My Body Will Rest In Hope - Good Friday
So this is what happened to the best of us. All the hopes and expectations have been cut down. They cried ‘Hosanna’ last week; now they just cry. The one who healed the sick didn’t heal Himself. The one who gave sight to the blind couldn’t see where this was going to end. The One who raised Lazarus from death is now dead. No one was standing next to Mary telling her to ‘celebrate His life’ or to ‘try and keep His memory alive’. No one was consoling her by saying that Jesus was now ‘in a better place’ or that He would ‘always live in her heart.’ No, this whole thing ended up as one big mess.
The place was a garbage dump so no one had to clean it up anyway. The rain washed most of the ‘unpleasantness’ away. Most of the crowd grew tired of this ugly scene and a few of the Roman guard were there to make sure no one did anything “funny” with the dead preacher’s body. The sun was beginning to set and this long day was coming to the end.
We don’t like to leave it there, do we? We appreciate the Gospel account that the body was wrapped in clean white linen and laid in a spanking-new clean tomb. The two criminals who were executed with Jesus were probably not as fortunate as the Roman practice was to dump their remains and leave them for the scavengers. But we still cannot avoid the scene on Calvary. Michelangelo carved his Pieta to show it. Caravaggio’s dramatic deposition of Christ tries to dramatize it with dark hues and contrast. But no one here can really do more than try and imagine it. We stand wordless before the silent scene of Mary holding the dead Body of her Son.
And this cold, colorless image is why we are here. It is the body, no longer living, that is our salvation. Like the hecklers, we don’t like to see it. We prefer the serene Christ on a crucifix or a “resurrection cross” of a Savior popping out with nary a scratch.
The death of Jesus Christ is the death of His body. It is all He offered because it is total. On the cross, He is the sacrifice and the priest who offers it. Unable to physically move, He changes the course of eternity. What we see and celebrate today in symbol and image was not anything like that on Golgotha. The song of salvation was heard in the silence of His dead-quiet body.
Some religion, eh? This is a day of silence and emptiness. We commemorate the greatest defeat in human history. The Savior could not, or rather, did not save Himself. We stand in a reverent silence and are left with the stone-cold reality that the mission of Christ is over and has ended with such disaster.
But even as we hear words like that, something stirs from within us. No, Father, you’re wrong. Your preaching a message that is not true. You ask us to hold in our mind’s eye what Mary held in her arms. Fine, but we cannot leave it at that. If that’s all there is, then why are we here? Why do we waste our time with Calvary if that really is the end of the story? Your reaction is correct; your instincts are stirred by grace. And you have entered the misty wilderness of hope.
My body will lie in hope is a prayer from the Psalms that we pray on a day like this. There is something very deep within us that says the story does not end this way. Not for Jesus, not for us. The deeper the horror, the deeper the hope. No wonder all those images of Mary weeping while cradling her deceased Child almost make us yell to her that tears are understandable but hardly final. We see a dramatic crucifix and say “yes, but…”
Hope Is found not in the happy illusions of human superiority but in the lifeless body of the deathless One who chose to die for us. Our truest hope for ourselves while we exist in these bodies will be found in the body of Christ, offered and accepted on the Cross. When we tell Mary that her tears are short termed, we also tell ourselves that ours will have no long duration as well. We enter the pain of this moment because of the dark hours we all know. And by grace alone, we thereby enter the endless gory of the One whose death has brought hope in spite of despair.
And so we pray to our living God who has died in our humanity. We venerate the cross, the tool with which our heavenly homes were built. We receive the Sacrament of His body as we hold it as Mary once did on Calvary. And because we do, we hope. Today is Good Friday. That’s not ironic or sarcastic; that’s just accurate. In the scary reality of life and death, we find the greatest good. In His Body we are free to live forever in our own. In His shameful death we are freed from the shame of sin.
Today is a good day, a bright day. In the ugly tragedy of the Cross we find what the world refuses to look at. Like the sick or the troublesome, we want to put it way and hide it. We don’t want it near us to remind us.
But we know better. We know hope. And because we do, we adore Thee O Christ and we praise Thee; because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.