Readings
Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Hebrews 10:16-25, Psalm 22
+ John 18:1-19:42

The Collect
Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Brief Meditation

On the cover of the bulletin is a painting by Matthias Grünewald that has occupied my imagination since I was a little boy. My mother and father had a framed print of this painting on the wall in our living room, and I can remember as a child simply staring at it with a kind of awe and terror. As arresting as the image of Jesus is, I was also fascinated by the people standing to the right and left. Identifiable by her blue robe, Mary, the mother of Jesus stands in the left of the image, while the beloved disciple, identified by his smooth beardless face and youthful hair, stands to the right. The painting depicts the moment in the Gospel according to John when, hanging upon the Cross, Jesus says to his mother: “”Woman, here is your son…” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

What struck me as I contemplated the painting this year was that this is the second time in the Gospel narrative when Mary is told the unexpected news that she is going to have a son. Just last week, when we celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation, we heard in Luke’s gospel how the archangel Gabriel tells the virgin Mary she will have a son, a promise brought about by the power of the Holy Spirit. This time it is Christ, the Living Word, who accomplishes the same by the power of his suffering love.

The theology implied by Grünewald’s imagery is profound. Mary is downcast, overwhelmed by despair at the loss of her child. And John, the disciple, is overcome—even twisted—by grief at the loss of the One he came to know as Lord and Messiah. Jesus calls his mother to look up and out of her despair in order to discover that the emptiness of her loss may yet be filled by new relationship. And Jesus calls his beloved disciple to turn his eyes elsewhere to find that loving of others is the sacrament of loving him.



Mary looks at the ground: Jesus says “Look up and live!”
John looks at Jesus: Jesus says, “Look at your neighbor and live!”


Where are your eyes today?

Where does the brutal lynching of Jesus leave you today?

Are you lost in despair for the glib brutality of the world?

Are you unable to imagine how to continue carrying your grief?

Are you terrified by unanswered prayer?

Are you helplessly adrift in the oceanic silence of God?

Are you crushed under the weight of the dying and the dead?

As he calls to his mother and his beloved disciple, Jesus calls to us who gaze upon his agony and death. He calls us to imitate his self-emptying love, and to find through that love the power to stand in the gulf between the nothingness of Evil and the fullness of Divine Life.

Dear friends, a shame-filled and arbitrary obedience to the moral code of the Church will never lead us to experience the transformative love of Jesus. But if we will see in his death the totality of God’s love for us, we can begin to participate in his love in a way that will change everything about our lives. We will begin to see in everyone around us sons and mothers; daughters and fathers; brothers and sisters and beloved friends.

The world of self-gratification will always end in some kind of violence. Jesus refused to participate in that world, and died a brutal death to prove that there is, in fact, another way of being. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Not simply by paying our debt, for God has always loved us. But much more by changing the way we think about what it means to be human. For in Christ we see that human were created to lead the whole Creation in adoration and praise.

Will we allow the horror of our complicity in his death to turn us toward a new path: the path upon which the love of neighbor and enemy and stranger marks the way that leads to life? May it be so among us, even in the midst of our despair and grief and disillusionment.