Hallowed

Shoved stumbling along to Skull Hill.  The other gospel accounts tell us of Simon from Cyrene—the ruins of which city you can still visit in Libya.  The soldiers, seeing that Jesus was in a bad way, requisitioned Simon wide-eyed out of the crowd to carry the cross.  Not all the way.  Jesus carried his cross to Skull Hill.  The cross was not light.  It had to be strong enough to bear the full weight—the dead weight—of an adult man, and long enough, high enough, so that people near and far could see the man nailed to it.  The cross was cumbersome, heavy.  No wonder the soldiers, who had not much if any pity for Jesus, but who did want to finish the job of executing him, brought in some help for carrying the cross.

Remember also that, as Jesus lugged that lumber along the packed streets of Jerusalem, out to the rocky hill where he would soon be dying, he had already been split open all over by the Roman scourge, had a garland of thorns spiked onto his head—O sacred head.  He had had nothing to eat or even drink.  Small wonder that he cried out, “I thirst,” but it wasn’t for anything that could be offered here.

The march out to the hill, with the crowd and the weight, the falling, getting back up, took something like an hour.  Faces and hands to left and right, above him, contorted, reaching.  Voices, faces, shouting, crying—anger, excitement, sorrow, horror.

April is a mild, sunny month in Jerusalem.  On the hill just outside the city, John tells us without comment: “There they crucified him” (19:18).  It needed no elaboration.  John and his first audience knew.  They understood; they had seen crucifixions.  That wasn’t something one could unsee.  No need to describe.  John mentions that Jesus was crucified along with “two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle” (19:18).  We remember that: maybe especially from Luke’s telling—the one thief unleashing his last rage and final scorn upon Jesus, the other confessing the innocence of Jesus, begging Jesus to remember him when Jesus came into his kingdom.  John is particular to note that Jesus was crucified between the two: an eyewitness detail, an indelible memory.

Some movies show the sign already attached to the cross—INRI, Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum—but I someway feel it was as other movies depict it: the sign was affixed after Jesus had been lifted to die.  How would you like to have that task?  “Hey grunt, climb up there next to the crucified, bleeding mess, your face to his face, and nail this sign up there: Pilate’s orders!”  “The King of the Jews”: here’s what we do, to them.  Here’s what you’ve done to your king—got enough authority lording it over us as it is!  Who needs more?  Less, please!  After all, the only authority over us that any of us really want is our own authority . . .  I wanna be the boss of me.  We’ll take the love; He can keep the authority.  Pilate knew many would see, Golgotha situated where it was, and the sign having been written in the common languages of the region.  The whole point of what was happening was for people to see.  All must pass by the cross; everyone must see.

That didn’t mean everyone approved, or thought, justice served, finally, thank God!  “The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, ‘Do not write “The King of the Jews,” but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews’” (19:22).  Now, for Pilate’s purposes, official purposes, Jesus was executed for supposed claims to the throne, claims that infringed upon Roman rule.  But the priests knew, and Pilate understood, that Jesus was killed because the priests wanted Jesus out of the way: Jesus was an unwelcome nuisance to them; he was no Messiah; he couldn’t be.  That really meant nothing to Pilate, but it did mean something to the priests, the religious officials.  They didn’t want that, didn’t want him.  They had things arranged just the way they wanted, just the way they liked.  What would happen to the sacrificial system established there at the Temple, if the Perfect and Final Sacrifice came along?  The priests received their food and income from the offerings and sacrifices—Jesus was messing with their livelihood!  All their generations of prestige and power were tied up in the priesthood they held: their God-given right.  The priests were primarily looking out for their interests, their livelihood—food on the table, gold in their pocket.  We understand.

So, Pilate is less than moved by the priests’ indignant insistence upon the precise wording of the signboard over the head of the man on his way to death.  Haggling over details.  Jots and tittles, rather than the spirit of the message.  “What I have written, I have written” (19:22).  Pilate had given them enough already, that day.  He wasn’t going to give more.

John here shifts the scene.  The focus, really, is the hill, the cross, what was happening there.  The soldiers charged with crucifying Jesus “took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining.  This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.  ‘Let’s not tear it,’ they said to one another. ‘Let’s decide by lot who will get it’” (19:23-24).  Gamble for it, throwing dice, there at the foot of the cross.  I’ve done some gambling, there.  Haven’t you?  If you’ve been to Goodwill or come to our annual church garage sale, or just looked in your closet, you’ll come away with the impression that we have a lot of clothes.  At some point all of them used to be money, even if you can now just get them for a dollar a bag.  In the ancient world, clothing was quite valuable; most people didn’t have much.  The soldiers could themselves wear the clothing for which they were gambling, or they could use it to buy favors, solicit services, or they could just sell it outright and have a little extra coin in their money bags: buy a little extra wine or some roasted meat.

Back in 1953, Richard Burton starred in a film as a Roman officer commanding the detail crucifying Jesus; in The Robe, it’s Burton’s character who wins the garment, but rather than gaining any material benefit from it, he finds himself afflicted, perhaps even cursed by it.  The film plays with the idea that it’s just the officer’s projected sense of guilt, but the underlying premise is familiar to Catholics, at least: relics have power.  Even we can begin to think that some object that has been in close contact with a person somehow carries something of the . . . what? the aura, the energy, the spirit . . . of the person.  My mother kept the handkerchief her mother had been holding when she died.  Well, it’s a way of being in touch, in contact, somehow, with our loved ones.  They’re gone, and we’re here, left alone, left hurting, sorrowful.  A piece of the cross, a thorn from the crown—it was almost like being there, yourself; were you there?

John, watching what was happening, though at a slight distance, lest he be identified, implicated, was taking it all in.  Later, he understood what he was seeing: again, God’s Word, being fulfilled, all these things, done to Jesus.  “This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, ‘They divided my clothes among them / and cast lots for my garment.’  So this is what the soldiers did” (19:24).  Ancient words, being fulfilled before his very eyes.  God’s Word became quite real for John there, as all of it fell piece by piece into place.  O, may God’s Word always be quite real for us, and for those with whom we share him!

When has God’s Word been quite real for you, as if God Himself had taken you by the shoulders, looked you in the eye, and spoken?  The apostles were each in his own way coming to realize that what they had been witnessing was the fulfillment of God’s promises, what God had already foretold so long ago, through the psalms, through the prophets, through Moses and the law.  All of it was pointing to that man on that cross on that hill on that day: today, this day.  The story was this story; the message was this message.

Though we’re told that the eleven fled for their lives there in the garden, we know that Peter, and John with him, muster up enough courage to follow along behind, not even quite at a safe distance, and on into the courtyard of Annas’ house.  Annas was the powerbroker, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest.  And I like to believe that, just as John was there, at the cross, near the cross, so, too, the other apostles were also somewhere in the vicinity, needing to be near, taking it all in, beginning, by the Spirit, to see.

See what?  God’s plan, God’s purpose, God’s grace, God’s glory—the mystery of the love of God.  We tend, for several reasons, I suppose, to take God’s love for granted.  God’s love is illuminated entirely by His holiness.  That day, the disciples witnessed the depths of the holiness of God.  O, that we might begin to plumb the depths of God’s holiness.  Holiness, at heart, means separate, different, as in what we hear so memorably through Isaiah:

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,

and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return to it without watering the earth

and making it bud and flourish,

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

so is my word that goes out from my mouth:

It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  (Is 55:6-11)

The apostles, what was left of them, may have been scattered among the crowd, the dwindling crowd, everyone going his own way.  John stayed near, with the women.  The women were there, brothers.  The women were there, close as the soldiers would allow them.  Yes, the women were there, as we know.  There was Mary, her sister (probably Salome the mother of John and James), another Mary, identified as “the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” (19:25).  Sculptors, painters, and composers have long depicted that scene, not only on account of Roman Catholic devotion to Mary.  It’s the mother, beholding her son, her child, dying, and she powerless to prevent it.  To call it a bitter day would barely begin to express it.  Simeon, a lifetime ago, had told her: the gory glory she had ever dreaded—her nightmare, her deepest fear.  Her only hope.  The holy love of God.  God’s Word was beautiful, and hard.  He gave, and He took away.  God’s Word had filled her soul, and left her hollowed, here.  Hallowed be Thy name.