On Solitude and Solidarity

"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58, NIV)

In crisis do we see humanity at its worst. On a daily basis, we have seen much of the COVID-19 fear and fatigue in response to relentless news and government measures to date and for months to come. For some, it has brought about an upsetting level of upheavals in life including loss of job, family and loved ones. Others suffer from social isolation in very real ways. At times, I am exasperated at how much better we can or should be. Perhaps we have all seen enough of behaviours driven by self-interest on a national and international scale, which manifest themselves sometimes in a disappointing lack of basic human decency in community, personal lives, workplace practices and the mass reaction of utter panic (some are simply unwarranted).

Yet at times, we also see glimpses of humanity at its best. Instead of self-interest, we see self-deprivation for the good of others. Our frontline fighters continue to battle on, in wards and intensive care units, to save patients in public and private hospitals. Beautiful tales of love, compassion and kindness are also not lost, least amongst some churches and communities, even when the church doors are firmly closed. Frankly, the church is never about its building but the body of Christ and us, who are members in the body of Christ.

And Easter is a true reminder of that. Whilst there are no gatherings to recall the fear and foreboding in the Son of Man's last hours alone on the cross or to celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God, perhaps and rightly so, the solemn solitude and solidarity of Easter 2020 should be remembered in our individual psyche as to what the passion narratives actually tell us if we delve deeper. From Christ's triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we saw the countdown to calvery in six days that culminated in Christ's death, desolation and deprivation on the Friday in the synoptists of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. 

I have disliked the name "Good Friday" because there is nothing good about the Friday that Jesus, on the cross, breathed his last as the Son of Man. In Old English, the day was called "Long Friday" (Langa frigedæg), and this term was adopted and is still used in Scandinavian languages and Finnish. In Latin, the name used by the Catholic Church until 1955 was Feria sexta in Parasceve ("Friday of Preparation [for the Sabbath]"). In the 1955 reform of Holy Week, it was renamed Feria sexta in Passione et Morte Domini ("Friday of the Passion and Death of the Lord"), and in the new rite introduced in 1970, shortened to Feria sexta in Passione Domini ("Friday of the Passion of the Lord"). The word Passion is the short final period in the life of Christ and derived from the Latin verb patior, passus sum, which means "to suffer, bear, endure".

And the Passion narratives tell of a man who was welcomed by the great crowd that spread the palm branches in front of him as he rode into Jerusalem to celebrate a royal King of Israel on a donkey in fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy, and who, six days later, was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities on the cross labelled the King of the Jews, in fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy. 

This very man was alone in agony at the garden of Gethsemane in the Mount of Olives after the last supper at the upper room. The day of Unleavened Bread marked when the Passover victims or sacrifices were killed according to the calendar of Jesus' time as some such as Leon Morris suggested in Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. As his soul was "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Mark 14:32, NIV), Jesus knelt down and prayed alone to the Father that "if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39, NIV). In Luke's gospel, we get a glimpse of Jesus "being in anguish, prayed more earnestly and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:39, NIV). And so the Son of Man, who has nowhere to lay his head in this world, prayed alone and was worn out by grief whilst his disciples that followed him simply could not stay awake let alone to truly understand the personal trial of Christ on that sorrowful night. As the cup in the Old Testament has associations of death, suffering and the wrath of God, it was no easy task to which Jesus shall go forth, alone, to the cross. Yet, his prayers centered on the Father's will rather than his own so that God's will may be done and not his will to be spared of what was to come. Frédéric Louis Godet sees this incident with significance for it, amongst many things, differentiates the sacrifice of the freely consenting Jesus from those of sacrificed animals who had no say in the matter. According to Godet, "At Gethsemane, Jesus did not drink the cup but he consented to drink it." A real internal battle was fought there where in true human agony, Jesus, the only person who knew what was to come, did not flee from or forsake the path on which he, and him alone, proceeded.

This is a man, passed over by Judas the Iscariot, disowned three times by Peter, and deserted by all other followers who fled and took flight from him in the moment that Jesus went to the cross alone so that the scriptures must be fulfilled (Mark 14:49, NIV).  And it was on the cross, dying by crucifixion, and often those who were crucified would die by asphyxiation whilst trying to pull oneself up in order to breathe against the gravity of one's own bleeding body through nailed wrists and feet, did Christ cry out "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani", knowing why. In affliction and abandonment, the Son of Man cried out to the Father, “my God, my God, why have you foresaken me" because Christ was human, even though he knew why he must be forsaken by God so the curtain of the temple can be torn in two, so that we can have a direct relationship with God the Father, and so that our sins can be wiped clean by the only innocent man who ever lived and died for us, who cried out in despair and direliction from the worst psychological and physical suffering that there can ever be because he is man, albeit the son of God. In addition to the tormenting and torturous penalty of crucifixion that was known and intended as the cruelest capital punishment at the time, the death of Christ on the cross is one in which after mockery on a man and messiah who performed miracles to save multitudes, he was forsaken by his people, his disciples, his very own Father in which God made him to be sin for us. He was alone, alienated and in the darkest hours, abandoned. 

Yet, in Easter there is hope. Christ is risen and he is risen indeed on Easter (also called Pascha in Greek and Latin or the Resurrection Sunday). So Easter is also about hope because "He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that free from sins, we might live for righteousness" as "by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24).  Just as the Pharisees, Sanhedrin, Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate plotted against Christ and his rise at the time, perceived as a threat to their political and religious rule that may lead to unrest and uprising, ironically, it is in Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection do we see the most powerful Christian message from God and ever since, the widespread message of Christ that has become truly worldwide. 

These 'kingly' authorities which represented law, religion and governance at the time were a stark contrast to Christ, who, as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city six days before the coss, wept over it.  As Jesus said to a city of his own people upon his triumphal entry that marked the beginning of his Passion, "if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace - but now it is hidden from your eyes...because you did not recognise the time of God's coming to you." (Luke 10:42-43). It is against a backdrop of the joy in the unknowing crowd that Jesus wept and lamented lost opportunity. The Jerusalemites did not know the things that make for peace, which in the Hebrew understanding of peace, lies its emphasis on peace with God, the right relationship between the creature and the creator as a necessary ingredient in the true peace of Shalom (שָׁלוֹם ). It was this that the men of Jerusalem had failed to come to know and their failure to get to grips with the message of God was now final for "nation will rise aginst nation and kingdom against kingdom" (Luke 21:10). Yet, Christ died due to and rose for precisely the people like the Jerusalemites and us. This is because "at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)

And there is no greater hope to this broken world than this.

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