Good Friday meditation – the many faces of Jesus April 10, 2009 The woman has attended this church, her church, for years. But she has never taken time to be in it alone – with no worship going on, no people to watch, no bulletin to follow. Now, today, she is here on an errand and she finds herself drawn into the empty cavernous nave. She hears her heels click as she walks on the old tile floor. She decides to stroll around and look at the windows. She’s looked at them enough to know that they depict the story of Jesus’ life from birth all the way around the nave to his ascension. She has heard that they were made by some famous German company. They are large, intricate, with colors that seem liquid and vibrant when the sun shows through them. Each one has a central scene, surrounded by smaller scenes and symbols that connect to it. She begins at the first window on the north side – the nativity window. Its royal blue sky with tiny crystal stars is a backdrop to an almost unnoticed primitive wood and straw stable. It’s as though the night sky is the larger context of life but we are called down into the shadows of this small scene. Filling the stable is a graceful Mary in her traditional blue and white, bending over her child, intently studying his face. The woman thinks with humor of what she must have looked like the night she gave birth to her children! Graceful would not have described how she remembers feeling. Nevertheless, a protective Joseph holds a lantern up high – and it lights up, within the dark stable, a naked chubby baby. Baby Jesus is not wrapped here in swaddling clothes like the gospel depicts, but his naked arms and feet are stretching and flexing, his eyes wide open. ‘If we had the capacity to remember our first hours,’ she thought, ‘what must it be like to be trying to move a brand new body that has been scrunched up in its mother’s womb and now has nothing to bind it? Then she notices the nimbus or halo surrounding his little head. Mary also has one, so does Joseph. Mary’s is solid gold with small stars on it. Joseph’s looks like her formal dinnerware at home – cream with a gold edge. And the baby’s – white with three bands of red radiating out to its edges – obviously a foreshadow of the cross. She moves along. The next large window is of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River. He is standing in the river in the simple white robe of baptism, the nimbus there with its cross still in place. John, his cousin, in a rough brown tunic, is pouring water over his head. Clouds are parted and light comes through, that larger reality still stands behind our human stage. The next window has many people in it – all different colored tunics and sandals and stylized hair. She looks for the theme. What scene is this? She wonders as she looks: Like ‘where’s Waldo?’ – ‘where’s Jesus?’ She always had assumed when she glanced a the window that Jesus was in it. He’s in all the others, but no nimbus with red cross to be found. She passes by the ‘Good Shepherd’ window and the ‘Last Supper’. Thirteen men lined up behind a table, all with their cream colored dinner plate halos – and his with that red shadow of the cross. The next window shows Jesus carrying the thick heavy cross beam on his bare back through a crowded street. Even with the thorns around his head, the white and red nimbus remains. Then, in the next great window, with a small crucifixion scene tucked up in the left hand corner, there in the center of this one is his mother, holding his almost naked body, scars on hands and feet and side, her strong hands support his head as she gently bends down to ponder his face once again. The cross-filled nimbus remains firmly attached to his drooping head. Then, the window she sits near and has had chances to give some attention to. Jesus, coming out of the tomb, fills the center of this window. Healthy, strong, the perfect human body with white bands of cloth loosely draped from his arms and partially surrounding his body as though they are the loosened burial wrappings. When the sun shines through this one on Sunday mornings the body and its cloth bands are white, gleaming white as though a fluorescent light were shining through clear glass. There is no defined nimbus because nothing could outshine the light that emanates from him and surrounds him. His face looks directly forward, not staunch or determined, or bold- but focused and open and knowing, inviting. He is stepping forward, and holds a brass standard in one hand. She notices now for the first time that it has a small crossbar at the top. The cross no longer a hint in the nimbus surrounding his head, no longer a heavy threatening instrument of death - but he carries it lightly as though it were a walking stick. He is obviously the Risen Lord who has triumphed over death but he is also humanity, redeemed, created anew – and beautiful to behold. She moves on. Next, the ascension window, Christ’s red garment drapes in folds as he reaches his hands forward, and his feet rest on clouds just above the ground. His face still regards the onlooker, and the aura around his head now fills the space within the clouds that surround him – and she notices that the clouds outline the aura with a fluid cruciform shape. Finally, she has moved all the way around the nave. The last window which is opposite the nativity scene is Christ the King. Here Jesus is richly robed in dark greens and golds. These, she notices, since she is on the altar guild, are robes of the church, the white alb covered by a green filigreed deacon’s tunical, a deeper green processional cope wraps around his shoulders and drapes perfectly symmetrical to the floor. On his head is a jeweled crown. How does she know this is Jesus and not some famous bishop? Maybe Patrick because of the green? Because his face is the same face as the beautiful risen one. Then she notices his feet – bare with no sandals or shoes. She sighs and shakes her head. We’ve dressed him all up and forgot to put shoes on him. She’d done that a few times, forgotten the shoes, while rushing to get her children ready in the mornings. Her son would be all fed and brushed and clothed and then when they are all in the car, ready to back out of the driveway, she would notice that his feet were shoeless. And then she notices what is behind this regal Jesus. The cross again – merely a shadow that extends below his feet and slightly beyond his outstretched arms. The cross that now seems to conform to his shape rather than contorting and fixing his body to it. She walks back and stands beneath ‘her’ window The gleaming Risen One, strong, face set, yet eyes gentle. Teaming with light - power conveyed in that unadorned body. ‘Why do we dress him up?’ she wonders. ‘Why a king’s crown?’ He never asked for that. On him, who considered the lilies of the field, the crown is placed on one who chose to tie a towel around his waist and to wash feet – one who aspired to be servant. ‘Why a priest’s robes?’ The white robe of baptism. The tunical of a deacon’s servant ministry. The cope of a priest or bishop called to lead and pastor the faithful As the ‘priesthood of believers.’ She thinks back of her daughter in pastel Easter ruffles tied at the waist with a satin bow, like a pretty package. Hat firmly tied on beneath her chin, stiff patent leather shoes buckled on. Jesus would probably handle his finery like her daughter did hers. Before they would get to church the hat was off, the satin bow had slipped loose, shoes off and feet free. Jesus would have those robes and that crown off before we could get him down the aisle, she thought to herself. They would be given away, delighting curious children, making someone feel lovely. [He turns our world inside out. He flips us upside down. He redeems our symbols and gives them back their integrity or he outshines them and we wonder why we gave them such worth. Even when we have fashioned him in images of our own making, the power of his presence shines through our trappings – she hopes - just like the larger life of the night sky puts our moments in perspective. If we will look through it all the ways we have tried to define him, he is there. He redefines us, and calls us to himself.] And what of the omnipresent cross? A subtle foreshadow, a gruesome means of murder, a standard of honor, a symbol of life. He changes it, too. ‘An instrument of shameful death turned into the means of life,’ the collect reads. Why must the cross be part of it all? He took on the blows of the darkest of human traits, Violence, treachery, cowardice, pride, greed, you name it - and did the work that had to be done, that had never been accomplished before. Humanity came up against something it could not overpower, could scapegoat away, and could not withstand. Against the beautiful, pure and powerful, creative love of God darkness is exposed for what it is. And we are enabled to see it for what it is. He doesn’t blame us for it. He sets us free from it. And the cross is where that happened. And she remembered his last words from that cross – ‘It is accomplished.’ She is glad she took this time. There is so much more to search out in these windows! As she walks back around, she passes by the window that has no Jesus, no nimbus with the red cross anywhere to be found. Only ordinary people showing compassion in simple acts of kindness. There is a person tending someone lying on a cot; someone holding out a cup to another; someone sitting next to another, with arms around his shoulder; two walking side by side. Those ordinary people are humanity restored, forgiven, free. That it is we who proclaim him, follow him, we who long to have our lives and our hearts shaped by his, who are his clothing, his appearance in the world. That would be his crown and glory, in such an ordinary setting. Ordinary people loving in ordinary ways. She reached up to touch the cross around her neck. She simply wanted to be one of them. She touched the cross she habitually wore And quietly hoped that she might be among them in her way, Part of carrying on what he accomplished. She had to get going. Afternoon traffic to deal with, more errands to run… She looked back over to ‘her’ window and silently asked the beautiful one to be with her as she went about her day.