Good Friday: The Atonement of "I AM"

When I was about eight years old, I saw Cecil B. DeMille’s classic film The Ten Commandments for the first time. The movie has come to be associated in my mind, as it is for many others, with the Easter holiday, probably because ABC has shown it on this weekend every year since the late 1960s. I remember though, the first time I saw it, how impressed I was by the visual artistry of that movie. Its special effects are certainly dated by modern standards, but somehow they still amazed me as a kid. 

The scene I remember best is the one in which Moses encounters God in the burning bush. The idea of a bush that was on fire but not consumed by it was one that impressed me, even as a child, just as it amazes Moses in the movie. If you recall the scene, Moses comes to realize he is in the presence of the divine. He removes his sandals, recognizing that he is on holy ground. The Lord tells him that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and commands Moses to go to Pharaoh and say to him, “Let my people go.” Before Moses departs, he asks the Lord what name he should give for the god who has sent him. The Lord responds, “I Am That I Am” … or as is more commonly said in our tradition, “I Am Who Am.”

Much has been written about that saying, that name, “I Am Who Am.” It is something of an enigma – a declaration of God’s identity as being equivalent to his power, his majesty, his infinite glory. God is he who IS – who exists, period – and nothing further needs to be said. In the Jewish tradition, this name was accorded such great respect to this name of God that it was never said or written; instead they used alternative descriptions, like Adonai, “Lord” or El Shaddai, “God Almighty.” Only the high priest of the Temple was allowed to pronounce the name of God, and only then once per year, on the Day of Atonement.

Mihály Munkácsy, Golgotha (1884)

In the narrative we just read from the Gospel of John, you might have noticed that something a little strange happens right at the beginning of the story. When Judas arrives with a group of soldiers to arrest Jesus, he asks them whom they are looking for. They respond “Jesus the Nazorean”, and he then responds two times “I AM.” The Gospel then says that those who heard him turned away and fell to the ground.

If Jesus is just saying that he’s the one they are looking to arrest, it seems strange for them to turn away and fall over. But of course, his response is more than that – his response, “I Am,” is composed of the same words as what Moses heard on the mountain, “I AM Who Am”. We can understand now why his listeners were so aghast; Jesus has used the personal name of God in reference to himself. At this critical moment of the story, on the verge of his arrest, Jesus forces those who hear him to make a choice – either he is God himself, as he has claimed, or he is not. If he is not, then he has committed blasphemy and rightly will be sentenced to death. If he is, then those arresting him are about to put to death God himself.

We are, of course, forced to consider the same choice. Good Friday is about the death of one man, a man who claimed to be God. If he was not, then this day is no different than any other, since thousands even millions die every day, some in ways as terrible as a crucifixion. But if he is God – and we as Christians certainly reaffirm today our act of faith that he is – then Good Friday is the day we solemnly remember that He who is Existence itself, whose very Essence is what it means “To Be”, offered himself up to death for our sins.

After the reading of the Passion Narrative, this Good Friday liturgy has three important elements, each of which is directly connected to the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross. First, we will pray the Solemn Intercessions, approaching the Father and daring to ask him to grant us what we ask, precisely because we have faith in his Son and in the sacrifice by which he reconciled us to God. Second, we will venerate the Cross, showing it a supreme reverence because of the Body of the One who used it to offer himself for our sake. If you notice, we priests will remove our shoes when we kiss the Cross, recognizing like Moses that we stand upon holy ground. Finally, we will receive in sacramental form the Body of Christ himself in the Eucharist, he who once was dead but now lives forever.

My friends, as we prepare to celebrate the Easter festivities once again, let us first pause and renew our faith today in the saving death of Jesus. Good Friday is our eternal Day of Atonement, the day on which, gathered in this temple, priests by our baptism, we utter with reverence and faith the Name which is above every name. Jesus the Nazorean was no mere man; he is the God-Man. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the One who Is, whose Essence is Existence itself – and also the one who submitted himself to betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and death, all for love of us, all to redeem us from our sin. With the fire of divine love, he hung upon the tree; but like the bush that did not burn away, he could not be consumed by Death. Rather he lives anew, and his death is the demise of Death itself for all who believe in him. So it is; so let us believe.

A Soliloquy on Suffering

At one time or another, every high school English student has to study the works of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Hamlet – these works and more are classics of our English language and great studies also in the human condition. When I was in high school, each year we studied a different one of the Bard’s plays, and we always had to memorize a soliloquy – that is, a speech by a character who is alone or speaking only to themselves. Each of them remains etched in my memory somewhere: Romeo contemplating the beauty of Juliet; Macbeth grappling with his murderous desires; Hamlet pondering the pros and cons of continuing to live with his burdens and griefs.

Looking back, I realize that we did this for a few reasons. Certainly, we came to appreciate Shakespeare’s masterful use of language. We appreciated his ability to gain insight into human nature. Most importantly, though, studying those soliloquies gave us an insight into the stories themselves, into the character’s circumstances and motivations at that moment of the plot. Understanding the thoughts and feelings of those characters at a critical moment in the story helped us to understand better what would happen next.

In our Gospel today, we hear Jesus give voice to his inner thoughts and feelings. Like a Shakespearean character, he considers the circumstances of his coming Passion and Death and responds with the sentiments in his heart. Jesus, though, is more than a character; he also speaks with the authority of the Author, with the knowledge of God himself who has constructed the story. Like a good teacher, Jesus wants his students – his disciples – to understand more fully what is playing out before them, not on the page but in real life.

We might include ourselves also among the intended audience of Jesus’s words. It’s pretty rare in the Gospels to get a glimpse into the inner life of Jesus, but in John’s Gospel, these long addresses become more frequent the closer Jesus draws to the Passion. As his “hour” approaches, the tension in the story builds until the climax of the drama at last unfolds in the road to Calvary. Jesus does not want his disciples, nor us, to mistake what is truly happening – to miss the meaning of the story before us. As terrible as the sequence of Jesus’s Passion and Death is, it is also fully the will of Father, the love of God for humanity on display. As Jesus says, it is the purpose for which he has come into the world, the hour for which he was sent.

At times, we might ask ourselves, “Why did the Lord need to die? Was it necessary?” St. Thomas Aquinas responds to that question in a few ways which might be of help to us. He says that we should not think of the Lord’s suffering as necessary, in the sense that God was forced to make things that way, or as if Jesus himself had no choice in the matter. God is all powerful and could have chosen to accomplish our salvation in some other way; and Jesus had a truly free will and so could have rejected what his Father called him to. And yet this was always God’s plan; Christ’s suffering was necessary therefore in the sense that it most perfectly accomplished the redemption he desired to work for us. The word the Church Fathers use is “fitting” – the Passion and Death of Jesus fittingly show us both the true result of our sinfulness and also the total obedience that Christ shows to his Father out of love for humanity.

We would do well to keep these considerations in mind as we prepare to enter into Holy Week, with Palm Sunday one week from today. But I think they also can be helpful for us in approaching our own sufferings, our own invitations into sharing in the mystery of the Lord’s Cross. One of the great advantages of our faith is that the Lord has taught us how to understand our suffering, but too many Christians today seem to have forgotten what that lesson is or to have rejected its value. What we need perhaps is to study again the Lord’s own suffering as a lens through which we can view our own.

Notice in the Gospel today that Jesus has a certain heavy-heartedness as he looks ahead to the Passion. It is not that he goes to his death unwillingly; far from it. But he says that his heart is troubled, and understandably so. Jesus is in the prime of his life, not ill, not weakened, only some 33 years of age; to face an impending death seems almost impossible to believe. This sadness – at the necessity of dying, at the rejection he has encountered – does not, however, in any way diminish the resolve he has to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by the Father. He has trust in his Father’s will, and that through his act of obedient suffering “the ruler of this world [Satan] will be driven out.” 

Anatoly Shumkin, The Humility of Christ (2013)

In our own lives, none of us likes to suffer, and rightfully so. Suffering always involves something bad; whether it is physical pain, or emotional distress, or the suffering of loss, in some way or another, we encounter something in suffering that we would rather avoid. Jesus shows that suffering can also be transformative. Remembering Christ on the Cross, we can unite our own sorrows to his, and so make them offerings to God as recompense for our sins. The suffering may be particularly challenging at times, but it is always only temporary. Like grains of wheat, we anticipate a future transformation, and we believe that what we endure here will allow us bear fruit for what awaits us. In the meantime, we embrace the various “deaths” that are the passageway to newness of life – death to our desires and our ambitions, death to our grievances and our hardness of heart, death to our attachments to things, and to people, and even to this earthly life. But suffering, and even death itself, do not have the final word; God has proven that in Christ as well.

Friends, soon we will celebrate again the most important mysteries of our faith, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. These events are the story of our salvation, something far deeper and richer than even Shakespeare, and thus they are worthy of our study and reflection. But they are also mysteries to be entered into, performed so to speak in our own lives. Jesus knows well the sorrows we face and the sufferings we endure, and he invites us to share in his Cross, so that we might have a share in the glory of his Resurrection. His words to us in the Gospel today teach us patience, inspire in us obedience, and most importantly encourage us in perseverance, so that at each moment we may seek to follow after him. May our own sufferings be for us a further step down the road of discipleship, closer to Calvary, but closer also to heaven, so that where he is, we may one day be.

Herein Is Love

When was the last time you had a truly meaningful conversation? They say that the average American talks somewhere between three and five hours a day, women on average a little bit more than men, children a little bit more than adults. If you add in the conversations we have in other forms, like texting and email, then surely those numbers go up even more.

Most of this communication is not what we would probably consider all that meaningful. It serves a purpose in the moment – an exchange of viewpoints or information, or just a chance to catch up with someone we know. But it is ephemeral; once it is over, it doesn’t stay with us and we don’t return to it. However, there are times in life when we find ourselves engaged in a conversation that can be truly meaningful, even life-changing.

In the Gospel today, a man named Nicodemus has a meaningful conversation with Jesus. A little context for you for the passage we heard: Nicodemus is a Pharisee, who has been impressed by Jesus’s teaching and his miracles. He comes to Jesus to discuss things with him further, but he comes to him at night, under the cover of darkness, afraid of what the other Pharisees might think of him taking Jesus seriously. Nicodemus is interested to find out what Jesus means when he says that we must be “born again”. He asks Jesus, "How is it possible for a person to be born twice?"

Visit of Nicodemus to Christ (1880) by John La Farge

What results is a conversation that is anything but ephemeral. In fact, St. John the Evangelist records their dialogue as one of the key exchanges of his Gospel account, an insight into the purpose behind Jesus’s mission. In short, Jesus tells Nicodemus that human beings are sinful and headed for destruction because of our sin; however, God loved us, despite our sinfulness, even to the point of sending his Son. Jesus refers to himself in the third person, directing Nicodemus’s attention to the sacrifice on the cross that he will undergo as a sign of the profound love of God and as the remedy for human sinfulness. It is through faith in him and in what he will do that human beings are born again and can enter into the presence of God.

We have reached the Fourth Sunday of Lent, more or less the midpoint of this season of renewal and purification. Each of our readings today speak to us about the same theme: God’s love for humanity. The first reading, from the Second Book of Chronicles, reminds us that his love for us persists, even when we have sinned. The second reading, from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, tells us that it is a free gift, not one which we earn but offered out of sheer grace. And the passage from John’s Gospel that we just looked at states that God’s love must be accepted in faith for it to be salvific, that is, to save us from eternal death.

The Church gives us this theme of God’s love midway through this season for two reasons: first, to remind us why we are in this penitential season and second, to encourage us to be renewed in our efforts. After about a month of Lent – and the more intensive fasting, prayer, and almsgiving that this season calls us to – it can be easy to forget why we are doing this, or perhaps to be discouraged if our efforts have been lacking in some way. Rather than focus on our shortcomings though, the Church bids us “Rejoice” – remember God’s everlasting love, offered freely to us as a gift, and one that, accepted with faith in Jesus, merits our eternal salvation.

The question, of course, is whether we take this encouragement – this invitation – to heart. Too often, when Jesus bids us to come and be renewed by the knowledge of God’s love, we are hesitant to accept. For one, we can’t overcome our doubts that he really means what he says: "that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," who took upon himself all of our sins and crucified them on the cross in order to give us life. We just fail in some way to really believe that that can be so. Others of us believe all of that in a half-hearted way, but it doesn’t really inspire within us anything in response; it fails to really ignite anything from us in return.

This was Nicodemus’s problem. The Church Fathers saw Nicodemus as a half-hearted disciple; he believed in Jesus, but he wanted to do so in secret only. He could have become as openly a follower of Christ as the Apostles, and yet the only time we see him again is after Jesus has died, when Nicodemus helps prepare his body for burial. We might say that Nicodemus is the first in a very long line of people, including many of us, who could be great followers of Jesus if only we weren’t so limited by what others might say in response.

What Nicodemus needed, and what we need too perhaps, especially at this point in Lent, is a reminder of the profound love of God. We’ve heard it in the readings, but we also must be convinced of it in our own hearts. The great writer C.S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, says that love is not so much something God does, but something that he is. This is seen most fully when we look at Jesus on the cross. He writes:

“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing… the buzzing cloud of flies about the Cross, the flayed back [of Jesus]…, the nails driven through…. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”

Lewis’s profound words remind us that God knew – before all time, from all eternity – that mankind would fall into sin, and so doom itself to death, and that to save it, he would send his Only Son, who also would be rejected, and who would be put to death in a terrible way. He knew all of that before he ever created a thing, before he ever said, “Let there be light…” He did it all anyway, because he loves us – because he loves you, personally, by name – with a love that is everlasting.

Friends, take a moment this week to have a meaningful conversation with God. Take a break from the busy grind of work or school, and get away for a little while, just yourself and the Lord. Speak to the Lord a bit about where you are at in your relationship with him, and let him speak to you. He went to the cross 2000 years ago out of love for you; with that same love, he desires to renew your spirit this day. In this Eucharist which we celebrate in a few moments, may we rush forward to meet the Lord, not with doubts or half-hearted conviction, but with confidence, with thanksgiving, and with rejoicing.