In today's first reading, we have the
last of the four servant songs which we have been reading this week. They
remind us that our Lord's passion, his suffering and death heart clearly
foretold in Scripture. So much of the action of this week has taken place so
that Scripture may be fulfilled. What God told the people of Israel through his
prophets comes about and the end of his son's life. It shows us in the clearest
possible way that what we see in the prophetic descriptions is true.
If
the truth be told, the suffering, the rejection, torture, and death of our Lord
and saviour, Jesus Christ, is beyond our understanding. It is a mystery, the
mystery of God's love: an act of loving service, the power of silent love
overcoming a world of political scheming, deception, self-interest and sin. But
God's own son should come from heaven and die to save a sinner like you or me
is extraordinary. We are shown today in the clearest possible terms how God
loves us: that there is no length to which he will not go to save us, to
embrace his prodigal children. The chief priests and elders think that they're
ridding themselves of an heretic, a potential troublemaker, a fool who claims
to be the son of God and King of Israel. When Pilate asks “What is Truth?” he
does not understand that the source of all truth, the word of God incarnate is
stood in front of him. After scourging him the soldiers put a purple robe
around our Lord, crown him with thorns, and give him a reed for a sceptre. They
think they’re being funny, they’re having a laugh, but this is God showing the
world what true kingship is: it is not pomp, or power, the ability to have
one's own way, but the Silent Way of suffering love. It shows us what God's
glory is really like: it turns our human values on their head and inaugurates a
new age, according to new values, restoring a relationship broken by human sin.
In
being raised upon the cross, our Lord is not dying the death of a common
criminal, but rather reigning in glory. His hands and feet and side are
pierced, as wounds of love, to pour out God's healing life upon the world. In
his obedience to the father’s will, he puts to an end the disobedience of
humanity's first parent. Christ is a willing victim, the Lamb of God who takes
away the sins of the world, the Silent lamb led to his slaughter, the Good
Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep that have gone astray.
Death
and hell, the reward of sin, have no power over us, for in dying, and being
laid in a stranger’s tomb, Christ will go down to Hell, to break down its
doors, to lead souls to heaven, to alter the nature of the afterlife, once and
for all. Just when the devil thinks he's won, then in his weakness and in his
silence Christ overcomes the world, the flesh, and the devil. The burden of sin
which separates humanity from God is carried on the wood of the cross. On the
way to Calvary our Lord falls three times such is the way, such as the burden,
so we too as Christians, despite being reconciled to God by the cross, will
fall on our road too. We will continue to sin, but also to ask God for his love
and mercy. But those arms which were opened on the cross will continue to
embrace the world with God's love. We don't deserve it, but it is there to help
us become the people God wants us to be: to be strengthened, fed, healed, and
restored by him, to die to sin and be raised to new life, and to share that
life and love with others, that the world might believe and be saved through
him. Christ pays the debt which we cannot reconcile humanity to his loving and
merciful Father. He shows us the meaning of true love: that we might live it
out in our lives, forgiving one another, bearing our own cross, and living
lives of love for love of him who died for love of us.
We
should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is our salvation,
our life, and our resurrection, through him we are saved and made free.
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