(Reflections for Second Baptist Church's Worship on April 14, 2017, Good Friday)
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Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
(Luke 23:34)
The cross holds aloft the helpless humanity of Jesus. On the cross, Jesus knows pain. Jesus knows thirst. Jesus knows death.
On the cross, Jesus is as human as can be.
This is why, I think, the people around Jesus mock him. If he is from God, then why is he here, suffering such a human fate? Why not put on a divine demonstration for them all? The leaders, the soldiers, even one of the criminals beside him—they all mock Jesus. If he is God’s chosen one, the king of the Jews, the messiah himself, then why not show his divine power and save himself?
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” we often say of great persons who finally hit their limit and show their fragile humanity.
Hanging helpless on a cross, as human as can be, Jesus has nothing left but a decreasing supply of breath. All he can do now, is to utter his last words—the first of which is about as far from human as you can get.
The leaders, the soldiers, the criminal beside him—they all fantasize about Jesus putting on a display of might and muscle and magic, as though that would demonstrate his divine character. But their fantasy suggests the very opposite: to call down a host of angels, to save himself and perhaps exact a bit of self-indulgent retribution on his offenders, would in fact be an all-too-human response. It is the sort of thing that humanity dreams of.
The scandal of the cross isn’t that Jesus failed after all, that he is helplessly human. The real scandal is that the cross reveals Jesus at his most divine. The cross reveals God as savior—not through might and muscle and magic and getting his own way, but through something much more powerful, something we hear in his labored last breaths:
“Father, forgive them.”
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After this, when Jesus knew that all was finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I thirst.”
(John 19:28)
I wonder if there were any backspin on these words of Jesus, if they brought back memories of the other times he had spoken about thirst.
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me” (7: 37). “Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:35). “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).
How can this be, that the thirst-quencher is thirsty? Has the eternal spring of living water run dry?
From where we stand today, the answer is simple: “Yes.” The spring is now but a trickle. It is at its last drop.
And yet…Jesus’ very thirst proclaims otherwise.
To thirst is to say, “Yes,” while present circumstance says, “No.” We say, “Yes,” to water precisely when we do not have water. Thirst is an inverted blessing. It is a blessing in absentia. A “Yes” that dwells defiantly in the land of “No.”
“I thirst.”
With life spilling out from his body by the second, Jesus does not proclaim the end of life. He cries out, “Yes!” to life. God saw that life was good, very good, in the beginning, and even now in the very face of death, at the very end of things, Jesus declares so too, “Yes, life is good. Yes, I want more of it.”
Is it any surprise? Jesus could never conceal his love for life. When he taught, when he told stories, all he could talk about was this life: the serenity of the birds, the grace of wild flowers, the sun that rises on us all, and the rain that falls on us; children who dance and play flutes, brothers and bridesmaids, weddings and feasts. If the few whispers we’ve heard are true—that Jesus is the messiah, the son of God—then we might have expected someone more inclined toward heaven, someone ready to get back to heaven. But Jesus is firmly rooted in the soil of this life, insistent that heaven come to earth.
“I thirst.” “Yes, life is good. Yes, I want more of it.”
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When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
(John 19:30)
“It is finished.” So says the painter after she puts the finishing touch on her masterpiece. So says the teenager after his mother asks him about his homework. So say the business executives after they conclude negotiations over a new deal.
“It is finished.” In our world, these words mark an achievement, an accomplishment. They declare what we have done.
Jesus did a lot in the months and years before his crucifixion. He taught, told stories, answered questions, healed the sick, challenged hypocrites, consoled the sorrowful, wept, called the dead back to life.[1]
Jesus has done a lot. But the last few days bring about a bitter twist, a turn from action to passion, from being active to being passive—being acted upon. Jesus is arrested, imprisoned, led before leaders, whipped, crowned with thorns, made to carry a cross, stripped of his clothes, nailed to the wood, and mocked.
Jesus had done a lot. But he doesn’t say “It is finished” after what he has done.
“The great mystery of Jesus’ life is that he fulfilled his mission not in action but in passion, not by what he did but by what was done to him.”[2] He says “it is finished”—it is fulfilled—not after achievement or accomplishment but after having been passed from hand to hand, after ending up on a cross.
In a world that seeks fulfillment in results and returns, profits and the bottom line, the cross that we see before us today proclaims something radically different: love. Love does not seek accomplishment or achievement; it does not find fulfillment in a return or a profit. Love is fulfilled simply by having given itself for others, come what may.
What happens after love gives itself, is out of love’s hands. What happens next might be the end of things. This might be the very end of things. No matter. Love stops at nothing.
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[1] Henri Nouwen, Adam: God’s Beloved (2nd printing; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 83.
[2] Nouwen, Adam, 84.
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