Exultation of the Cross
Behold the Man: The Cross and Our Shared Criminality
Homily on the Passion and the Cross
I Corinthians 1:18-24; St. John 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30-35
Christ was crucified among criminals, a mirror of our own sinfulness and complicity in His Passion. Yet like the repentant theif, we are invited to turn to Him in humility, behold His mercy, and enter the Kingdom with the New Adam who reveals true humanity. Enjoy the show!
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Our Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, was condemned and put on a cross to die in the midst of criminals. Not just the obvious criminals, such as the thieves on his right and his left, but he was surrounded by them. For the entire world had been given over to sin. The religious authorities, the ones who knew the law and the prophets, and should have been the first to support him, were certainly criminal. They “assembled together… unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtlety and kill him.” (Matthew 26:3-4). They were jealous of Jesus, seeing how “the world is gone after him.” (John 12:9). They did not want a trial; they wanted his death. Remember that when the good and law-abiding man, Nicodemus, called them on this and suggested to them that Jesus be brought before the court for a hearing, saying, “Does our law judge any man, before it hears him, and know what he does?” They mocked Nicodemus, saying, “Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet.” They were not interested in the Law or the Truth or even the facts; they were preserving their own comfort and power, and were willing to break the law and commit murder (deicide!) to protect it. They were criminals.
Nor were they the only criminals. Think also of Judas, who participated in their perfidy by betraying his alleged friend and teacher for thirty pieces of silver. And then there was the entire crowd who came out, and in their own criminality, chose the convicted criminal Barabbas over Christ. As St. Nikolai Velimirovic puts it; “God or a criminal? And the criminals choose the criminal.”
Yes, Christ was surrounded by criminals. But before we condemn them, let’s remember one of the first rules of biblical interpretation; when the scriptures speak of bad men, be they the scribes and pharisees, Judas, the Jewish people, or even common criminals, we are to think not just of them, but how it is that we are like them.
In our fallenness, it is easy to see the criminality of others, especially those with whom we disagree or are from other Babelic tribes than our own. But so often their crimes are not obvious because they are so heinous, but because they have been magnified by the problems with our vision – we can only see darkness when our eyes are full of darkness and it is hard to see anything objectively when we have giant honking logs sticking out of our eye-sockets. When tempted by such judgment, let us remember Christ, draw in the sand and say, “Let he who is without sin, throw the first stone.”
Yes, we are all criminals of the sort that participated in the passion of our God; petty, jealous, riotous, scheming – it’s all there in our hearts and on our lives for everyone to see. We are the criminals of this story. All of us have sinned against God and against His Way.
But there was one criminal who stepped out of his sin and the propaganda of the devil, and repented. He accepted that he had earned his suffering. Again, paraphrasing St. Nikolai; blessed is the criminal who, in the midst of his very real agony, does not lash out in condemnation of the other criminals but rather recognizes that he has earned his cross because of his sins. The resulting clarity then allows him to see the God-man in his midst, repent, beg for God’s mercy, and then find himself in Paradise with his saviour. We quote this saint every time we take communion: “Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom”. We imitate his words, but do we imitate the deep transformation that allowed him, while feeling such pain, to say them?
And now that we have looked at the crowds of the scene described in today’s Gospel, let us look to Christ. Right before today’s reading, Pilate had brought our Lord out before the people after he had been beaten and scourged and had a crown of thorns put on his head and had said, “Behold the man!”.
Yes, let us behold the man. For Jesus was both fully God and fully man. And His humanity had brought Him immense agony. Earlier, we saw Him as a man when He was an infant in a cave, and when He and his family fled to Egypt, and when He was hungry and thirsty and had no place to lay his head. Of course we also saw Him as God, walking on water, quelling storms, healing the sick, and multiplying loaves. But at no time was his humanity more on display than from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross. First, sweat poured from his head like blood because of anguish, and then that blood was joined by more from the lashes and the crown and the nails. Jesus in the Garden was tormented; as man he knew pain and was expecting more – and as God He had ordained this as the path to the salvation of the world. St. Nikolai writes; “these two were in conflict and had to be brought into accord.” And so the man-mind and will went from the tortured; “if Thou be willing remove this up from Me” to the submissive “nevertheless, not My will, but Thine, be done.” And when He did this, He acquired a peace that could not be broken by unjust accusations, or blasphemies, or physical pain.
Yes, “Behold the Man”! Behold the sort of man that God had in mind when he first formed Adam. A man obedient to God and willing to do everything so that some might be saved. Think of His dignity as He went to His death. Not only did He avoid grumbling and condemnations, “He worked for the good of all to His dying breath.” (SNV, 201) He desired good even in the midst of the pain of crucifixion, even in the midst of the most supreme injustice, and even in the midst of those who reviled Him. As St. Luke records, He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Do we see the charity? Do we see the love? Are we not drawn to imitate Him in His magnanimity? Rather than throwing their sins against their teeth and shouting it out to God for vengeance, He was merciful toward them. For even if the criminals who assaulted Him used words to justify their blasphemy, they “knew not what they did.”
“Behold the Man.”
Are we men? Are we willing to imitate the Ur-Man, the New Adam; the very definition of what it means to be a man?
Can we be charitable in our pain? Can we look to the salvation or others from the depths of our despair?
And if this is, at least for now, beyond our reach, let us then imitate the one at his side, and focus not on the sins of others, but on our own, and turn to God in repentance, crying;
“Remember me, Lord, in Thy Kingdom.”
