Yesterday evening we reflected on the last great gesture of Jesus to his disciples, which was to wash their feet. We reflected on how Peter was shocked by this, because it challenged his worldly wisdom. In the world all is not always what it appears to be. Acts of service may say more about the needs of those who perform the service than about those who receive them, or they may reinforce relationships based on inequality and subservience. We reflected on how Peter’s worldly wisdom and culture prevented him from seeing Jesus’ gesture for what it really was, a most profound act of love and friendship. If Peter could not see what Jesus was doing when he washed his feet, how would he see his crucifixion?
What did the other people mentioned in the gospel story see? For the Jews who bayed for Jesus’ death, they saw the end of a dangerous threat. Jesus threatened their religion. He threatened, they thought, their precarious existence under the Romans. What did the disciples see? The tragic end of their hopes for a better world, perhaps. What did Pilate see? An innocent man whose death he connived with, in order to safeguard his political position. What did the woman see? A terrible injustice which they were powerless to prevent.
St John, whose gospel we have just heard, sees the foot washing and the crucifixion as two aspects of a seamless garment that is the life and death of Jesus. As Jesus lived, so he died. As he died, so he lived. Jesus’ life and death together reveal the love of God the Father for us, made physical, in the body of Christ – Christ, who gave himself for us in humble service, and died for us on the Cross.
So St John looks at the cross and sees in the crucifixion a double glorification. The cross reveals the glory of God. It takes the veil, so to speak, off the unseen God and reveals Him to be a God of love, present among us, loving us without conditions to the utmost limit. St John also sees the cross too as the glorification of Jesus; in other words there is more to the cross than what we see with our eyes. The cross reveals Jesus to be the eternal Son of God who has carried out his Father’s mission of love to its perfection.
But why did John see the Cross as a glorification? Let’s consider for a moment the last words of Jesus. They are recorded differently in each gospel, but what is common to every gospel is that his last words were a prayer. In Mark’s Passion last Sunday we listened to Jesus saying, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ This sounds like a cry of despair. Some of those standing near the cross took it as a call for Elijah. But in reality Jesus was praying the words of Psalm 22, a great prayer of hope in God to deliver him from death.
In John’s version Jesus’ final words are, ‘It is accomplished – finished, ended, fulfilled’. Again, these could be misunderstood, unless we bear in mind that Jesus saw his whole life as accomplishing the mission of the Father to reveal his love and not lose anyone who was given to him. Reading through John’s gospel we see that between Jesus and the Father there is a tremendous unity of purpose – Son and Father working together to establish friendship between God and us, the friendship that is eternal life. On the cross that unity of purpose is brought to its fruition. The final words of Jesus are the final words of a life offered totally to God.
So what we see when we look on the cross is not some tragedy, some terrible mistake – the tragic story of a good man where all has gone wrong. What we see is the working out of the purpose of the Incarnation. God’s Word became flesh to share everything we experience, including our death. What we see is the final achievement of Jesus’ life and mission. Seen through the eyes of faith, the cross becomes a triumph. Hence in a few moments we will carry the cross in procession, raise it high in triumph, because the Cross is a real sign to us that God is truly here among us as a friend; a friend for whom no act of service is too great, not even the giving of his very life.
