The Fifth
Sunday in Lent
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church Windsor NS,
April 2, 2006
Before Abraham was, I
am.
The cross is veiled. We see but only “in a glass darkly.” The
veiled crosses of Passiontide remind us of a discomforting and yet profound
truth. We know and yet do not know the full and real meaning of Christ’s
crucifixion. Indeed, it is the struggle of our lives to come to understand
more fully the significance of the Passion of Christ. Everything in the
ordered life of the Church, in the proclamation of the Gospel and in the
sacramental liturgy, in the pattern of the church year and especially
during Lent, points to a mystery which we see but do not yet fully
comprehend. At the heart of it all must be our willingness to enter into
the mystery of Christ’s passion in the hope that at last “[we] shall know
even as [we are] known.” But only through the intensity of the passion,
only through the mystery of Christ crucified, the mystery of sin and
salvation, the mystery of human redemption. “The Cross shines forth in
mystic glow” and we are illumined in its shadows.
For it, too, shall be said of us, as Jesus says to the mother of James and
John, that “ye know not what ye ask.” Such, after all, are the
disorders of our desires. We do not really know what we want. Even more,
it, too, shall be said of us what Jesus prays for on the cross, “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Such are the
consequences of the disorders of our desires – the agony of Christ’s
crucifixion and the agonizing tenderness of the first word of the Crucified
who prays for our forgiveness.
But such things can only be said of us if we enter into the way of the
passion, the way of the cross. We are precisely those who know not what we
ask and know not what we do. The veiled crosses of Passiontide signal the
dark ignorance of our minds and the dreadful darkness of our wills. We are
the crucifiers; Christ is the crucified. But what that means is only dimly
seen. The cross is veiled; present, but not clearly seen, an image hidden
in the dark purple of sin and repentance, an image concealed in the dark
purple of the royal divine. The veiled crosses of Passiontide suggest the
shadowland of sin and salvation, the shadowland of divine love and human
redemption.
Yet the veiled crosses of Passiontide reveal as much as they conceal. They
reveal the deeply conflicted and darkly contradictory nature of our humanity
and they point to the heavenly king who reigns supreme from the tree.
O Tree of grace, the conquering sign,
Which dost in royal purple shine,
Gone is thy shame; for, lo, each bough
Proclaims the Prince of Glory now.
The late sixth century bishop and poet, Venantius Fortunatus, has captured
the meaning of this day in his memorable hymn Vexilla Regis, which we
have already sung. A profound meditation upon the Passion of Christ, it
signals the paradox of glory – the Crucified is King. The shame is the
glory. And “by that death did life procure” “He reigns and
triumphs from the Tree” whose “favoured branches bore / the wealth
that did the world restore, / The priceless treasure, freely spent, / To pay
for man’s enfrancshisement.” The language of restoration and
restitution, the language of sacrifice and substitution all belongs to the
mystery of human redemption. In a way, by hymn and liturgy, all is
revealed.
And, yet, all is veiled. We don’t get it and even when we think we know
what we want – surely we want what is best for ourselves and for one
another, for our children and the children of the world – we discover that
we don’t really know what is best. How can what is best for our humanity be
realized through the grim horrors of a tortured and bloodied man nailed to a
cross of wood? How can dead wood become a living tree, “O Tree of grace”,
that restores us to paradise and even more, to heaven? Only through our
awareness of the darkness of our unknowing and the destruction that our
darkness causes. Such is part and parcel of the Passion. Such is part and
parcel of the deep mystery of the Gospel itself.
Today’s gospel in our Canadian Prayer Book is rather unique. It marks one
of the few times where a change has been made to the appointed readings
belonging to the Eucharistic lectionary of the Western Church. The more
ancient reading is from the 8th Chapter of The Gospel
according to St. John which tells the story of Christ’s encounter with
those who accuse him of two things: first, not being a true Jew; and,
secondly, having a demon. Jesus responds by proclaiming his identity with
the Father, God the Father, that is to say, and by proclaiming that in him
the promises to Abraham have their fulfillment. “Your father Abraham
rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” And when
pressed by his puzzled interlocutors, he makes the astounding statement,
“Before Abraham was, I am.” It is an outstanding proclamation of
Christ’s essential divinity.
The reaction signals the necessity and the heart-rending poignancy of the
Passion. “They took up stones to throw at him.” Our darkness
is made visible in the face of the light of Christ. The passage actually
appears between the two places in John’s Gospel where Jesus identifies
himself as “the light of the world.” And in each case there is
a connection to the dust of the earth, the dust wherein Jesus writes with
his finger on the ground and speaks words of forgiveness to the woman taken
in adultery, the dust out of which Jesus makes a healing poultice and
bestows sight upon a man who was born blind. Forgiveness and Glory. And in
response, there is only the darkness of animosity and the desire to
extinguish the light. Why? Because we do not understand what is clearly
stated. Because we will not open our hearts and our minds to see what God
wills for our good. How, then, will we know more fully and more clearly?
Only through the Passion of Christ who makes visible our sin and who makes
known God’s love. Such is the point of the Passion.
We have to enter into it year after year. It is really what the Church in
her liturgy and life constantly proclaims in each and every service of the
Holy Eucharist, namely, our participation in the Passion of Christ. He
suffers for us, to be sure, but to the end that we may know his love, the
love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that immense and
incommensurable love that we can never exhaust and never fully comprehend.
Only through the Passion in all of the grim horrors of our humanity in its
ceaseless and endless disarray, it seems, can we even begin to contemplate
“the breadth and length and depth and height” of that divine love
which sets all loves in order. In every service of the Holy Eucharist we
are reminded of the Passion of Christ and of the grace that is given that we
may participate in the Son’s thanksgiving to the Father. For that redeems
all our sins and makes us lovely even out of the unloveliness of our
ignorance and the darkness of our sin. Such is the purpose of Passiontide:
to reveal, as the hymn puts it, “the rule of heaven.”
“Before Abraham was, I am” is that rule and that reality. It points
to the infinite mercy of the grace of God in Jesus Christ; he is “the
perfect life”, the life that “was given.” It proclaims the
mystery that we can only enter into with the prayer that we may grow in
understanding. We go the way of the cross to behold the horror and the
glory.
Somehow the shadows of the purple-veiled crosses of Passiontide illuminate
the darkness of sin and show us the light of redemption. The Eternal Son of
the Everlasting Father wills to suffer for us; his passion, meaning his
suffering, signals the divine love which wills our redemption.
“Before Abraham was, I am.”
