Reflection for Good Friday: Ecce, Behold, April 10, 2020

TRIDUUM 2020
Good Friday
The Passion of the Lord

Parish of the Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist
Midtown Manhattan

Ecce, Behold

Behold!  The Lamb of G-D.

In the fourth gospel, John the Baptizer greets Jesus with this title – a moniker of immense foreboding, acute insight.  As the prophet called to testify to the light coming into the world, John identified Jesus’ role as the One coming into the world as the Passover lamb.  A sacrificial victim of purpose and resolve, intent upon illuminating the world and enlightening human imagination: the sacrificial victim to put an end to all sacrifice – to expunge the ancient human instinct toward sacrificial victims.

Our observance of Good Friday 2020, here in New York City, bears a distinctive depth of value and purpose.  As a population under siege and under wraps, the stench of death wafts dense in the air, the taste of mortality thick in our mouths.  We have little choice but to wrestle with the mystery of death, perhaps our least favorite among the facts of life.  As disciples of Jesus, this day calls for remembrance of the life, mission, passion and death of Jesus by which we believe death itself has been destroyed.  How does his inimitable death open the way to life indestructible in the embrace of our G-D? Time to prayerfully ponder.  Here’s one suggestion.

In the long arc of history, an array of human civilizations has come and gone, myriad human cultures have arisen and evolved.  For all their variety, they share a worrisome underlying set of dynamics and structures that have lain hidden since the foundation of the world.¹  In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, these age-old dynamics are brought out into the light that was coming into the world.  The paschal mystery of Jesus Christ sheds light on these hidden forces that we might see and understand, hear and comprehend, repent of their lure so as to live out of a new way of being together.  A life in deep relationship shorn of the rivalries, conflicts and violence that leave us prey to the powers of death.  Jesus named this new way of being together “the kingdom of G-D,“ a living communion in the power of the G-D of the living, not of the dead.

To repent of these death-dealing dynamics, we need confront the shape of human desire – a decidedly triangular shape.  Perhaps a brief example here is in order:  imagine a very young child given a toy with which to play.  The child, at once, is delighted, intrigued and in abandon to the thrall of discovery.  Now, in your mind’s eye, imagine after a short interval of time, a second young child is brought into the room and given a second, different toy with which to play.  What is the reaction of the first child?  With exceedingly few exceptions, the first will discard her toy and reach to the second, grasping after the new toy.

I’d like to suggest that a good many of us likely believe that at some point we have outgrown this pattern – but the far more likely truth is that we have become devilishly craftier in camouflaging it.  We learn to desire through observance of another’s desire, our desire is shaped and developed through this triangular dynamic.  Such is the basis of the rivalries, envies and conflicts that mar human cultures the world over.

Among groupings of human beings, as competing desires rise to a breaking point, a fevered rush emerges in a search for someone to blame for the discord.  Once identified, this one becomes the target of group furor.  This one is selected for expulsion, to be cast out like a scapegoat, more often than not murdered to salvage some modicum of edgy peace – an uneasy truce if you will.  This relative lack of conflict endures until the next frenzy of conflicting desire leads to a new search, a fresh victim.  And on it goes.²

On Good Friday, believers in the gospel celebrate the victory of Jesus, Lamb of G-D.  The innocent victim freely, fully stepping into the space of the scapegoat.  Repelled, expelled, executed, tossed onto the soaring pile of victims accumulated throughout human history.  But no ordinary victim this, rather a singular victor revealing the path out of this morass.  The crucified and risen One teaches us to shape our desire after his manner of desire – a desire he learned the from Father in a love without beginning or end.  A love without domination or subordination, without conflict or rivalry.

On Good Friday, we confront the truth that Jesus dies on the cross not because the G-D he addressed as Abba is blood-thirsty, but rather that it is we who are blood-thirsty and blood-soaked.  We are humbled before the selfless sacrifice of One intent upon getting us too see just how entrapped we are inside this insidious mechanism spewing violence, devouring victims.  We are offered the gift of freedom from such enslavement, forgiveness for our prototypical sin, the sin of the world.

Such revelation is a profound gift to those of us living on the cusp of the third decade of the 21^st century.  Take a moment to reflect upon the “foundations” to which we are constantly invited to build a community of life.  How so very much of our lives are built upon lazy, indeed deadly, designations of “us” and “them.”  “You know how they are, don’t you?  You know what they’re like, right?”  And so, we purchase a cheap, paper-thin form of society built over against “them,” a counterfeit community complete with sham claims to sovereignty.

Such reflection is especially crucial during this moment in which we find ourselves hidden and huddled in the face of physiological hazard.  Each and every one of us is presently a feasible threat to those around us, as well as potentially threatened by those around us.  When threats run high, the field of potential scapegoats expands rapidly.  Indeed, violence has already been visited upon victims simply because of their ethnicity or origins.  In the name of Jesus, by his grace, in his Spirit, let us resist such invitations. 

In the eerie silence of our places of abode.  Amid the ghostly silence of our hearts.  This day, we resolve solidarity with the sacrificial victim who has ended sacrifice once and for all – the Victor over death and death-dealing, the Way to communion in G-D’s love.

Ecce Homo

Behold, the man.

Behold!  The Lamb of G-D.

Behold! the Lamb of G-D who takes away the sin of the world.

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While public worship remains suspended here in New York State, you may find comfort in your personal prayer through this set of visual Stations of the Cross exploring the redemptive power of the paschal mystery amid our human history of suffering and violence.