April 6, 2007 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 + Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 + John 18:1-19:42
When I stood in downtown Oklahoma City at the corner of Harvey and Northwest 5th street on April 19, 1996, everyone around me was asking one question: “Why?” For several days following, I was down inside the parking garage of that bombed building with rescue workers. I was there for hours with time to pray and time to wonder.
On April 20th, there was a different focus to it all, and something came over me that I know recognize was a gift of insight that could have come from nowhere else but the Holy Spirit who was very much present in that scene of horror. I stopped wondering “Why” and have never done so since. Only two questions make sense in the face of such a tragedy. “What does this mean?” and “What am I going to become because of this?”
When I read, pray, and proclaim the Passion of Christ, those two questions rise up in me again, and I have found some intriguing insight into the suffering and death of Jesus from the Letter to the Hebrews which we just heard. It is often overshadowed by the powerful reading from Isaiah and the Proclamation of the Passion itself, but this year, I want to draw your attention back to that Epistle.
The author of Hebrews speaks of Jesus as the “Great High Priest” who learned obedience from what he suffered, being made perfect in his suffering. To begin to understand this and move toward some answer to the two big questions in the face of this tragic death, it is necessary to understand the traditional role of the High Priest in Judaism.
Once a year, in the Temple at Jerusalem, the High Priest offered sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people. Before he could do that, he offered a sacrifice for his own sins committed that year, so that he would be pure and holy making the communal sacrifice perfect. It was on the level of sin that the High Priest could relate to the people. This is what the people and the High Priest had in common; sin.
But Christ “The High Priest” had no sin, and so could not relate to us. There is nothing in common. Here is where the author of Hebrews saw the meaning of Christ’s suffering and death. By suffering and by dying, Christ now can relate to us. He shares something with us. We have something in common. The sacrifice he offered was so perfect that the need for an annual repetition was finished. I have begun to believe that this is what Jesus meant when he said: “It is finished.”
His obedience to the will of His Father was complete. It was not that God wished him to suffer, but that God wanted Christ to identify with us completely even to the point of suffering and death. Even more so, Christ was obedient because God wanted forgiveness to be made perfect, and so we find the obedient servant even forgiving his executioners, those who denied him, and those who betrayed him. Obedience is what led Christ the High Priest to accept even death in order to relate to the suffering in our lives.
Through the Letter to the Hebrews then, we know the answer to the questions; all of them.
What does the Passion and Death of Christ mean?
It means God knows from experience our suffering, loneliness, and pain.
And it means that those who experience suffering are close to God.
What do we become because of it?
Holy and Redeemed, forgiven, chosen, and loved by God
who has reached out to us in the person of Christ and called us His own.
There is in this Biblical Wisdom even a hint about “Why” this happened.
But only those who love and understand how sacrifice works,
how easy it is to make a sacrifice,
to give up something or even one’s life for those who are loved.
What at first sounds like a tragedy, a horrible, cruel, and senseless death is really a love story that leads us deep into the mystery and wonder of a God who wills not that we suffer, but that we love enough to sacrifice and forgive one another and so come to perfection.