But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
The affliction of the suffering servant was something more than simply absorbing the punishment intended for others. In bearing our infirmities, in enduring our sufferings, in being pierced, and crushed, it was not that a wrathful God was venting against Jesus his anger at us.
Even as many were amazed at him --
so marred was his look beyond human semblance
Jesus took on our human nature that had been wounded by sin so that he could refashion it according to God's original intent. Jesus, who never sinned, became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of good (see Second Corinthians 5:21). The ugliness of his suffering was the ugliness of human nature tainted by sin. The stripes he chose to receive for us put back into place the deformities in our nature caused by our selfish disobedience.
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed (see Hebrews 12:12-13).
Humankind had indeed become fundamentally selfish, oriented toward self-preservation, unable to offer ourselves in love to God and neighbor. As God Jesus perfectly offered everything he was to the Father from all eternity. But in order to involve and implicate humanity in this gift he chose to take on our nature, to live as man that same divine giving of himself, even in spite of all the human pressure to give up and put his own life first. By experiencing these temptations and persevering in obedience he refashioned our nature from within, enabling us also to offer our lives in love.
For we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one who has similarly been tested in every way,
yet without sin.
The Letter to the Hebrews does not say that since we have a compassionate high priest that we can now just go about business as usual since everything is already perfected. It is rather that we must come to this high priest so that he can grace for timely help, so that he can make present within us what he has already accomplished by his Passion. The treasure is available but we must avail ourselves of it.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
Why was Jesus so vehemently despised by the people who demanded his crucifixion? It seems hard to relate. We ourselves have never probably never been conscious of this level of violence and hate in our hearts.
They cried out,
“Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!”
Pilate said to them,
“Shall I crucify your king?”
The chief priests answered,
“We have no king but Caesar.”
Yet we too have a similar motivation to that of crowd. When Jesus proclaimed that he was the Son of God, when he identified himself with the "I AM" of the burning bush in the book of Exodus, he made a claim on our obedience against which our fallen nature rebels. We want to remain on the throne, in the driver's seat, in charge of our lives. If Jesus is "I AM", if he himself is the voice of truth, we must listen and obey. But at this point we begin to attempt to talk our way out of it, saying, "What is truth?" We begin to try to silence the voice of a claim that would turn our lives inside out. This happens not only before we are Christians, but it can happen anytime we are invited to come up higher and to be more deeply converted.
But Jesus performs a divine Judo technique, taking our very resistance to him and using it to bring about our salvation. We are taken by surprise and see ourselves caught in the act of rebellion against love itself. This revelation invites us to lay down our opposition to him and let ourselves be transformed. But we don't and can't and needn't be transformed by our own effort. Since Jesus has already given himself he now can empower us to be similarly transformed.
but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,
and immediately blood and water flowed out.
Let us look upon him whom we have pierced so that our own selfishness can be short-circuited, so that we can drink from the sacramental stream and be transformed, refashioned, and renewed.
Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden,
and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
Everything had gone wrong in a garden so long ago with the sin of Adam. A new garden hinted that this story was not over. There was to be a new beginning. The new Adam was only sleeping while the new Eve, his Church was being brought forth from his side. Let us therefore venerate his body as we await the new creation.
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