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Via Crucis Via Lucis
by The Rev. Canon R. Craig Smalley
Above: Resurrected Christ by Matthias Grünewald
Isenhiem Altar Piece, 16th Century
Year C, Palm Sunday, Luke 22:14-23-56
March 28, 2010
unedited
There is a little stone chapel sitting on Middle Street, on Sullivan's Island. The Church of the Holy Cross, this tiny chapel, has an inscription in Latin above the entrance - Via Crucis Via Lucis - “the way of the cross is the way of light.”
Clearly that is a faith statement. From the accounts of the people of Jesus' day, from the description of the crucifixion in the scriptures, through the research and reenactments in film, the cross seems anything but the way of light. It seems all darkness. Humanity revealed in all of its vindictiveness and brutality, shortsightedness, self-centeredness, in all of its darkness instead of light.
Jesus is sold out, betrayed by one of his closest friends for pocket change, the money is skimmed from the temple treasury and paid to Judas by the religious leaders, and the courts, in Pontius Pilate, are willing to let an innocent man be killed in order to quiet the crowd and keep himself out of trouble with his boss. The people that he has come to deliver call for his death and his closest friends, who pledged their unyielding support, even unto death, have deserted him, denied him, and fled to the dark places of their own construction- places of shame, guilt, and despair. The authorities beat him, the people mock his sacrifice for them, and even the earth itself turns dark, outwardly matching the inward reality of the human heart and the events of the day. How can the way of the cross ever be called the way of light, or life, or anything good?
Through Jesus willingly walking through darkness a great light has shined.
Here we are again, entering Holy Week, preparing to end these 40 days of Lent and celebrate again the victory of our Lord over the powers of sin and death through His willing sacrifice, through His cross and atoning blood shed for us, defeating death and dying our death as a substitute for us that we might have light and life. However, before we arrive we must travel through Jerusalem, through Golgotha, the place of the skull, the place of the cross of Jesus.
This is very much about death, but it is also about life because without his death we would not have life.
Where are the dark places of your life? Where you desperately need light to shine in your life, in the lives of those you love? Where are the places of despair, devoid of hope? We see today that there is no such place beyond Jesus' ability to reach. One of the truest and most moving statements I have heard was spoken by a friend of mine relating to this. Speaking of a particular struggle of sin and shame and weakness, he said, “I went for years as a Christian somehow failing to recognize that the power of Jesus' blood had the ability to reach that area of my life too.”
There are plenty of places that are too deep or dark for you and me to fix, to bound and enslaved, but we see not only is there one who is willing to go there, but He has traveled through there and back again. He went down into the darkness in order to give us an unmerited light.
In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis offers some helpful insights for understanding the unfathomable reality of Christ's incarnation and his passion for you and me:
“In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity…But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping and precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour too.”
The ooze and slime and old decay are the world and its creatures subject to sin. Jesus is the strong man, the diver who stoops beneath the burden to lift us, who dives to the depths to bring us up into the light. The most amazing part is that we are the dripping precious things that he went down to recover.
This portion of Philippians read today is believed by many to be a hymn sung by early Christians to commemorate and celebrate the incarnation of the Son of God. It is called a Christological gem, a theological diamond, that sparkles and in a brief, yet extraordinarily profound way describes the condescension of the second person of the Trinity to be born, to live, and to die in human form to provide redemption for fallen mankind.
I pray that this gem, this light and hope will shine in your life. It was not an accident that Jesus bowed beneath the burdens of the sins of the whole world. He stripped himself that we might be clothed in His righteousness. He was not unknowingly caught up in a terrible escalation of injustice and tragedy. From the very beginning he came for the cross, made his way resolutely toward it. He came down into darkness to rescue the precious thing trapped in darkness, to bring us into light and life.
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