March 8, 2023
Image: “The Scream” – one of four versions painted by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. (https://www.npr.org/2012/05/02/151706441/scream-still-echoes-after-more-than-a-century)
In Worth, a 2020 movie (Netflix) that recounts the story of Kenneth Feinberg, the Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund in the USA, there is a compelling movement from a cold compensation formula towards a humane response to the victims of the terror attacks of 9/11, largely due to intense lobbying by Charles Wolf who emerged as a leader amongst the victims’ families. Whilst the Al Qaeda terrorists acted out their misplaced vengeance against everything American and Western, the suffering fell disproportionately on the nearly 3000 who died in the WTC, at the Pentagon and of course the luckless passengers of those murder-suicide flights. The movie delves into the fine weighing of what is just compensation to the families of the many victims, asking the question: What is (a) life worth?
The Lenten readings for Wednesday March 8th, 2023 share an overwhelming theme of judgement and justice. In Romans 1:28 - 2:11 we read that God’s wrath is set against all evil and that humans are the objects of His wrath for our participation in the rebellion against Him. As a result, God has given our race over to our own wickedness and the evidence for that is all around us – 9/11 is sadly not even the worst, and certainly not the last, example. St. Paul continues (addressing all people):
5 But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgement will be revealed. 6 For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: 7 to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. 9 There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no partiality.
In a passage from Jeremiah 18:18-20, the prophet laments the abuse he is receiving from the Jerusalemites whom he had faithfully represented before Yahweh, seeking to deflect the wrath they so richly deserved. He asks:
20 Is evil a recompense for good? Yet they have dug a pit for my life.
However, Jeremiah’s and all the prophet’s legitimate laments pale into insignificance in comparison to the injustice that our Lord Jesus endured at the hand of his own creatures, in his suffering and death on Golgotha. Surely only the words of his ancestor David express adequate emotions, so let us turn to the Psalm set for today, Psalm 31):
To the leader. A Psalm of David.
1 In you, O Lord, I seek
refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me.
2 Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily.
Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.
3 You are indeed my rock and my fortress;
for your name’s sake lead me and guide me,
4 take me out of the net that is hidden for me,
for you are my refuge.
5 Into your
hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.
This last verse includes some of the very words that our Lord Jesus cried out before dying for the redemption of humanity, the last of the seven sayings of our Saviour on the cross, as recounted in Luke 23:
46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.
When I read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s predictions of his passion, for example as in the reading from Matthew 20 set for today:
18 ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; 19 then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’
I find them emphasizing our Lord’s divinity: the triumphant Christ, who willingly subjects Himself to the denigration of arrest, mockery and crucifixion but triumphs over all this in his resurrection. But in the word from the cross just cited, I am profoundly moved by the humanity of Jesus. As a young boy in the synagogue schools, He would have committed large portions of Scripture to memory, including much of the Book of Psalms. Whilst surely accepting the testimony of St. Peter in 1 Peter 2 regarding Jesus that:
23 When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.
In his intense agony on the cross, as a suffering human, I sense that Jesus was drawing for strength on his memorized Scripture, reciting whole passages such as this psalm of David, which continues:
13 For I hear the whispering of many — terror all around!— as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.
14 But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’
15 My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.
16 Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.
17 Do not let me be put to shame, O Lord, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol.
18 Let the lying lips be stilled that speak insolently against the righteous with pride and contempt.
19 O how abundant is your goodness that you have laid up for those who fear you, and accomplished for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of everyone!
20 In the shelter of your presence you hide them from human plots; you hold them safe under your shelter from contentious tongues.
21 Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was beset as a city under siege.
22 I had said in my alarm, ‘I am driven far from your sight.’ But you heard my supplications when I cried out to you for help.
23 Love the Lord, all you his saints. The Lord preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.
24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.
Indeed, by way of such powerful words of internalized Scripture, Jesus entrusted himself to his Father – in the sure conviction that Got the Father judges justly!
- René Boeré
Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross. Hob. XX:2: "In deine Händ, o Herr, empfehl' ich meinen Geist" · Nikolaus Harnoncourt. (Luke 23.46)
Bible quotations are all from the NRSVA.
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