by Fr Fabian Dicom
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 30(31):2,6,12-13,15-17,25
Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42
Theme: Behold our Crucified Lord
Every time you sin, every time you do naughty things, ah…..you are driving the nail into Jesus. You are striking the hammer on the nail.
This is what I was told. I’m not telling you. This is what I was told many times when I was growing up. It may have come from a Catechism teacher, or a priest or a nun or even some adult who wanted to keep me on the straight and narrow path so that I will not misbehave. But even later in life, I heard this kind of thing, this sort of thing that some of the preachers preach about.
Now what are they actually trying to say? Now just bear with me. It is just my thinking and I ask you to stretch your imagination quite a bit, okay? So humour me. Try to picture this.
Now, do they mean that every time I sin or do something bad, my sin is going to travel back in time through some time delivery courier machine like the one by Emmet Doc Brown in Back to the Future. Now all the sins go back and there it goes 2,000 years and it hits the nail harder on Jesus back then.
Does that mean that? Which actually means the nailing of Jesus, this torture of Jesus, this humiliation of Jesus, this crucifixion of Jesus is still going on since there is still sin in my life. There is sin around me. There is still sin in the world. This also means the passion is still going on. Right?
But how can that be?
Now on the flip side of it, of this argument, of this kind of thinking, some smart aleck will come up and say this:
Since Jesus has already endured all the torture, all because of the sins, our sins, and I’ve not lived my life fully which means I still have some more sin, so I have no choice but to continue sinning. So what’s the point of praying? No hope!
Then what are we doing here?
Why are we celebrating even Easter, tomorrow?
Okay. I know that I am exaggerating this quite a bit but I just want to make a point. That this kind of thinking, this kind of teaching, this kind of understanding is totally, totally ridiculous. And this is the model, the model of the cross that has been offered and has been operated in many of our lives till today. And we struggle with it.
Now imagine what that did to me growing up as a child. And how that followed me into my adult years despite being told that God forgives, God loves, God cares for you. And I went through my life focusing on my sins, about how much I am hurting God every single time I do something wrong, fearing punishment from God, constantly guilty, constantly ashamed. And that was my preoccupation since I was quite naughty when I was young. And I know it is quite hard for you to imagine. Perasan pula ah?
But seriously, seriously. I hardly gave any space in my life for Jesus’ mercy, for Jesus’ love, for Jesus’ healing.
My dear brothers and sisters, that is definitely not the way to live a Christian life. This is not Christian at all! We may not be able to grasp Jesus’ passion and death completely. We cannot. It is really beyond us but we can get glimpses of it. You and I have experienced it. But it is not about sin and punishment. And if we just focus on that, then I would dare to say, desecrating and insulting his passion, his death and his resurrection.
Good Friday is not about us and what we have done to Jesus.
Good Friday is about Jesus and what he has done for us and keeps doing for us.
So instead of being preoccupied with what our sins are doing to Jesus, like a freed prisoner still not wanting to leave his prison cell, regretting all that he did and afraid to face the future, let us focus or should I say let us re-focus, let us do a reset. Let us do a realignment, complete reset and focus on Jesus, his passion, his suffering and death and what it has done and what it continues to do to us.
And we need to move beyond. I know. I mean today I got so many WhatsApp messages about you know with Jesus in the bloody state he was, you know the people going up and crying and feeling bad about it. Yes, that is true and our emotions, it gets us here, right here (heart). We feel and we imagine how can we do that to our Lord and Master. That is true!
We can’t be stuck there because his death and resurrection means much more than this. And we need to move beyond. The emotion gives us a jumpstart. We need to feel it before we can begin to grasp his death, his torture, his crucifixion.
I asked a friend of mine what does the Lord’s passion and death mean to her? Her reply was this. She said:
Fabian, for me, it is an opening, the door, the path, the direct link to God is open.
She went on to explain that in the Old Testament, the people of God carried out rituals and rights and had to follow the law and certain norms so as to earn God’s protection and blessings. Sounds a bit familiar.
God covered them. It was sort of based on their own efforts and work. But with Jesus death, salvation is won for us. Through what he did, he metaphorically opened the gates of heaven. Opened the gates of heaven and we know now that we have direct access to the Father who sustains you and me by His grace.
Here is Jesus. It is not our own efforts. In Jesus it is not our own efforts and work that saves us. It is the work of Jesus. His effort that saves. It is God’s initiative and not ours. And it is totally, totally unmerited and unconditional. Even if we feel we don’t deserve it, you have it. You have it.
So in today’s Passion Narrative, I want to offer you a way of looking at it. One small little way. Let us look at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross (John 19:30). Let us look at that in tandem with what the verses that followed it in John 19:31-35.
In John 19:30 we hear that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. And that is the first point – the bowing of the head was a deliberate action. The image is of Jesus looking down in the direction of the assembled group, the people there. And now that the hour of his glorification has come, he gives the spirit to his followers. The nucleus of the church.
In John 7:37-39, let me just read this to you:-
Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink, Jesus sad. Whoever believes in me as scripture said, rivers of Living water will flow from within them.
By this he meant (Verse 39), the spirit whom those who believed in him were later to receive up to that time, the spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified. So in other words, Jesus promised there that when he was glorified, those who believed in him would receive the spirit. His last breath that we acknowledge and after the last breath we all knelt just now, His last breath was the outpouring of the lifegiving Spirit. His spirit.
That is the beginning of Pentecost, actually. Think about it.
And what follows right after his death? The words in the passion reading, if you remember, the stress is just after his death. They said:
His leg was not broken.
The not breaking of Jesus’ leg, that was the stress. Followed by the flow of blood and water from his side when they pierced him with a lance.
What does this mean? This is the true Passover Lamb. Not one bone of Jesus was broken. In this manner, Saint John points to Jesus as a true Passover Lamb today and makes an illusion to the Passover Lamb which was the means of salvation for the Israelites. And if you see Exodus 12:46, the words say:
It must be eaten inside the house. Take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones.
That is the Passover Lamb. And the Israelites know that because it was significant in their liberation from the land of slavery.
The second point is for John, this mysterious flow from the side of the dead Lord would symbolise two chief sacraments:
The Sacraments of the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Baptism.
The water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist are now here linked with a Cross.
Now you have to understand to whom John was writing, to his community 70-80 years after Jesus. So Jesus was absent from John’s community but nonetheless he is telling them he is present in spirit. He is present in their baptism. He is present in the Eucharist.
The community of John is urged to believe this and take it to heart. While the blood and water flow from the dead Jesus, the drama of the Cross does not end in death but in the flow of life that comes from death. The death of Jesus on the cross is the beginning of Christian life.
The death of Jesus on the cross is the beginning of our Christian life. This is the focus.
So the message is for us today, 2,000 years later, that our life is linked to the Cross every day of our lives. If the Spirit is given, the blood and water signifying baptism and the Eucharist, we are connected to the Cross. We are linked to the Cross intimately.
We have received the Spirit of Jesus who dwells in us, uniting us to God. We have received the Sacrament of Baptism and continue to receive the Eucharist which comes from the water and blood of Good Friday. Through them, we are transformed into the body of the Lord.
This is our focus, not what I said just earlier in my homily. And all this is because of just one thing: that he loves you and me unconditionally.
We were made to be saved. How do we even, how do you and I even, make sense of this?
Today I just suggest this to you. No need to do anything. Just be still and to ponder and wonder in silent contemplation. This would be our best response to the Cross of Good Friday.
Click below to listen to homily and watch video:-
Click to live-stream Mass on 29 March 2024