I attended a Good Friday service yesterday. The young minister did a great job of putting the service of readings and reflection together. His words in the homily were also thoughtful and in my hearing, faithful.
He called us to pay attention, in the readings from the Gospel of Mark, to the presence of the various people in the story, those around Jesus. There was the follower who ran away scared, and apparently naked after he lost his “linen cloth” in the commotion around Jesus’ arrest. There were the women who followed faithfully, Mary and Mary and Salome among them. There was Peter who denied even knowing Jesus as Jesus faced mock trial and torture. And there were the crowds. And there were the religious leaders.
At yesterday’s service, during the readings, before the homily, I was struck by the derision and the disdain of some of these religious leaders towards Jesus.
As Jesus was being crucified, as he was lifted up, they sneered with glee towards one another about Jesus. They were sarcastic. They said, “He SAVED others? He can’t even save himself!”
I heard those words today and over history. What I mean is, I heard in those words, how almost any faith or worldview can become a parody of itself and a worship of power and destruction over self-sacrifice and love.
Even today, culturally and politically and religiously, we seem to have not gotten over our tendencies to demonize and condemn others. It is an indictment on our lack of spiritual maturity that we fall so easily to anti-semitism or Islamophobia, among other prejudices. Troublingly we also fall easily to condemning others, labelling them, while failing to see our own biases or shortcomings. We can often tell you just who, other than us of course, is anti-semitic or Islamophobic.
It has often been noted that the Bible has been used by anti-semites, including some key figures in Christian history to forward a hateful agenda. The crucifixion narratives, when misused, often find currency in such a project.
Those deriding Jesus, those mocking him are labelled by their faith and then all people of that faith are labelled as culpable.
This is hateful and juvenile and has nothing to do with the faith in Jesus.
What it does have to do with is power and the desire for power.
When I see those religious leaders snickering at Jesus and mocking the very idea that he could save anyone, I see not their particular religious faith, but my own.
That is, I see what can happen when Christianity becomes muscular, triumphant, the purview of a “strong man”. This kind of faith is given to talk of culture wars and winning influence and strength.
Sorrow arises due to what is happening to large swaths of Christian culture and theology around the world. In places where so-called Christian faith is being aligned with patriotism and ideas of nation and cultural identity it is also moving, in some cases, to snicker at Jesus himself.
“What kind of weakling would give his life? He can’t even save himself!” The faith is then changed to become the faith of the strong, the faith of the gun, the faith of the dear and powerful purveyor of war and national purity. This is happening in many countries.
Once you see the symbols and scriptures of Christian faith alongside symbols of nation and patriotism, you can know that the faith is being used and distorted, not sought.
During the Good Friday service yesterday, in the time of silent reflection after the reading that included the snickering leaders, I was reminded of how Jesus had compassion even for those who snickered, even for those who wielded power. Those religious leaders congratulated themselves because they had won over the crowds. The masses were doing their bidding. In many places the same thing is happening today.
And Jesus had compassion for them all.
What I felt in the time of silent prayer was a sense of how those snickering leaders had no idea what was happening. They really did think that they were strong.
Jesus, in giving his life, in showing such love, was and remains, truly strong.
His was a strength not of triumphalism, hate and division, but a strength of self-giving love. I still am unable to wrap my mind around it.
If there was anything worth deriding that day, it was death itself.
The leaders who mocked Jesus thought that victory came through killing your enemies. Jesus was about to die and they were not, so they must be the victors.
Death, in this way of seeing things, is the ultimate victor.
It is about this, that John Donne wrote his famous sonnet.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.