Holy Week, Good Friday
John 19:1-15
Then
Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. Tissot
The soldiers braided a crown of thorns,
put it on his head, threw a purple cloak around him, walked up to him, and
said, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and struck him in the face.
And again, Pilate went out to them and said, "Behold. Thus I bring him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him." And Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And Pilate said to them, "Behold, the man!" [or, Behold, this is Man!]
When the chief priests and the Temple attendants saw him, they shouted, "Crucify him, crucify him!" Then Pilate said, "Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him."
Then the Jewish leaders replied, "We have a law, and according to that law, he must die because he has made himself a Son of God."
When Pilate heard these
words, he was even more alarmed, and again he went into the courthouse and said
to Jesus, Tissot
"From where have you received your mission?" But Jesus gave
him no answer. Then Pilate said to him, "You will not speak with me? Do
you not know that I have the power to release you and also to crucify you?"
Jesus answered, "You would not have power over me unless it had been given to you on high. Therefore, the greater burden of destiny falls upon him who handed me over to you."
From then on, Pilate tried to set him free. But the people shouted, "If you release him, you are no longer a friend of Caesar, for everyone who makes himself a king is against Caesar."
When he heard these words, Pilate led Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat in the place called the Pavement, in Hebrew Gabbatha. It was the day of the preparation of the Passover Festival, about midday. And he said to the people, "Behold, this is your King." But they shouted, "Away with him, away with him, crucify him!"
Pilate asked them, "Shall I crucify your King?"
And the chief priests
answered, "We have no king but Caesar!"
Good Friday
April 15, 2022
John 19:1-15
seed. This seed may be hardly distinguishable from a speck of dirt or a stone. Yet, when it is buried in the earth, it reveals its inherent life. The seed swells and breaks apart. Its husk falls away, and from the heart of the seed, one shoot dives downward, rooting itself in the earth. A second sprout shoots upward toward light and air and warmth. In doing so, the form of the seed is transformed. The fact that it is alive makes it take on a different form.
The body of Christ Jesus was like a seed in its husk. It was lowered into the earth. The husk of its material covering fell away like ash. The true underlying body of the human form, imbued with superabundant vitality, swelled like a seed. Partly anchored in the earth, partly rising heavenward, the life in Him became a new kind of life, an undying human life.
He became at once the Old and the New: He restored the old original blueprint of the human being as an image and likeness of the Creator – for all humankind had been corrupted by Adam and Eve's succumbing to Lucifer's temptation, and we all subsequently fell into a bodily form which is imbued with matter, subject to death. This corrupted and corruptible body has been passed down to all of us through the generations.
During Holy Week, before His death, Christ Jesus tried to explain what He was about to do. After he had raised Lazarus from the dead, some Greeks came and asked to see Him. In their spring rites, they would bury an effigy of their god, Adonis, a god of life, death, and rebirth. They would celebrate his rebirth as spring's new vegetative growth.
And Jesus told them [the Greeks]: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be revealed in His spirit form. Yes, I tell you: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth, it remains as it is. But if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:23-24, Madsen rendering).
image and likeness, Christ also became our new ancestor. For, like the single wheat seed that swells and grows and ultimately forms multiple seeds for a new life, so too is Christ's immortal human form, a body not weighed down by material substance, capable of producing multiple copies. For each of us, there is a copy of His immortal human form that He is waiting to give us. To the extent that we join ourselves to Him, choose to take Him in, join our lives to His Life, we will ultimately receive a non-material bodily form which is a living copy of His immortal form, suffused with the timeless life of Him who carries and orders the life of the world.
The path of Christ is the path of descent, of grounding and
rooting in the earth, and at the same time an ascending one, of rising and
growing toward the light and warmth of the Father. It is a path through
death into the realm behind it, into the realm of abundant and overflowing
Life. It is a realm where God's original command, "Be fruitful and
multiply" (Genesis 9:7), is given a new meaning. For it is through His
dying that He, and we, attain Life. And that life multiplies itself as ongoing
life for the earth, and as immortal life for human beings. We pray that His
body, and His enlivening blood be for us the abundant overflowing life that
strengthens the forces that form us. Boos-Hamburger
An immortal spirit body is the gift that
He, in His love for us, is literally dying to give us.
In the words of Angelus Silesius:
The Godhead
is my sap; what in me greens and flowers
It is His healing Spirit who all the growth empowers.*
* Angelus Silesius, The Cherubinic Wanderer, p. 43
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