Every year there’s a new surprise.
Every year on Good Friday—which seems terribly named to me and ought to be called Bleak Friday, or Haunting Friday, or Be Silent & Remember Friday—I sit in the balcony of the campus chapel, behind a whopping oaken pillar, and I weep copiously at the sheer human pain and grace of the whole thing.
From the first moment, when the priest walks up the aisle and for once does not wander around behind the altar, but startlingly prostrates himself with his face hidden, his robe spread over him like the plumage of an enormous broken bird; to Christ murmuring, “I thirst!” and Peter ashamed by the fire, and poor Malchus bending down to pick up his ear; to the freighted moment when everyone kneels silently with the image of that actual broken, brave, exhausted young man dying seconds ago on a dark afternoon, the ceremony is the most emotionally naked and honest day of the Christian year.
It is the day we stare suffering in the face, the day we stare at the young man as he tumultuously was, not the remote legendary hero we so often reduce him to; and I am annually moved to tears by this communal honesty, by our crowded silence, by the creak and thud of our knees on the shining wooden floor of the chapel, by the shiver and ring of voices in the dark corners, as they tell the story again, for the millionth time in the long history of the churches that grew from that awful, obscure, epic moment.
And every year now, I know that there will be a line, a glance that catches me by surprise and hits me amidships. Last year there were two.
First, old prickly, thorny, testy, brilliant Isaiah: “. . . so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals. . . . There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. . . . Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth. . . . A grave was assigned him among the wicked . . . though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood” (Is 52:14—53:9).
I sat there, behind the huge oaken pillar, gaping just like the gaping kings in this tale from thousands of years ago because maybe, for the first time, I really heard what was being said. I heard it deep and true and piercing: He was us! He is us! Ugly and bruised and ignored, nothing in our appearance to occasion desire; familiar with pain, and held in low esteem; battered and tattered, and yet we do not complain, but rather forge ahead one step at a time. . . . That’s us! That’s the vast oceanic majority of us, who are neither twisted murderers nor perfect agents of love, but muddled mixes of greed and glory, sin and courage, reverence and ruin, laziness and light!
How apt and right and perfect that the creator, poured into the skin of a young, brown man during the reign of Gaius Octavius, would be neither handsome nor rich, charming nor muscular, famous nor wealthy; a regular Joe, a man you would never pick out of a crowd, although you might well finger him in a police lineup.
Adamant, inarguable, astonishing genius: us! As ragged and decent and testy and frightened and weary and thirsty and haunted and brave as any one of us is, or can be, daily. Not a superstar, not a hero, not a glorious shining being, but a thin, confusing, irascible young man, beaten by the cops and hung out to die. I sat there for long moments, as the Passion ended and the Veneration began, and I was moved, and I was grateful for the vision, and I expected none else, for one epiphany a day is a lot of epiphany. But then vision came to me, and I was grateful for it, for it set my heart to sing, and perhaps it will set yours ringing also.
A girl, maybe age seven; tall for her age, with plaited pigtails and a blue checkered dress; walked toward the cross with her mother behind her, carrying the baby. I watched them approach, wondering idly if the girl was just along with her mother out of curiosity, or if she would nod at the cross, or even perhaps bend and touch it, like everyone else; but then when her turn came she suddenly stepped forward eagerly, knelt, and wrapped her arms around the cross, and hugged it tight, as tight as she would her mother or father or brother, as tight as she would someone she loved and trusted with all her perfect unbroken heart, and I could see even from the balcony that her eyes were closed and her face was lit with a smile you could see from Saturn.
Maybe she knelt there transfixed and transported for six seconds, or eight, or 10, before she disentangled herself, jumped up, stepped aside, and waited for her mother, who held the baby with her left arm and touched the cross with her right. To me it seemed an hour, a year, that this sweet, holy, brilliant girl held that poor, bruised young man in her arms, and gave him her love, and sent me smiling back out into the light, my face shining and my heart singing; and now perhaps yours, too. And so, Amen!
