The Passers By
Matt 27:39 Mk 15:29 Luke 23:48 Phil 2:6-8 Lam 1:12 Ps 38:11 2cor 12:7
I’m not sure that I can justify why I chose to visit Auschwitz.
To spend a day picking my way amongst the concentration camps.
Listening to stories. Wondering what it must have been like.
Thinking about the cruelty. Marvelling at the bravery.
Then coming back to our lovely hotel in Cracow and choosing where we might go for a lovely evening meal.
I wondered what sort of person it takes to spend a day like that!
“Is it nothing to you all you who pass by….look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow”.
These were words written about the crumbling city of Jerusalem following its fall to the Babylonians. Looking over the place that was the heart of the people’s religious belief as well as their home and finding it to have become a shadow of its former self.
This is a cry from people who felt that loss deeply to those who cared little or nothing about it..
These words could be rightly translated into – it’s none of your business – to stand gawping at another’s misfortune – be off with you.
We tend to take those words and make them into a plaintive cry of exasperation towards for those who drift past Calvary and remained untouched by what they see there. Like those on a motorway – slowing down at the scene of an accident with no intention of stopping to help or of being affected by what goes on. Looking, wincing and thanking God it was not them.
Passers by are cold hearted people who will not cross to the other side of the road when one lies dying in a ditch – yet most of the passers by who come out to Calvary are rather different – they are not passive – they are people who feel let down by Jesus.
Matthew has them hurling insults at him.
In Mark they wag their heads furiously.
Luke has them standing afar – just watching and yet tellingly, when Jesus dies he has them returning to their homes beating their breasts as they go.
“My friends and my companions stand aloof from my plague and my kinsmen stand afar off”
John does not describe this crowd as passers by or bystanders – they are just called “the Jews”
Marks words are graphic
“And those that passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross! So also the Chief Priests mocked him to one another saying “He saved others he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the king of Israel come down from the cross that we may see and believe”
Wait though, did you hear that cry from one of the scribes “He saved others, he cannot save himself”
Such truth. Such tribute. Such understanding. Albeit so mockingly expressed.
He saved others he cannot save himself!
This I believe!
There are those who believe God can do anything, but I don’t hold to that for a second.
I do not believe that God can ever stop loving you…or even me.
Not even if the choice ends up being between life and death.
Catherine of Sienna writes:
“Nails were not enough to hold God and Man nailed and fastened to the cross , had not love held him there”
That’s it – love for you and me – holds him there!
Paul’s words are more formulaic but they come to the same place:
“Though he was in the form of God, He did not cling to equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
William Temple, like many others grappling with the relationship of love to power during the second world war wrote “the kingdom of God is absolute power controlled by perfect love”
I found myself captivated by a painting of Georges Cornelius when we visited a great gallery in Pont Aven some years ago. Most people moved quickly past it for it is not a pleasant sight.
The painting is called “The Baptism” and it has an old priest kneeling in prayer as a Mother holds her new born baby up to Jesus., but Jesus is dying on the cross and Jesus is reaching down in agony, pulling at the nails just to plant a little kiss on the baby’s forehead.
I stood transfixed by this scene – for rarely had I see the love I understand Christ to have for us, so starkly expressed.
(The picture is at the back of the church – if you want to glance at it)
He saved others. He cannot save himself.
But how must you and I live out the truth of that statement – if we are his body now.
I heard it once said that the closer you get to Jesus the less your own spiritual life will matter to you.
The closer you are conformed to his likeness – the less it will matter if you get a buzz from worship, that you are thanked for something you’ve done, that you gain recognition for your gifting – rather it is the giving up of your life for others that matters and that this be not done to get rid of guilt or out of obedience but rather because what we’ve heard is true
“the kingdom of God is absolute power controlled by perfect love”.
He summons up every sinew in his dying body to plant a kiss on the forehead of an infant.
Living out that is what took Jesus to the cross – we are not Christ, but still must ask ourselves – where will it take us?
The passers by had high hopes of Jesus and were left bitterly disappointed by Him.
What they wanted was another God from this one.
What they wanted was one who would come down from the cross and clear up the mess of the world.
Our prayers can fall into the trap of wanting a different God – trying to manipulate Him into the sort who is responsible for everything that happens. That He would come down and work miracles in the conditions we ourselves have created.
That passage from Lamentations can actually become the heart of our misplaced prayer – we cry to Him – Is it nothing to you? Is there any sorrow like my sorrow – how can you be a passer by God after all we have hoped for and steadfastly believed.
Jesus does make miracles though – he does not disappoint if you see it from the angle of love itself rather than loves action.
He makes miracle within. He comes to our weakness, to the heart of our prayerful cry and there he changes things.
Part of the prayer the Priest can make as they wash their hands before the Eucharistic Prayer contain these words
“Make me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me”.
Let perfect love have its way with me – even though God knows I’m scarcely capable of such a prayer let alone giving space for it to take effect.
But do you see, God’s grace gets its opportunity when we are weak, not when we pretend we are strong, nor yet when we accord God a strength that has little to do with cross shaped love
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”
Jesus says these words to Paul and to us and he does so because he has first known them as being about himself.
If only the passers by had waited a while instead of passing on quickly to the next fashion.
If only the church would wait with Christ for longer – to let things unfold.
If only we can bring ourselves to cry in a different tone of voice from that scribe
“He saved others, himself he cannot save”
Cry that to know ourselves on the very threshold of the kingdom for which the penitent thief prayed.
Words from Edward Shillito:
If we never have sought thee, we seek thee now:
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars:
We must have sight of thorn pricks on thy brow,
We must have thee, O Jesus of the scars
The heavens frighten us: they are too calm,
In all the universe we have no place.
Our wounds are hurting us, where is thy balm?
O Jesus, by thy scars we claim thy grace.
If when the doors are shut, Thou drawest near,
Only reveal those hands, that side of Thine:
We know today what wounds, we have no fear.
Show us thy scars, we know the countersign
The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak;
They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak.
And not a God has wounds BUT THOU ALONE!
RH 10.4.09