Word to the Wise
Friday, April 6, 2007 - Good Friday
[Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1 - 19:42]Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.
There is a theological expression: "the scandal of the cross." One might interpret it in more than one way. Some would see the action of humans putting an innocent man to death in a cruel and inhuman fashion as scandalous. Others (especially in the early days of the Christian community) found it scandalous that a group of persons would worship someone who had been executed like a criminal! Still others would find it scandalous that the symbol of Christianity is an instrument of capital punishment and suffering. Why not choose something more "positive" and "loving." Good Friday is a day to contemplate suffering - the suffering of Jesus, the suffering of others, and our own suffering. Who among us does not know someone who is suffering terribly? What would we say to them if they told us that they were "offering up their suffering" for our particular spiritual benefit? Would we be embarrassed and feel responsible for the suffering of this person? Is the idea of "redemptive suffering" a negative thing to us? Do we prefer not to think about Jesus' admonition that to follow him means picking up our cross? Isaiah's Suffering Servant and Jesus in the Letter to the Hebrews in today's first two scriptures suffer FOR us and WITH us. We sometimes forget the WITH. Pope John Paul II, in a letter to the General Chapter of the Dominicans in 2001, spoke of how people have confined Jesus "to a distant past or a distant heaven." Good Friday is our assurance that Jesus suffers with us in our time and in our individual circumstances. It is OUR infirmities that he bears and our sufferings that he endures. Accepting this gift is the beginning of knowing how much he loves us. AMEN
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