Apr 05 | The Sixth Station: Death

What a great scandal we Christians proclaim. How is this possible? In our records of the time, we can find mocking letters from Romans, ridiculing this ragtag group of miscreants who worshiped a god who died an embarrassing death as a convicted felon. This naked and bleeding man, who cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” pierced and crowned with thorns, is our god? We even say this death is “good news!” Something must be terribly wrong here.

As we gaze at the cross we are not only looking at yet another chapter in the book of injustice. We are looking at the beginning of the most amazing shift in history we can imagine. We are not only looking at the unfolding of thousands of years’ worth of human history and events. We are looking at the voluntary disgracing of the source of life itself. The force that moved stars, formed earth, that breathed life into chaos before time began, is before us, having willingly given up amazing power in exchange for pain and death – all for love. This love is beautiful but also frightful in its fierceness. This love refuses to let us go in all of our destructive hatred and fear. This love says, “Show me what it is to live in the world I have given you. Give me all of your hurt and anger and pain and fear and let me experience it. I want to know you more deeply than you can know yourself. You can give me your worst and I will only accept. And after you have given me your worst, I shall gift to you my best. I shall gift to you my everything.”

It is a most scandalous love. Mystics like Julian of Norwich, Richard Rölle, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross wrote ecstatic volumes to its beauty and power. Everything – and nothing – can be said of this love. And we know this love not only because of the surrender to human suffering, but because of the morning that Scripture tells us awaits, the morning that undoes all death and sin and tears, if we only have faith that the sun will rise again.