Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), 1954, Salvador Dali
Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
Outside the City Wall
April 5, 2017
"Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:12-14)“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both [Jews and Gentiles] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” (Ephesians 2:13-17)
As we prepare to go into Holy Week and
hear the stories of Christ’s final week, his death, and resurrection, it is
important to rid ourselves of preconceptions that limit the way we understand
these stories. Some ways of reading them
are patently false: anti-Semitic
readings that accept the blood libel that Jews of every age and time are
personally responsible for Jesus’ death, or the notion that Jesus’s sufferings
and death were willed by an implacable Deity as a proxy death penalty upon
sinners. It is important to read these
stories as they are, and recognize in them the dynamic of unjust horror and
suffering.
Philosopher René Girard defines
community as “unanimity minus one,” that is, a group united in accusing and
expelling at least one of its own.
Community defines itself in part by pointing to those who are not part
of the community. It regulates itself by
identifying and driving out scape-goats, who bear away the wrongs of the
community to outside the camp, outside the city (Lev. 16:10). Community is not just joined hands and linked
arms of embrace. It in its structure is
also the pointing finger of accusation, of exclusion. Anthropologists have noted that most of the
world’s primitive cultures have myths that express this dynamic. Generally a dissident, abnormal, or impure
member of the community is singled out, driven out, and often killed in the
myth. Thereby the community is made
whole. Impurity and wrong are thus
purged.
Girard notes that Christians have their
own version of this myth, based on the death of our Lord: the crowd points their fingers at Jesus and
calls for his death, he is brutalized, taken outside the city walls, and
killed.
But the difference is this: in the Christian telling, Jesus is
innocent. It is he who is right, and the
community that is wrong. This story
condemns the dark side of community, the accusation, the driving outside the
city wall, the scapegoating itself, not the accused deviant put to death
outside of the city walls. Easter
morning tells us that everything has been turned on its head here.
Ephesians says that Christ on the cross
preaches peace to those who are far off and those who are near. The resurrection condemns accusation
itself. The cross, that cruel tool the
Roman Empire used to enforce community, that instrument of public terror as an
act of policy, is itself undone by the resurrection of our Lord.
And it is not just the accusation of
group hatred that is undone by the cross.
Our own accusation of ourself, our own sense of guilt is undone by
Jesus’s unjust death at the accusers’ hands and his being raised from it. As Paul says elsewhere, Jesus “erased the
record against us from any legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the
cross” (Col. 2:24)
Thus Christ, once driven outside the
wall, becomes our peace, and breaks down all dividing walls. He brings those far off, those driven outside
the walls themselves, back, and brings them near.
Hoping to see you in Church during all of Holy
Week.
Fr. Tony+
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