Death leads to resurrection
The Scottish poet Edwin Muir once wrote about the crucifixion from an eyewitness’ perspective: “That was the day they killed the Son of God on a squat hill-top by Jerusalem. Zion was bare, her children from their maze sucked by the demon curiosity clean through the gates. The very halt and blind had somehow got themselves up to the hill.
“After the ceremonial preparation, the scourging, nailing, nailing against the wood, erection of the main trees with their burden, while from the hill rose an orchestral wailing. They were there at last, high up in the soft spring day.
“We watched the writhings, heard the moanings, saw the three heads turning on their separate axles like wheels spinning. Round his head was loosely bound a crown of plaited thorn that hurt at random, stinging temple and brow as the pain swung into its envious circle. In front the wreath was gathered in a knot that, as he gazed, looked like the last stump left of a death-wounded deer’s great antlers.
“Some who came to stare grew silent as they looked, indignant or sorry, but the hardened old and the hard-hearted young, although at odds from the first morning, cursed him with one curse, having prayed for a Rabbi or an armed Messiah and found the Son of God. What use to them was a God or a Son of God? Of what avail for purposes such as theirs?
“Beside the cross-foot alone, four women stood and did not move all day. The sun revolved, the shadow wheeled, the evening fell. His head lay on his breast, but in his breast they watched his heart move on by itself alone, accomplishing its journey.
“Their taunts grew louder, sharpened by the knowledge that he was walking in the park of death far from their rage. Yet all grew stale at last: spite, curiosity, envy, hate itself. They waited only for death and death was slow and came so quietly they scarce could mark it. They were angry then with death and death’s deceit.
“I was a stranger, could not read these people or their outlandish deity. Did a God indeed in dying cross my life that day by chance, he on his road and I on mine?”
John’s answer to the mystery of Christ’s death on a cross is God’s infinite love. He says simply: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). The incredible nature, the immensity of this love is revealed in his gospel: “This is how God loved the world, He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar described the care of God as the Father’s hands outstretched under the cross, ready to hold Jesus as he hung there. Yet death itself is not the end: Death leads to Resurrection; Good Friday to Easter Sunday.
The English poet Edward Spenser, in a brief but beautiful poem, captures and expresses the significance and the consequence of Easter; of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ: God’s love for us, and, in return, our lives of love for God and for one another.
Most glorious Lord of life, that on this day
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin;
And having harrowed hell didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin,
And grant that we for whom thou didest die
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live forever in felicity.
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for thy sake that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought.
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
