Good Friday: out of control?

[tree_and_leaf]

Parish Church does Good Friday in the form of some form of Three Hours Devotion, 12-3, with meditations, prayers, hymns, and a lot of time for silent prayer; then the liturgy of the Passion, with the passion according to John being sung by three voices plus choir (at which rate two chapters take a very long time...), veneration of the cross, and then communion with the reserved Sacrament from the previous night.

The meditations, in particular, really resonated with me. Incumbent focussed, not on the words from the Cross, but on a series of questions which Jesus asks in Mark's Gospel. There was a lot to think about in all of them, but I was most struck by the final one "Have you come out as against a robber?"†, which is what Jesus says to the soldiers who arrest him (though as Incumbent observed, Peter does a fairly convincing impression of a bandit, so you could say that maybe the soldiers had a point - though, on the other hand, if someone who can summon up twelve legions of angels at the snap of a finger wants you dead, I'm guessing a few swords probably wouldn't help). But the question is also directed at us, the readers.

"Have you come out as against a robber?" Do we see God as a robber? Are we afraid of God? Incumbent talked about the fear of God robbing us of control, of our sense that we are in charge of our destinies, safe within ourselves - locked away so that we can't be hurt (unfortunately, that sort of safety is indistinguishable from being dead, spiritually or emotionally). The paradox of the passion narrative is that Christ, God Himself, refuses to be in control, gives himself totally to us - and yet this is a free choice, and though we can put him in the grave, he won't stay there. We try to grab God, to control him, we think we have grasped him - and then we have only a dead body, and shortly thereafter, we have only a winding cloth. Christ is free, because he isn't playing the game of dominance and control - and he offers that freedom to us, if we will only stop trying to hold onto power over ourselves and other people. Which is easier said than done, because however often we realise it, we want to be in control; we can only keep trying to realise it. It has to be done everywhere in our lives, of course, but being conscious that we kneel at Communion and let someone else feed us isn't a bad start. (I have terrible issues with control in various aspects of myself, which stem largely from fear).

This fitted, obliquely, into the sermon, which was preached by another of the clergy, on sacrifice, and how atonement works: it's not Jesus appeasing an angry God, but God subverting the system of sacrifice and scapegoating (which can also be a mechanism of social control and oppression, as well as an attempt to control a frightening and apparently wrathful universe, and continues as such in our society, even though we don't believe in slitting people's throats in a liturgical context). It's not God that's hung up on vengeance, it's us. There is no wrath in God, as Julian of Norwich said; the angry, vengeful deity is our own shadow. God comes to us and wecan't bear him, turn him into sacrifice and scapegoat, but in God's death the curtain of the temple is torn open. The Holy of Holies is open to everyone, without needing to take in purifying blood; God's blood, shed once for all eternity, is enough and to spare.

...Gosh, I'm tired. Though not as tired as the various clergy, I imagine.


† According to Incumbent, the word in Gk translated as 'robber' or, in older translations, 'brigand' could also be translated 'pirate', which is one of those bits of trivia which aren't actually of any relevance to anything much, but will now be burnt indelibly on my mind.

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Incumbent talked about the fear of God robbing us of control, of our sense that we are in charge of our destinies, safe within ourselves - locked away so that we can't be hurt

That resonates with me. Thank you.

[tree_and_leaf]

You're welcome - as I say, it really resonated with me, too.