Body vs No Body

There was a body on the cross!  This was a shocking revelation to this 12 year-old seeing a crucifix for the first time.  I was not used to seeing Jesus there—or any body for that matter.  The many crosses in my world were empty.  But here, visiting a friend's church, in a denomination different from my own, was a scene I had never fully considered.

In my own Protestant circles I remember hearing the rationale.  It went something like this:  "Friday is here but Sunday is coming!" Holy Week did not end with Jesus on the cross.  Good Friday is not the end of the story.  Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried.  And on the third day, he rose again.  The story ends in the victory of Easter.  The cross is empty because Christ is risen.

In fact, it is true, and as Paul notes, essential, that Christians worship a risen Christ.  He writes: "For if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith is in vain" 1 Corinthians 15:14.  Even walking through the events of Holy Week—the emotion of the Last Supper, the anguish in Gethsemane, the denials of the disciples, the interrogation of Pilate, and the lonely way to Golgotha—I have come well aware that though the cross is coming, so is the empty tomb.  The dark story of Good Friday will indeed be answered by the light of Easter morning.

And yet, there is scarcely a theologian I can imagine who would set aside the fathomless mystery of the crucifixion in the interest of a doctrine that "over-shadows" it.  The resurrection follows the crucifixion; it does not erase it.  Though the cross has indeed taken away the sting of sin and death, and Christ has truly borne my pain, and the burden of humanity is that I will follow him.  Even Christ, who retained the scars of his own crucifixion, told his followers that they, too, would drink the cup from which he drank.  As a Christian, who considers myself "crucified with Christ," will surely "take up my cross" and follow him.  The good news is that Christ goes with me, even as he went before all, fully tasting humanity in a body like mine.

Thus, far from being an act that undermines the victory of the resurrection, the remembrance of Jesus's hour of suffering boldly unites me with Christ himself.  For it was on the cross that Christ most intimately bound himself to humanity.  It was "for this hour" that Christ himself declared that he came.  Humanity is, in turn, united to him in his suffering and is near him it's own.  Had there not been an actual body on the cross, such mysteries would not be substantive enough to reach Bill Prather or if fact, anyone else.

I can well identify with what author and undertaker Thomas Lynch, in his book: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, describes as a related problem as well-meaning onlookers at funerals attempt to console the grief-stricken.  Lynch describes how often he hears someone tell the weeping mother or father of the child who died of leukemia or a car accident, "It's okay, that's not her, it's just a shell."  But the suggestion that a dead body is "just" anything, particularly in the early stages of grief, he finds more than problematic.  What if, he imagines, we were to use a similar wording to describe our hope in resurrection—namely, that Christ raised "just" a body from the dead.  Lynch continues, "What if, rather than crucifixion, he'd opted for suffering low self-esteem for the remission of sins?  What if, rather than 'just a shell,' he'd raised his personality say, or The Idea of Himself?  Do you think they'd have changed the calendar for that? Easter was a body and blood thing, no symbols, no euphemisms, no half measures."

Father, God, this morning, it's on the cross, that I find the one whose self-offering transformed all my suffering and forever lifted the burden of sin.  On this dark and Good Friday, I find the very figure of You in Jesus with me, a body who cried out in a loud voice in the midst of anguish, on the brink of death, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."  Precisely because the cross was not empty, the coming resurrection is profoundly full.  Full enough, that this Sunday, when the preacher announces, "He is risen," I will respond with a shout, "HE IS RISEN INDEED!"

Thoughts On Simon of Cyrene

For years I had not provided in-depth attention to Simon the Cyrene until reading Bill O’Riley’s book: Killing Jesus. My curiosity led me back to focusing on what the Gospels and commentaries on the Gospels said about this man leading me to think that this Simon of Cyrene had every reason to be shocked. He was on his way in from the country, likely headed to Jerusalem for the Passover, when he was seized from the crowd and forced to join a procession heading toward Golgotha, the place of the Skull. They put a crossbeam on him, one to be used in the execution of a criminal, and made him carry it. The offense of this object and un-chosen assignment was blatant to Simon and everyone around him. He had been recruited to play a role in a crucifixion, an extremely dishonorable form of judicial execution in the Roman Empire. Among Jews, anyone condemned to hang on a tree was thought accursed. Staggering in front of Simon, beaten and bloodied, was the man to whom this cross belonged.

In many ways, it was a day of shocking darkness. For Simon, thrust in the middle of angry men and wailing women, the day held a burden he did not deserve, a shame he did not seek to bear. He was on his way to celebrate the release of the Jews from the bondage of slavery--the central act of God in Israel’s history--and he found himself forced to carry the cross of a condemned man instead.

The crowd pressed in behind them as they walked forward. Simon heard Jesus turn to the women who mourned and wailed for him and offer a curious response: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed! They will say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!"' For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Luke 23:28-31.  Simon probably would have recognized these lines as words of the prophet Hosea, the prophet God used to show Israel his heart, to demonstrate a love that would not quit despite an adulterous bride.

When they made it to Golgotha, Simon's task was finished. The beam was taken from him and the man he followed to the place of the Skull was stripped of his garment and nailed to the cross. Nothing further is mentioned about Simon the Cyrene in any of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion. Still much is left for me to wonder. Did he stay after the burden had been lifted from his shoulders? Did he hear Jesus cry out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" or watch him extend the invitation of paradise to the broken criminal on the cross beside him? What went through Simon's mind as he walked behind the weak and beaten Jesus, the events of Passover interrupted by the events of the cross? Did he look on as they mocked the “King of the Jews” who remained silent through the insults? Was he filled with thoughts of the Passover he was missing, the life he needed to resume, as they challenged Jesus to come down from the cross? Or perhaps Simon was as disturbed by the end of the journey as he was of its beginning. 

Matthew reports the conclusion of the first Good Friday and the cross that would become a stumbling block for all of history: "When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.  At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split... When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!'" Matthew 27:50-54.

 
I have resigned myself to the fact that it is impossible to tell what became of Simon after he carried the burden of the one sentenced to die. Ironically, the memorial he had celebrated his entire life--the redemption of Israel from the yoke of slavery, the blood of the unblemished lamb, the Passover hope for the liberating Messiah--was emerging before him, the slaughter of the paschal lamb. Still one thing is clear for me this morning as I write; Simon of Cyrene was on his way somewhere else and the cross was a shocking interruption. And so it remains for me today.