Modesty Woven by Prayer
Modesty Woven by Prayer
Eight Meditations on Jesus’ last words from the Cross
Christ Church (Parish) Church, Fredericton, N.B. Good Friday, April 10, 2009
Canon Jim Irvine
Marc Chagall – The White Crucifixion
Oil on canvas 1938, 154.3 x 139.7 cm – The Art Institute of Chicago
“Well done Sir! I am forwarding to friends…”
Gary McCauley,
Ottawa, Ontario
“What a marvelous piece. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
The Reverend Dr. Sam McClain,
Rector, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Stephenville, TX
“Hope Good Friday went well and that you were your usual magnificent teacher. I liked your analysis of the talks… They are wonderfully clear and related to life. Thank you for doing them.”
The Most Reverend H.L. Nutter,
Sixth Bishop of Fredericton and Metropolitan of Canada (Ret.)
“I must say your addresses gave listeners
much food for thought and challenged facile assumptions.
I am sure they were appreciated.”
The Reverend Canon T.A. Smith,
Diocese of Fredericton
Prayer
Rebecca Campbell
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Spirit my soul to keep;
and if I die before I wake
I pray the Spirit my soul to take;
but if I wake for one more day
I pray the Spirit to show the way;
and if I walk this earth for years
I pray the Spirit let wash my tears;
and if I lend a helping hand
I pray the Spirit to let it stand;
and if I fail to do what’s right
I pray the Spirit let shine the light;
and if I find a path that’s straight
I pray the Spirit it’s not too late;
and if I die still halfway there
I pray the Spirit my soul to care.
I pray the Spirit my soul to keep…
Holy God,
holy and mighty,
holy immortal one,
have mercy upon us.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Spirit my soul to keep…
M
y Father pushed the heavy door inwards and I climbed up the stone step to the threshold and entered the vestibule. The overcast sky and the drizzle of the day were exchanged for the darkness of the porch and once in, our eyes had to adjust to what little light there was. Another door and we entered the nave. My earliest memory of Good Friday goes back nearly six decades.
Your memories of Good Friday may go back further. Or perhaps you began your pilgrimage more recently. Whatever the case, we have joined company today as we continue our pilgrimage. We will travel together for the next three hours. Some of us will tire and break away, too weary to go further; while others will join us on the way.
The journey has been the same for some of us – we have rehearsed the words of Jesus written faithfully by the evangelists. But while Jesus’ words have been the same, our experience of the brief encounter has been different for many of us. My first memory has me in a red cassock, holding a brass Boat containing incense, as the thurifer and I led the crucifer and Canon John V. Young – I knew him as Father Young – from one Station to another. The alabaster Stations lined the aisle walls of the Mission Church. By the solemn procession from Station to Station I knew that this was different; this Day was different.
A verse of a hymn glided us along the narrow aisle. Father Young said a versicle and the congregation made the response. Exchanges like that, I knew, brought priest and people together and gave us a focus. I held my Boat of incense. The Station was censed and a prayer offered aloud. There may have been other prayers offered in silence, throughout the assembly. The music began again and as a verse was sung, we moved on.
Other occasions found me at first in pews and later in pulpits making the Watch by the Cross in the customary form we are engaging this afternoon.
Whether the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday, or the Seven Last Words of Jesus from the Cross, we have rehearsed the familiar expressions associated with our Lord during his final hours on Golgotha. Whether as a layman or a priest, I have rushed to tell the story, confident that it was mine to tell.
We might all rush to tell the story, confident that it is ours to tell when, in fact, it is ours to hear. Forasmuch as I have told the story, this afternoon I am going to listen. While I know the story, and while the details have been part of my observance from my youth, I have come to the last words of Jesus today from a place I least expected.
Two pieces assist me here: first, a poem, Prayer, by Rebecca Campbell, and second, a painting by Marc Chagall, The White Crucifixion.
The delightful poem by Rebecca Campbell is wonderfully woven into the lyric of The Cart by Three Sheets to the Wind, an a cappella trio from the Ottawa Valley. The familiar children’s bedside prayer is graciously adapted to lead us as it shall today. Rebecca Campbell meets us where we are and takes us further. By each couplet we will advance through the intervals and hear Jesus’ words again – possibly for the first time.
Marc Chagall, from his studio in Paris gave expression to the sufferings of European Jewry that coincided with Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. The year was 1938. This assimilated Russian Jew inexplicably places Jesus in the very midst of contemporary suffering – on a truncated, T-shaped cross; his loin cloth a prayer shawl. Prayer provides a focus and takes up the theme. Irony abounds in such an image, for in the litter of shattered windows lies more than bits of glass: Kristallnacht testifies to a deeper breaking of basic human continuities. Shattered windows leave faith in fragments and pierce the wholeness of the human spirit.
Vignettes of shattered lives surround The White Crucifixion – all are unredeemed, caught in a vortex of destruction binding crucified victim and modern martyr. As the prayer shawl wraps the loins of the crucified figure, Chagall makes clear that the Christ and the European Jewish sufferer are one. On all sides there is frenetic activity: a Red army attacking, a burning synagogue and village, a man carrying away the holy scroll of the Torah, people fleeing in a boat, elders floating above, covering their eyes in dismay at the horrors below. Chagall has here appropriated our Christian mythology… and heard something that perhaps we have failed to hear.
A powerful tableau, this scene provides expression that scandalizes, that makes us stumble over our own expectations and knock down the comfortable prop we have made of resurrection faith.
I pray the Spirit my soul to take…
Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.
Luke 23: 33-34
Holy God,
holy and mighty,
holy immortal one,
have mercy upon us.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Spirit my soul to keep…
and if I die before I wake
I pray the Spirit my soul to take;
T
he heights of Golgotha invite the wind, and as the sky darkened – or was it man’s vision – crosses were illumined in the referred light of a Paschal Moon. Across the hill top silhouettes stood out against an ashen sky and people could be seen darting amongst the confusion and pain.
Cries of agony punctuated the dark and words as well: words of obscenities and words pleading for mercy. The wind swept words across this profane mountain like a brush carries paint across a canvas. The felons seemed to speak as one to the ear of the Centuries standing guard. The careful ear might discern a coherent phrase; perhaps it was simply the wind.
Near the cross bearing Yeshua, the convicted felon with a superscription posted above his head, a Century may have taken pause early in the darkness. “Father forgive them,” a voice was heard to utter. “For they know not what they are doing.” Listening carefully, and tilting his head, the Century listened for more. As the Tallith whipped in the air, the guard shrugged and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It was the wind. It must have been the wind, he thought.
While Luke places the words on Jesus’ lips, Luke was not a witness. Better understood, Luke knew the character of Jesus sufficiently to know that the words would not be foreign to him. But as much as absolution was not outside Jesus’ sphere of ministry from the time of his Baptism in the Jordan by John, his turn of phrase in this instance is disturbing.
In the past, Jesus engaged all sorts and conditions of men and women and did not shrink from announcing to them that their sins were forgiven. It had both brought relief to the broken and enraged the authorities. No one can forgive sins save God, they held, and their accusative stares and outstretched arms and pointing fingers served to punctuate the point.
Jesus, in this instance withheld his absolution and referred the responsibility to the Father. It may even have been uttered between clenched teeth. Possibly it may not have been borne on the air at all. But in its sentiment, Luke shows how close Jesus has come to our humanity.
Racing to protest this scandalous likelihood, we deny Jesus having come close to us and struggle to keep him ever at a safe distance, even on Golgotha. We fail to listen to his prayer of supplication. This afternoon, ours is a time for listening and silence. Not when we speak to victims but when we listen to their testimony do we truly perceive the cross, the cross that breaks our moral certainties and shatters our continuities of power. We cannot give our victims the cross, for they are already its true bearers.
In the world of victims, our language of victory – the language of redemption – may alienate, echoing only the speech of oppressors.
Who among us has not withheld our forgiveness when our pain has been too great? “God will have to forgive you,” we hear ourselves saying, “I cannot – I will not”. Our forgiveness has by times been deferred, and to learn that Jesus enters into that secret dark place in our lives is something we need to learn.
When we approach the cross with too much faith; when we stand in its shadow with certain confidence of Easter light, is finally to confront no cross at all, only the unrepentant echoes of our religious noise.
In the darkness of the day – relying only on the Paschal Moon beams to keep us from stumbling – we discover the mystery of God so that we may not reduce Him to an object we might reverence. In this profane dark place – the Place of the Skull – all of creation finds itself on the threshold of redemption. Yom Kippur bears the name: the Day of Atonement, the day in which the people of Israel are to be judged by God and the sins of the nation of Israel are atoned. The Day of Atonement is also known as “the Day of Redemption.” This day pictures the transference of sin. It is a time of fasting, cleansing, and reflection which is to be observed once a year. Time is compressed and we stand in judgement and find ourselves atoned.
In the darkness, the church must stand as if before Easter.
I pray the Spirit to show the way…
Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.
Luke 23: 39-43
Holy God,
holy and mighty,
holy immortal one,
have mercy upon us.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Spirit my soul to keep…
but if I wake for one more day
I pray the Spirit to show the way;
J
esus had set his face towards Jerusalem. His final pilgrimage was taken in the company of his disciples. Others would have joined them as they drew closer to the City. In this season, all roads lead to Jerusalem.
The Pilgrimage Festivals – Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles – are times of obligation when the Israelites living in ancient Israel and Judea would journey to Jerusalem, as commanded by the Torah. In Jerusalem, they would participate in festivities and ritual worship in conjunction with the services of the priests at the Temple in Jerusalem.
The devout watched the phases of the moon and knew when to begin their journey to arrive in time at the Temple. Along with the devout, others less pious joined the procession. Festivals draw crowds and among the crowds are the assorted felons: pick pockets, thieves, thugs and extortionists. The Roman Governor and soldiers were drawn to the City as well. Each would seek out the object of their devotion: the devout would find the Temple; and the felons would follow the devout, hungry for their purses; while the soldiers had a thirst for the public houses.
The thieves crucified near Jesus would have set their faces towards Jerusalem. Possibly they had come from the coast, or from Jericho. The Jericho Road did have a reputation for danger. Like Jesus, their paths had led them to the streets and markets of a City bursting to the seams with pilgrims. The thieves were happy to relieve them of their coins. We know nothing of their arrest and summary trial. Such occurrences were common knowledge and did not warrant a detailed account by the evangelists.
The familiar image of the crosses is mirrored in Elie Wiesel’s memoir of the Holocaust, Night. The provocative tableau is set in the Camp as they saw…
“three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine gun trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains – and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel… The three victims mounted together onto the chairs… ‘Where is God? Where is He?’ someone behind me asked,” Wiesel writes, and goes on, “At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting… Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive… For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed.