The Answer

“Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

I wonder if you and I have in common the fact that every year we come to Holy Week and find ourselves asking the meaning of it, almost as if we had never been through Holy Week or ever figured out what it means. It would seem that the opposite would be the case. Millions of people discover themselves deeply moved by the depth of his suffering, the enormity of the abuses he endured. Others are impressed by what they hear as something that was always in the Mind of God, foretold fairly explicitly by the old Hebrew prophets, and obediently endured by Jesus. Still others are horrified by the thought that a good and merciful God could possibly have sanctioned, let alone planned, such suffering and cruelty, a notion that leads them to appropriate Holy Week quite differently, often seeing it as part of the continuing struggle of innocence against oppression, of good against evil.

I find myself staring at the Passion of Christ much as I remember looking at the Grand Canyon for the first time—seeing something that exceeds all the stories I have ever heard, grander and more terrifying than all the photographs and paintings could possibly convey, a tragedy at once easy to follow and yet impossible fully to grasp.

Most intriguing of all is the figure of Jesus himself. No matter what gospel you read, all of them portray a Jesus not the least bit interested in saving his hide. The four canonical accounts that we have of the Passion differ in a number of details, some of them mutually contradictory. But in all of them Jesus is clearly in control of his fate. That is not to say that he experiences no struggle. In Mark’s account he goes to Gethsemane and is “distressed and agitated.” But when he is arrested by the Temple police and brought before the Sanhedrin, as charges are flying back and forth, false and conflicting testimony given, he is silent and gives no answer. When he finally opens his mouth, it is to answer the high priest’s question, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”

Ah! That question is the one that we keep asking, isn’t it? We ask it even if we have firmly answered it in the past. We ask it even if we know that the answer is not going to change from what we heard when we last asked the question. Thank you, Mr. High Priest, for saying out loud what I was about to ask but a little bit afraid or embarrassed to. I have no idea what the high priest was thinking, short of the obvious need to come up with a charge that would stick, one that could be used to justify the death penalty. And blasphemy was not such a charge actually. Nonetheless, where there is a will, there is a way, especially, it seems, if the will is evil.

Momentarily your mind is off the questioner and the question as you sit looking at Jesus, waiting for his answer. Silent he is. And in that silence there opens a corridor stretching back through your whole life. Look at all the things that have defined you since you can remember. You were a daughter or son, a sister or brother. A few years later, someone labeled you with a word or phrase or name that seemed to fit. “Smart,” or “troublemaker,” “shy,” or “talkative,” or “insecure” or something. School defined you for awhile. And the sports or music you excelled at. Maybe you chose a work that became your life. Perhaps you fell in love with someone or ones. Maybe in time you became the mother or the father of someone, the friend, associate, lackey, sidekick, flunky, boss, chairperson.”

As you go down the corridor, do you hear yourself forming your response to all those who might have asked you the question, “Are you…?” Are you this or that? Who are you, what are you? Amazing that most of those personas we have worn from time to time have something to do with a role or a function, maybe even a relationship, but few of them have anything to do with the core of who we are. And we know it. That is what makes for increasing pain, frankly, as we continue the project of living. There is something down deep inside us aching to express itself, something like the archaic crying that we let out when we were babies, crying so far back we can’t possibly remember it. Something is at my core and your core that transcends roles and won’t fit into categories of function and work and career and relationship. Maybe it is something so inchoate that it feels like a piece of ourselves aching to be born. Does it feel like a passion that has not yet quite figured out what its name is? Does it lodge somewhere in your chest, feeling like an old hope or a dream that has not dared describe its contours? We are talking here about something that is deeper than any of the surface things about you, something that is wired into your core Self, indeed maybe your core Self itself. And the high priests question, “Are you?...are you?” put to Jesus echoes the voices that keep asking us who and what we are, most of the time perhaps our own voice asking just that.

Out of the silence, Jesus answers. “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” This might be the all-important moment in Mark’s story, perhaps even the all-important moment in Jesus’ life. The interesting thing about it is that, if you take his answer at face value, it is beyond debate. Mark must have known that none of the members of the Sanhedrin were around to read his gospel, and all of them (with possibly an exception or two) died presumably without having seen anything like what Jesus was describing. Quite clearly, his “I am” spills over beyond the borders of human history, and surpasses what can be quantified, proved, or conventionally described. “I am,” Jesus says.

On one level we hear in his answer all that we need to hear, whether we love it or dread it. He is the one who stands at the center of life and meaning. His ministry, his teaching, his suffering, his death, all that had preceded the trial and all that was to follow, are caught up in his answer. The high priest obviously didn’t believe him—he tore his robes and called it blasphemy, maybe out of grief, maybe out of anger, or some combination of the two—and it is equally possible to hear it today and contest it, discount it, or lament it.

But you may choose to take the story as trustworthy and true. More importantly, if you hear something in Jesus’ response that spurs you to give your life to him, to take him as the way you learn God and therefore what is most true in the Universe, then it will not be long before you begin to sense that the way he speaks Truth is the way you have to speak Truth, beginning with your own truth. If you accept and embrace who he is, the chances are heightened that you will find in him the power fully to accept and embrace who you are.

And that is just the beginning. It does not explain Holy Week. It does not necessarily make the terrible tragedy of Jesus’ Passion less difficult to swallow. It does not explicate the nuances of scripture or give a solid answer to all of your questions. But what it does is launch us on a quest, and for some of us already long launched, to spur us on to hear the truth and obey the truth and be the truth. Simply to keep following him is enough, for deep down we find ourselves wanting to live always and only for the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of the Power, coming with the clouds of heaven. Though life may beat us, spit on us, close all the doors to us, shut out the light from us, we know we are loved and kept by the One who is “I am,” One who touches that place deep within us causing us to say, “In you, Jesus, so am I.”

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2012

Innocence Slaughtered

A sermon preached at St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, Palm Sunday, March 28, 2010

Text: Luke 22:14-23:49

We want the world to be perfect. Why not, if that is a live option? We want the world to be perfect. But it simply isn’t.

What would perfect be? I don’t know. Maybe it would be a world that had no evil, and thus no good. Maybe it would be a world that knew no shadows or sunsets, only eternal noon. Maybe it would be a world free of snowstorms or thunderstorms, safe from earthquake and flood, full of mild spring days showered by cherry blossoms.

Instead, the world we inhabit is a world where the innocent are crucified.

Palm Sunday begins as if the world were perfect, on tiptoe awaiting the arrival of its Savior, singing, “Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord.” Glory, laud, honor, palms, parades, victory are all in place; but the whole thing quickly sours and darkens as we see the king of glory shamed, taunted, abused, and finally killed. And that is the way life in the world is. However wonderful that life could be, it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. Palm Sunday only puzzles us if we have not yet learned the truth of that.

There are, of course, multiple ways in which we can look at the passion of Jesus. A conventional way is to see him going about all this as if he knows the script perfectly well, moving from Bethany to the Temple Mount without a moment’s hesitation, heading towards the Passover in which he himself will be the slain lamb with not so much as an emotional hiccup. Luke will not allow such a view. He draws us close to Jesus at his last supper, clearly knowing that death awaits him, aware of imminent betrayal, fully expecting the most stalwart disciple to deny him, and overwhelmed with anguish as he prays to be spared the time of trial. There is nothing phony or superhuman about this Jesus. Yet Luke makes it clear that Jesus is not thrown off center by any of this. He has his wits about him, and he is no less here than throughout Luke’s gospel, full of Holy Spirit.

But this story is more than Jesus’ story. Or rather, in Jesus’ story we see caught up a host of other stories. The righteous suffer all the time, not just on Calvary. Evil hunts down Good every day of the week, not just on Friday. And innocence is slaughtered throughout the world, not just in Jerusalem. We tell this story over and over not only because it happened once and not only because we believe that it is about God’s Son, but because it rings true to what we know about our own lives. And lest we rush to conclude that we are the victims in this cosmic drama of the slaughter of innocence, we might remind ourselves that, like the players in a Passion play, we can switch parts with ease. Out of our mouths sometimes comes, “Hosannah!” and sometimes, “Crucify!” Sometimes we are rubbing our eyes trying to stay awake and watch with Christ, and sometimes we are busy negotiating the best way we can shut him up. At times we are walking behind him, carrying the cross, and sometimes we are running away from the scene lest we become involved. We can work ourselves up into paroxysms of pity for the innocent and in the next breath poke fun at the little prophet and dress him in purple drag as cheap entertainment. We usually do not one or the other but both.

And you know it. You may have been fired without just cause, discriminated against, hated without reason, brutally raped, robbed, or ridiculed. Or you might have been the one to inflict harm, or maybe just stand by looking and shaking your head–or less–when somebody else has been busy executing innocence. The tale goes on. Truer words were never spoken than his admonition to the women who followed and bewailed him: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and for your children.” The story is about them and us, not just about him. And so when he prays, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” he is talking past his own age and down the centuries. Yes, we keep killing innocence because in part we don’t know how to stop. We keep killing innocence because we refuse to become conscious about what we are doing. And we continue to be victims because as long as somebody is out to kill innocence and we happen to be in the way, we will get it between the eyes. The tale goes on, in my life and in yours, which is precisely why we need to pause and see that in this archetypal story of Jesus’ passion our own passions find healing and resolution.

Herman Melville gave us the character Billy Budd, the handsome sailor, naïve and beautiful, charming and well loved, who loses his temper when falsely accused of fomenting mutiny, strikes and kills his accuser, the jealous, evil Claggart. Captain Vere who passes sentence on him has Billy hanged not in the usual place but in the main yard of the ship, the center crossbeam unmistakably reminiscent of the one on which hung the Savior. Standing there with his neck in the noose, Billy says in clear accents, “God bless Captain Vere!” and all who stand watching with one voice echo him. It is the Christ story told again. “Bless them that persecute you; bless and curse not.”

There is a time to bless and a time to take up the fight against the slaughter of innocence; a time to say “No more!” to the shameful abuse of children and the exploitation of the helpless; a time to wage battle to protect the vulnerable. But there is never a time to give way to hating, nor a time to lie like those who lie about you.

We have no guarantee, only a promise that behind the shadows is the all-seeing Eye to whom not even a sparrow falls unnoticed. One can imagine that as the noble Joseph took the body of Jesus and wrapped it for burial in his own new tomb hewn of the rock, that no one spoke a word, if indeed anyone was around to see it all, grief locked in their throats. We can imagine that perhaps only the birds sang his dirge, as did the gulls when Billy Budd’s body dropped into the sea, as they flew “screaming to the spot,” and the silent ship under light airs passed on.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2010