The readings for today tell the story of the woman who anointed Jesus prior to his passion and death. In the version we heard yesterday, in Mark, Jesus tells his friends that she has done a good deed, she has already anointed his body for burial.As always in Mark's gospel, there are only ever a few people who see what Jesus is really doing ... demons, a blind man, a sinful woman. The people who think they know Jesus and understand him ... his friends, the authorities ... don't get it at all.
Can we try this week to see all the ways we avoid looking at Jesus' death? Can we look at him with the open gaze of the centurion at the cross, or with the extravagant thanks of the woman with the ointment?
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Just as Palm Sunday swings from the joy of arrival to the dispair of departure, Holy Week seems drawn to the actual death of Christ. There is a build up that can only be ignored if one chooses to turn out until Sunday. We all know that Sunday is over the horizan from the pain of Friday...as good as it may be.
ReplyDeleteGibson's Passion certainly gives on the full face of a terrible death that was inflicted upon those were perceived as a threat or way out of line...their defined criminals. It was brutal. But we cannot become stuck there on that Friday.
Christ as a spiritual being came to the earth to die. Spiritual beings do not die as humans do. We need ever by mindful of the sacrifice that was offered and the turning point in time the Mystery of Golgoth represents.
I have to respectfully disagree about the nature of Christ. Christianity has insisted for 2,000 years that Jesus was fully human and died a real, mortal physical death. He was not a spiritual being in a pretend body. He was not a spiritual being in a borrowed human body that died while the spiritual being lived on. He was real. Flesh. Blood. That's what we celebrate every Sunday in the Eucharist. God as human, living a human life, dying a human death ...
ReplyDeleteAnd then ... being raised, not a ghost, not an ethereal spirit, but in a BODY. The same kind of BODY we will be given one day.
It's all about the body (the Body), or it's about nothing.