josephholubsermons
April 22, 2011 -
Good Friday
This reflection was given at the Good Friday Tenebrae Service. It is the "theme reflection" of seven short reflections on the "seven words" the four gospels present as Jesus' words from the cross. Click here for the other six reflections.
"It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until
three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of
the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus crying with a loud voice, said,
'Father, Into thy hands I commit my spirit.' Having said this, he
breathed his last." (Luke 23:44-46)
To even begin to get this, I think we must look at it with a
more-than-literal perspective.
If we do, it explodes with power and meaning.
Luke says the curtain of the
temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The curtain, you see,
was the drape that separated the Holy of Holies, that sacred place in
the core of the great temple; a place beyond description where it was
believed God was especially present; a place isolated from the
rest of the world. No person
could ever enter the Holy of Holies except the High Priest, and
he but once a year, on the great Day of Atonement - to make sacrifice
for the sins of the nation. But
Luke says the curtain was
"ripped in two," reduced
to rags!
The message was crystal clear. The temple aristocracy were
no longer to mediate
God's grace. The
distribution of God's grace was
no longer to be rationed-out like it was in short supply, and
of course, only to the defined-deserved.
No longer
would God's most serious business of love occur behind curtains and
closed doors, in secret and isolation.
The message was that God will not tolerate being be sequestered
any more. Grace was officially set loose in the world, turning up in the
most unlikely places, even in this most profane place of death and
execution.
Do you see the message here?
The lines between the sacred and profane have been blurred.
Thye are no longer so distinct. It
is not clear any more as to what exactly
is sacred and what
exactly is profane;
not clear who is in and who
is out; who is included and
who is “left behind.” Grace
on the loose blurs and erases the lines.
Forgiveness has been taken care of.
The oppressed are liberated.
The exiled can come home because home, the love
of God, is set loose and it comes to them.
The lost are found by a seeking love.
The prisoners are set free.
You and me and the whole world, without exception, can experience
the embrace of Divine love.
Only when the temple curtain was in shreds, and narrow, exclusive and
oppressive traditional religious practices turned topsy-turvy, did Jesus
commend his spirit to God and die. It's Luke's version of John's
"It is finished."
The audacity of God!
How dare God
do such a thing! How
dare God blur our
neatly drawn lines between sacred and profane.
How dare God
tinker with our carefully controlled belief systems.
How dare God
crack open our carefully crafted God boxes.
God will no longer be confiscated, isolated, and mediated
by narrow and arrogant human thinking anymore.
Just try and imagine:
grace running loose in the world; cascading through life like a tidal
wave, washing
indiscriminately over the sacred and profane, saints and sinners, the
good and bad alike?
Compassion, acceptance, social justice and inclusivity running rampantly
out of control. Just imagine such a world!
Some did, and tragically, it was
too much for others - maybe for most. Indiscriminate grace
was seen to be dangerous and too risky; too out of control.
Much of the history of Christian Church ever since could
be described has an attempt to stitch the curtain of the temple
back together again; to wrest control of grace back from God;
to mediate it narrowly and
exclusively using confining institutionally imposed beliefs and
doctrinal formulas - insuring that only the defined-deserved receive it.
I have to wonder what Jesus would say and do if he were to walk among us again and see much of what has been proclaimed and done in his name down through the centuries since; how he has been grotesquely distorted; how the essence of who he was, how he lived and what he taught has been ripped out him.
I suppose he would probably do what he did the first time: come announcing and embodying the Kingdom of God; preaching the inclusive and lavish love of God's kingdom; lifting up the least and the last that have been oppressed by the domination systems of our day. He would be especially annoyed with the strictly religious who narrowly mediate God's grace. And they would be annoyed with him, and would probably conspire to do away with him.
But he is not here in the flesh to do it
again, but we are!
And, my friends, that's the point!
We are now his
hands and feet. We now, by
grace through faith, assume his life to be lived in the world.
Will his heart and soul live on - in and through us?
As his followers and disciples it is up to us to take up our
cross; to love lavishly and passionately for the sake of the Kingdom of
God; to see to it that curtain never be stitched back together again,
and that God's grace is set loose in the world.