Behold Before the Tree: Homily for Good Friday 2018

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby,

he said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son!"

Then he said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!"

And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home.

(John 19:26-27)

The thunderous chaos of jeering spectators. I'm sure there were many reasons why people gathered around the three crosses that day. Some were bored, looking for entertainment, seeking a thrill; and watching the life drain from three crooks is more than enough rush to shake you from your doldrums. Some were greedy, hoping the soldiers might drop a scrap of leftover clothing as they divvied up the fringe benefits of their brutal trade. Some were down on their luck, feeling vulnerable and at the bottom of the world; and there's nothing to help you safeguard your dignity like finding someone you can point to as your inferior and tread underfoot. Some brought with them a scientific curiosity. What better way to study the impact of virtue on the dying process than by hanging holiness between a control group of twin terrorists, and carrying out the experiment?

Some were awe-struck, incredulous that a real live prophet had been brought from the wilds into captivity, that the stage had been set for an act of God. Some were incensed, betrayed, hungering and thirsting for vengeance – they had relied on this Jesus to free them from the Romans, but here he was in Roman custody on a Roman execution implement, and they might as well watch him meet the customary fate of disappointing non-deliverers. Some were exultant, delighted that a threat to their interests was being eliminated, gratified that the Romans were proving a useful tool for their own power play – and so they were here to gloat, here to rub it in, here to boast and vindicate themselves and the course they'd taken. What else had they come to behold?

And then there was a quartet there whose dull duty it was to flip the switch, administer the injection, monitor life signs 'til they stopped – a humdrum and thankless job, spiced up only by the creative flourishes they could invent to differentiate one routine crucifixion from the next. They were men of war by training, fierce, strong, courageous; perhaps they found their current assignment demeaning and stifling.

But another quartet stood mere feet, if that, from the spears and burnished armor of the first. For all their spatial proximity, they could not have been further from the soldiering life. The first quartet bulged with muscle and bristled with grit; they kept vigilant watch, lest anyone threatening approach too near the crosses and foil the end process of Roman justice. But this second quartet was no threat. They could not hope to spearhead any form of intervention. Just three women, ranging in age from their fifties to their late twenties, the soldiers may have guessed, and one beardless kid in his teens. That's how they must have looked to the guards. Only the most unthreatening devotees could be let close enough to watch the flies dance on the Messiah's bloodied chest.

Two voices in this threatless quartet, a pair of Marys, are named but textually dispensed with. From the vantage point of the cross, the focus narrows to the other two: a mother and a beloved disciple, mētēr and mathētēs, a woman and a man. Both dripping with frenzied grief. Both transfixed entirely, exclusively on what they love most in all the world. One sees the curious gift of heaven, a child she'd cradled in her arms, a boy she'd raised and found perfectly obedient and perfectly exasperating, a man she couldn't predict and whose potent vocation she found beyond direction, beyond domestication, beyond comprehension. The other sees a father and mentor he'd always longed for, who'd embraced and all but adopted him, who'd offered him friendship and closeness, who'd shared meals with him and taught him purpose and offered him the hot flesh over his beating heart as a resting-place in the weary hours. With this man and this woman before him, whose gaze was fixed on him, the Crucified had bonds like no other.

This man and this woman gazed up at the 'tree' – the gnarled wooden thing crafted into an instrument of death, stained with blood. And in the immortal eyes that looked back at them, maybe they reminded him of a memory so long buried in the mind divine. There stood a man and a woman, gazing up from the foot of a tree. Around them, not the shouts of crowds with cries for blood, but the chirping of birds with songs for food in due season. Not the barrenness of 'the skull,' but the fecundity of a garden. It was the beginning. It was the dawn of life, the prologue of a saga, the stirring of goodness and beauty and truth.

A man and a woman, gazing up at a tree. The wrong tree. A tree that looked so good. A tree that looked so very pretty. A tree that flashed and dazzled. A tree around which an entwined intruder hissed fatal deceit. They became ensnared by what was on the wrong tree. Faith beckoned them away, to the bounty given them in the wisdom of their Maker. Envy, pride, gluttony, lust, all beckoned them toward the wrong tree. Envy, to resent what had been withheld from them. Pride, to think themselves mature enough to handle the effect the fruit might have. Gluttony, to hanker after a bite too many. Lust, to be allured and entranced by the symmetry and shine. A man and a woman, gazing up at a tree, made theft of an object in place of faith and family.

Their gaze was soon lost from the tree. Their faith was in tatters. They could never gaze at each other again – not without being distracted by their own vulnerability, their own exposure; not without being distracted by the threat posed by the other, the utility offered by the other. A man saw a woman, and suddenly recognized that this 'flesh of his flesh' seemed a flesh no more his own – a flesh in competition with his. Challenged by their Creator, he could protect this woman's flesh as one flesh with his flesh – or he could sacrifice her flesh in a bid to save his own. He did the latter. She did the same. Man declared woman's, and woman declared man's, as 'other flesh,' a threat or a tool. And they would no more behold each other, lest they be beholden to each other.

From their example and their spiritual rot, their firstborn learned to be jealous if others were honored above him – they were 'other flesh,' rival flesh. This firstborn could never behold others – never see them as himself, never see them as icons of God, never see them as flowers of Eden to be tended. Wandering from the tree, our impulse has ever been to compete, to critique, to classify. My house before your house. My nation before your nation. My name before your name. My vision before your vision. My flesh before your flesh.

On the heels of this tawdry history, beneath the present darkness, a new man and new woman stand beneath a painful, bloody tree. But the right tree. The tree of life. This man and woman had long been different tribes; they had different histories, different genders, different ages, different socioeconomic brackets. But a man and a woman stood, gazing up at a tree. It was a new beginning. And they were told to behold – behold, not merely the God on the tree, but one another – to really see each other, not as flesh in competition, but as family in love. They cannot behold their God aright unless they learn to behold each other as a family of the new creation.

All we have heard so far, all the blessings contained in the first and second words from the cross, are startling, magnificent, overwhelming. At first glance, maybe this word looked small, looked personal, looked petty or provincial or insignificant. But this is the word that rewrites the garden. This is the word that rewrites Adam and Eve. This is the word that rewrites every marriage, every friendship, every church, every community. This is the word that breaks the hold of the wrong tree and teaches us to behold one another at the tree of life.

Let the woman behold. Let the man behold.

    Let the parent behold. Let the child behold.

Let every tribe and tongue behold every other, in the presence of the Christ crucified on a tree of life.

    Behold... and take one another as your own.