Good Friday Homily

Behold The Wood Of The Cross

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Good Friday Homily

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Friday, March 29, 2024

The Persians are credited with inventing crucifixion between 300-400 BC. The Romans only perfected it for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4th century AD. At the time, the condemned person was meant to carry the cross beam and not the whole cross to the place of crucifixion. They were stripped naked, which was part of the torture and humiliation of the cross. In Romans times, crucifixion was applied mostly to slaves. It was a form of capital punishment where the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross, beam or stake and left to hang until death. There is archaeological evidence of the giant Roman nails that were used. Once the person is nailed to the cross, the excruciating pain “ex cruce” (pain from the cross, which is the worst kind of pain commences. Because as the crucified person labor to breathe, he would rock up and down on the crucified hands and feet. This would go on for hours or for days in some cases. And when the person died, the body was typically left to the elements and to the wild animals. As you already know, Jesus was crucified in a very public place near the city walls so that people coming and going would see him.

But the great question that has been asked up and down the centuries is why in the world do we gather every Good Friday and look intently at that moment when this horrific event happened? If people from the ancient world, using a time machine could see us here in a religious place gazing at a crucified person, they would think we have lost our minds. The answer is not far-fetched. From the lips of Jesus we hear, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14). The reference is to that story in the Book of the Numbers where the people of Israel are bitten by seraph serpents and many are dying. When Moses approached God and begged for mercy, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole and lift it up so that those who were bitten and look at it, they will be healed. Many centuries later, Jesus declared that he, the Son of Man, must be lifted up so that we who look at him are healed. 

Those who have wrestled with fear and anxieties and have been to counseling or therapy sessions or spiritual direction know that the answer to their problem is never found in denying it or repressing it or running away from it. It is rather in looking at them, and confronting them. In the Buddhist spiritual tradition, there is a phrase that says, “invite your fears to tea.” The phrase is a metaphor for acknowledging and confronting your fears. It is a way of facing your fears head-on and learning to deal with them in a healthy way. By looking at them, by not running away from them, you disempower them. On every Good Friday, we are invited to look at the cross of Jesus. As you intently look at it, what do you see? Everything that frightens us— physical suffering, bodily pain, dissolution of the body, humiliation, false accusation, the consequences of cruelty and hatred and institutional injustice and then death itself. We see in the cross everything that frightens us, everything that angers us and everything we try to keep at bay. As we behold the cross with rapt attention, not only is there this kind of psychological liberation in looking at our fears, we see the God who has accompanied us all the way down. In his Letter to the Philippians, St. Paul says, though he (Jesus) was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8). Look at it this way: The Son of God in all his glory came all the way down into our humiliation, into our physical suffering, into our fear of death etc. God came all the way down. That shows that even in our worst fears, we are accompanied by divine love. 

Rome used the cross as an instrument of terror. Rome maintained its power and dominance by terrifying the world with the cross. But the First Christians held the same cross up as a kind of taunt: you think that scares us? We can look right at it because we know that the love of God is more powerful than anything the world can throw at us. That’s why the First Christians began to use words like “redemption,” “liberation,” “salvation” in connection to that cross. It means that we’ve been bought back like those who have been enslaved. The ransom has been paid for us. We have been saved and healed by the power of the cross. That’s why today in the course of this liturgy, we are going to look at that terrible cross, in which all of our fears reside. And we are also going to reverence it as the place where our salvation was won and where God demonstrates his journey with us all the way down.