Just last night our Lord Christ offered his true body and blood for us as a last will and testament that is designed to nourish us in our struggle with our own sin, the temptations of the father of lies, and the social sins that pervade everything about the cultures we create. Last night, Christ offered us the feast of paradise, a foretaste of the new Jerusalem's milk and honey.
But tonight, with Peter and the disciples, we turn away from Jesus, abandoning him as he is taken to his execution. Tonight, with Judas we betray our Lord to the powers that will condemn him and bring the prince of peace to death.
Tonight sisters and brothers, our wearied, fickle and selfish hearts are revealed on the cross. In the starkness of nails pounded through flesh and bone, in the sting of open wounds, in the belaboured breaths of the innocent lamb of God, all about us that chooses death over life, anger over love, destruction over creation is laid before us to see, plain as day.
Not the Jews of the Sanhedrin nor imperial Pilate are to blame, we are. With blessed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we confess on this gruesome evening: "When the Church looks upon her people, she does not not see any cause for self-glorification."
The execution we remember tonight is so egregious, in fact, that we do not even need our experience to confirm our sin. Certainly as we meditate today we can all think of slights we've committed against others, greed which we've nourished, and care for self that we have elevated over care for others.
But we daren't turn our eyes onto ourselves tonight, lest we break our gaze on the crucified one. The crucified one whose heart beat more and more weakly with each passing moment. The crucified one who once smiled and laughed with the glee of a child. The crucified one who lifted his wine-filled glass with joy in Cana. The crucified one who ate by the lakeshore with the crowd, content with five loaves and five fish. The crucified one who calmed a terrible storm.
The crucified one who wept when his friend Lazarus died.
As saints baptized into his death we cannot take our eyes off the Lord as he hangs on the cross. Again, Pr. Bonhoeffer instructs us: "[the church's] members are not saints because they are without sin; their holiness is not the fruit of human endeavor but depends solely on God's action. The Church is therefore a community of sinners; she is a community of the godless, of people who are lost."
When we fix our eyes Jesus as he hangs on the cross, we fix our eyes on our holiness, on our reconciliation with each other, on our priest who sacrifices himself so that God will not turn the divine visage from us when we cry out to him. Rather, even as we gaze upon our dying Lord with eyes bloodshot by sin and senses dulled by self-love, God now turns his holy face towards us. No longer in anger at our war and inequity and blasphemy but with love. God the Father, who weeps in heavenly sorrow for the death of his beloved only Son, wipes the divine eyes and in the midst of tears begins to crack a smile - improbable though it is. A fragile smile that zeroes in on Jesus wounds, a tepid smile that cannot begin to convey the grief pervading the communion of the most holy and divine Trinity. But a smile nevertheless. A smile that knows the pain of humankind. A smile that grows as the divine visage begins to gaze upon not just the scene of an execution on a hillside in Roman Judea but upon all humankind, who live on earth and who rest in hades.
A smile that grows so that the attending seraphs lose track of their mournful song and stare in awe as God the Father almighty sees humankind anew, as he has not seen them since the very beginning, when his breath brought them up from the earth into his image. Before they believed the lies of the adversary. The Father's smile was not delusional but redemptive, for in his Son's death he saw his Son's love.
And so from the smiling Father's mouth a new song sounded forth: "Worthy is Christ the Lamb who was slain... power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and blessing and glory are his..." And the seraphs and cherubs and newly freed ancestors joined in this new melody so that all creation, even the depths of hell, began to harmonize this song of new life.
Tonight is indeed the death of the messiah, tonight all humankind has conspired to kill God. But let us not dare look on our own sin but rather keep our eyes fixed on Christ, for if we gaze on his wounds and on his lifeless eyes we will see through death into life. We will see through the frown of the executed and abandoned Son to see the smile of the loving Father who in the unity of the Holy Spirit will teach us to sing our part in the lamb's wedding song of paradise.
In the name of the forgiving Father, the wounded Son and the sustaining Holy Spirit. Amen.
