.

Wisdom, life and liberation – God’s redeeming gifts! Let us rejoice this Good Friday.

Frances Young is emerita professor of theology at the University of Birmingham and a Methodist minister. Her most recent book is Constructing the Cross (SPCK).

GOOD FRIDAY - 3

GOOD FRIDAY  -  3

We are called to draw closer to the mystery of the cross.  On one level  -  a very human and real level, the cross is no mystery. It was a remarkably cruel method of execution, subjecting its victim to awful agony and suffering. It was certainly a symbol of horror, an object of terror and an eloquent witness to man’s brutality. It was a punishment reserved especially for those marked out by the authorities for the most merciless torture. The philosopher Cicero maintained that the word for cross should not be uttered within the hearing of a Roman citizen. One needs hardly any imagination at all to understand the dread and fear associated with this instrument of torture. There is no mystery about this aspect of the cross. Thousands before and after Jesus perished in this barbaric way.

Our personal experience of suffering, pain and sorrow is a call to participate in the passion of Christ, to be involved in the sufferings of our Lord, “to fill up what is lacking there in our flesh” (Col 1, 24), and it continues in us Christians till the end of time. We are called to commiserate in and suffer along with the world in all its wretchedness, fallenness, and faith.  Saints, like St. Francis of Assisi, known for their joy and exaltation and song, are also serious saints, steeped in the experience of physical illness and pain, psychological hurt and rejection and spiritual darkness. Still they sing.  Francis sang because his suffering made him one with Christ, who knew so much pain in his own life. Francis loved passionately and wanted to stand in solidarity with his Master in his rejection, temptations, lonely nights on the mountain, night in Gethsemane, on the cross, in the tomb. For him, it was a chance to enter into and share the fate of Christ. Francis wanted to be as poor as Jesus himself; and we are poor in the face of illness, old age, mental incapacitation, and death. We are all at a loss in the face of our mortality. Others, too, have sensed this “putting on Christ” and rejoiced in it, learning in faith to pick up not only their own cross but to shoulder another’s. This lesson of shared pain, compassion, acceptance of action with and for those who suffer is the concrete expression of the compassionate life and final criterion of being a Christian. Part of what makes us human as well as graceful is our ability to rise above the selfishness and individuality of our pain and to help and encourage another.

Now let us focus more personally on Jesus along the lines of the Passion narrative of St. John. There are two ways of looking at the death of Jesus. One way, and it possibly appeals to us more, is to say that he was the just and good man who found the forces of evil just too powerful for him. This picture is of Jesus as victim, betrayed, trapped, beaten up, summarily tried and executed. A familiar picture. The same thing has happened countless times, as we know, to men and women in every country. Every dictatorship, whether of the left or the right, has done this to people.

The other perspective is that of St. John whose Gospel account was read today. St. John is at pains to make clear that Jesus was in command from the very start of his Passion. Take the scene in the Garden of Olives. The guards have arrived. “Knowing everything that was going to happen to him”, says St. John, “Jesus then came forward.” This is not a man taken by surprise or caught unprepared. When they ask for Jesus the Nazarene and He says, “I am He”, they fall to the ground. When Peter wounds the high priest’s servant, Jesus says, “Put your sword back in its scabbard; am I not to drink the cup the Father has given me?” Here is a man who freely accepts the suffering, not a man on whom it is loaded.

The final traumatic scene at the chair of judgement shows Jesus standing in silent majesty, and Pilate like a cornered ferret in front of the crowd, publicly humiliated and outflanked.

We do not have to choose between these two. Both views are true. If Jesus was to share our lot as human beings, his Passion needed to have about it that experience of sudden and anonymous cruelty which, alas, goes with so much human suffering. Luke tells us that the men who were guarding Jesus were mocking and beating him. This is the casual ill-treatment of someone who is condemned in advance of his trial. The people who really hated him did not really need to lay a finger on him. In this sense Jesus is certainly the victim, as much as a victim as the 21^st. century person for whom men hoodlums come in leather jackets in the middle of the night, and drive him away at speed in an unmarked car, to be tortured by professional torturers, and never to be seen again by family and friends.

There is a divine planning and purpose in what takes place on Good Friday. God has come to earth on a mission of rescue. To save us from the most negative and dark wickedness, and give us hope, he has to plumb the depths of the negative and dark wickedness himself. An early Christian author speaks of Christ offering himself to Death like a poisoned bait: Death devours him, and is itself destroyed. There is princely deliberation in this, as Samuel Crossman says in his sublime hymn, “Yet cheerful he to suffering goes, that he his foes from thence might free.”

PRAYER (Gilbert Shaw, 1886 – 1967)

O Jesus, blessed Jesus, I gaze on thy Cross,

O Saviour suffering to draw my love:

was ever love like thine, or thanks so poor as mine?

Thy hands are outstretched for love of me and all mankind,

and with my sin I have pierced thee and keep on wounding thee;

Bitterly I sorrow, deepen my penitence,

Give me tears that I may weep,

Give me strength that I may amend.

Take me thyself, keep me in thy wounds,

ever mindful of thy presence,

ever to love thee, in pain and in bliss,

on earth and in heaven, with thee forever.

THE SUN HAS SET

The sun has set.

Our Son has walked into the night,

And that night was dark, indeed,

Made the more opaque

By one man’s treachery

That manoeuvred our sinfulness unto his death.

Our Son has walked into the night,

Laid himself down,

And now is still in death.

Sleep on, Saviour sweet!

Brave Warrior of our freedom’s battle;

Hero of our redemption’s drama.

Sleep on, dear Son and Brother.

Yesterday and today you laboured;

A splendid work, indeed,

But the weight thereof

Has laid you low

In a stone sepulchre.

Yet take your rest,

Tonight and another.

Yahweh once rested

At the close of the original creation;

Why not you

On the threshold of the new?

So sleep, sweet Prince,

And take your rest.

Tomorrow and a day will bring the dawn.

And with the dawn new life.

Then you will be King!

For our Son will rise again!

 

GOOD FRIDAY -2

GOOD FRIDAY -2  

One day a little girl looked into her mother’s face and said, “O Mummy, you’re so beautiful ! I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world, except for your hands; what ugly hands you have.” The girl’s father heard that. Sensing how his wife felt, he said to the child. “Let me tell you a story, a true story.” One night a little baby was asleep in her cradle. Somehow the cradle caught fire. The maidservant ran out of the room in panic. But the baby’s mother rushed in. With her delicate hands she beat out the fire and saved the child.  Those beautiful hands sustained terrible burns. For several weeks she had to have them bandaged. The hands were finally healed. But they…” The little girl did not wait for the end of the story. She ran to her mother. Reaching for her scarred hands, she kissed them over and over again. “Mother, you have the most beautiful hands in the world.”

Anyone without faith who looks at the dreadful figure on the cross would say, “What an ugly sight he is ! What a repulsive face ! I can’t stand the sight of it.”  Such a person wouldn’t be far from what the prophet Isaiah said 700 years earlier: “We saw him without comeliness, without majesty, no sight to attract our eyes; a thing despised and rejected by men…One from whom people turn away their faces” (Is. 53, 2-3).

Happily our faith assures us of the deep meaning and reason for this terrible change in the appearance of Jesus; and our sentiments are those of the child in the story, kissing her mother’s hands. Filled with childlike gratitude, our hearts express their praise for our Saviour. In a few moments you and I will kneel to venerate the image of the crucified Christ. And you will realize that his ugly wounds are the most beautiful proofs of his love for you. You will remember that these feet that are fixed by a nail to the cross, these feet went in search of the lost sheep. These hands that are stretched out on the cross, are the very hands that rested gently on the heads of the little children he blessed, hands that cured the sick. And those parched and swollen lips spoke the word of forgiveness.

Listen to the words of St. Theodore the Studite: “Let us turn to the Cross anew, stopping, with joy to sing its praises. The Cross, worth more than all riches. The Cross, most certain refuge for Christians. The Cross, a light burden on the shoulders of the disciples of Christ. Consoler of great sweetness, for those suffering afflictions, a path-finder for the way to heaven, which no obstacle can block.”

PRAYER (Caryll Houselander):

Jesus, I praise you because I have known sickness and pain.

I praise you because I have known poverty, failure and contempt.

I praise you because I have been falsely accused and misjudged.

I praise you because I have suffered the parting of death.

I praise you because I have lived in sordid surroundings;

and I praise you for your goodness in bringing me to a happy home and giving the Faith to my friends.

Grant that I may always sip from the Chalice I am unworthy to drink from, and support me in every moment with the strong unfolding arm of your Love.

GOOD FRIDAY -1

GOOD FRIDAY

“Stay here, keep watch with me; watch and pray.”

Words spoken by a very human Jesus, bewildered and broken by circumstances to which he freely submitted himself. Consoling words that can bring balm and calm to us, if only we stay long enough to let the words sink in, if, like Mary, we choose to become men and women wrapt in silence. In all the austere liturgy of Holy Week there is a stark moment of profound silence, centred on the person of Jesus. And, let us face it, we are genuinely and rightly scared of entering too deeply into his silent suffering.

It’s not easy to watch a loved one suffer. Ask any mother, ask any father. Ask God the Father. One day God asked Abraham to sacrifice his beautiful son Isaac on Mt. Moriah. But as Abraham with anguish in his heart raised the knife over his Isaac, God held it. God spared Abraham’s son. But he did not spare his own Jesus. He let his beautiful Son be struck over and over again till he died. What else could he do? He saw his creatures misusing their freedom, hating instead of helping one another, hurting instead of healing. The world lay wounded and suffering. So what did God do? He did the noblest thing: he decided to become a co-sufferer, share our pain. He would receive wounds like we do. His Son would be known as the “wounded healer.”

Yet out of the wounds comes the wondrous faith fact that is clear and central to our whole living as men and women devoted to Jesus and to one another. If we stay long enough to notice that the facts are kind. We begin to understand the only fact that matters: God’s total personal love for each one. And we may even begin to realise that God asks only one thing of each of us: “Let me love you.” There can be no greater sign of God’s love than the divine-human Jesus stretched out on the Cross. The open arms of Jesus reach out to enwrap all who stay long enough to notice.

It’s rather awesome, isn’t it, when another human being says, “I love you”. So it’s no surprise that when we are faced by these three words lived out in the total self-giving of God’s Son, we find it hard to accept that love. It’s too good to be true; it’s frightening, and it costs. For a commitment already promised and given calls for a commitment in return. Love is two way; but it cannot be forced. Our Lover is patient. We only understand the Easter mystery by Eastering. We live in a Resurrection world. But such a world of wonders is only entered through the wounds. Not that we seek a morbid relish of the wounds; rather, we ask for a deepening understanding and compassion. After all, there’s no point in looking at a crucified Jesus unless we are willing to be with our crucified brothers and sisters. The cost is radical, a condition of complete simplicity, costing no less than everything. So we pray this Good Friday for staying power, for watching power, for praying power – all gifts there for the receiving if we really do want them.

Jesus is the Wounded Healer. He used to be harassed and tired, dust laden and very much involved. He never kept a clinical distance, but healed the sick by touching and holding, speaking and reassuring, and in a very personal way, for power went out of him. We are healed not by his health but by his wounds. The Crosses in our churches bear the wounded Christ. Yes, Jesus is our Wounded Healer. He lived through everything in love, with not a trace of bitterness or hatred for those who wounded him. Each of us is being called to become the same in mind and heart as he. As St. Paul reminds us: “Let this mind be in you as was in Jesus.”

CROSS AND COSMOS

            Just as a loud explosion can precipitate an avalanche, so when the crucified Christ “cried with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit” (Mathew 27,50), certain cataclysmic phenomena occurred like so many echoes of his final cry. As the body of the Crucified writhed “in extremis”, the earth trembled in earthquake horror at what took place on Calvary: the Master of the universe was being broken by his own creatures’ malice. Darkness enveloped the land, the Temple curtain was torn in two, and the earth convulsed and regurgitated the dead who walked the earth again in a zombie daze. Trembling nature got a slice of the action that decided the fate of the world forever.

          Wherever the story of Golgotha has been told, the role of nature as partner in the drama could not be left out, as if the mystery of divine suffering was conveyed through the compassion of nature. And the pagan Roman centurion was drawn into it by witnessing to the Crucified when, with numinous awe, he perceived in a naïve-profound way that something more had happened than the death of a holy and innocent man.

The sun veiled its face in shock horror at what it witnessed, and by that token lost its own erstwhile divinity: it conceded all power to the One who, in ultimate agony, surrendered to that which is greater than a million suns. Thus, a suffering and struggling soul, which cannot be broken by all the powers of the cosmos, is the true image of divinity. There is no more a “Sun-god”, only a “brother Sun.”

          “The curtain of the Temple was ripped in two.” The Temple tore its gown, as mourners do, to show its nakedness and shame for what its servants did by rejecting an innocent worshipper from its precincts. Plucked asunder, the now ragged weave lost its separating quality. He who was expelled for blaspheming the Temple had cleft the curtain and exposed the Holy of Holies for every man and women, for all time. From then on, every place became a god-unforsaken place, in the name of the One who hung upon the Cross in the name of the holy place.

Like the temple, the earth was judged at Golgotha, judged to be unfit of itself to be the safe ground for building our cities and religious systems. Trembling and gurgling, the earth pointed to another foundation on which the earth itself rests, and that was the self-surrendering love on which all earthly powers and values concentrate their hostility but which they cannot conquer. Since the hour when Jesus uttered his loud cry and breathed his last and the rocks were split, the earth ceased to be the foundation on which we build on her. Only in so far as it has a deeper root in which the very Cross is rooted can it last.

Finally, the body of God was too sublime to be contained within earth’s bowels. The boulders split, as the land quaked, in deference to the Lord’s passage from darkness to light. No longer is the universe subjected to the law of death out of birth, but to the law of life out of death by the One who passed from death to life, from earth to heaven. From the moment that the Divine Son surrendered his spirit to his Father, the universe has received another meaning. History has been re-directed and draws us human into its sweep unto God who is all in all.

GOOD FRIDAY: THE WOMAN ON THE HILL

                                               The Woman on the Hill     

                                                                                                          

                Our lives are to sparkle and dance and lure others into the arms of God. Mary’s faith life is a dance to imitate, but the steps are ours to learn, and no dance is the same. What is more important is to grow up, walk on our own two feet, and run after the Spirit’s gifts. A mother’s love stretches us and makes us imitate the love we have been given so graciously. Mother Mary saw that “the Child grew in stature and strength.”

Mary is the Virgin daughter of Israel who bears a Son, who says “Yes” to the God who calls her to carry God’s own Son and birth him in our world. She the lowly handmaid who will be called “Blessed” by succeeding generations, she has the Faith. Her will is to do “the command of the eternal God (Rom 16, 26), even if it means walking the hard road from Nazareth of Galilee to the place of the Skull outside Jerusalem. She saw her Son heading for disaster, but by faith and steadfast loyalty she walked by his side. From the “maid of Nazareth” she will become the “woman on the hill.” And we, men and women of faith, will walk with her from Bethlehem to Calvary. We shall stand and contemplate this magnificent woman on the hill, the woman of faith who replied to the angel Gabriel: “Be it done unto me according to your word.” Rest your eyes upon this brave Mother standing by her crucified Son.

She remembers saying to herself, when he was twelve and already about his Father’s business, “He’s not my little boy anymore.”

Rivulets of blood beading the earth beneath the Cross.

Deep down inside she knew that her little boy was born to die.

Why should she be there?

But this was hers. This cross upon the hill. He had not sheltered her from pain nor ever asked that she not be free to learn anguish. She had learned that.

He had not been fretful or concerned to throw around her soft protection, guarding her against a share in him. He’d spoken truth to her. He’d not been reticent or sparing.

He’d not held her unadmitted to the full acceptance, never.

She had heard what Simeon could say, and at the moment when she’d found the Child that had been lost, he had not consoled her with a gentle paraphrase of futures, eased away from what the days should be. And he’d not softened any loneliness when Nazareth was ended.

She was free to sorrow and not withheld. She could be eager, insistent, insatiate, for this was hers to take, her own. And by a long inclusion granted her, she’d known she’d need not ever turn from grief

Of all the spreading earth this was the one place she might stand with him.

She could be near. He would not deny her now; he’d not forbid her come here.

This was hers, her life, her dignity, her choice, the essence of her heart’s significance, the sum and substance of her existence, the end of her being.

She bore the right to be here, standing under the claim of being the “Woman.”

She could penetrate to this, this small and inner-concentrated anguish.

She could stand here. This was hers.

And he would only look, expecting her.

“Woman, here is your son.”

“Son, your mother.”

Love never looked like this.                      

The woman of the hill has become the woman of our hearts. As the Beloved disciple John took Mary into his own, we too take her home and give her pride of place, even though we humbly admit that our home is not always in order.

                                

TREASURE

Treasure

Posted: 20 Jul 2011 03:56 AM PDT

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 2 Corinthians 4:7

You may not have a lot of money, but you have incredible wealth. You may not have an abundance of things, but you possess more than you could ever ask or think. God has placed within you the greatest treasure anyone can ever possess—it is the life of Jesus Christ. You have, living within you, the beauty of His holiness, the kindness of His grace, the freedom of His truth, the compassion of His mercy, the greatness of His power, and the riches of His love. He has freely lavished upon you a treasure house of blessings that you can freely give away to others.