Excerpts
from ECHOES FROM
The seven last words of Jesus are
also our seven last words – the words
of terror and loneliness, of fear and horror, of despair and final surrender as
we complete our journey and perhaps begin a new one.
Andrew
M. Greeley
It is no small point to note that
Jesus’ first miracle that he did at Cana of Galilee was to satisfy the real
thirst of those wedding guests when the unthinkable had happened and the host
had run out of wine. I have always loved
that miracle for its earthy, practical, and sensual quality, and to
spiritualize it into some metaphysical lesson is to cheat the drinkers and to
deprive Jesus of the credit of doing something useful.
Peter
J. Gomes
In Luke’s view, the Jesus of the Passion
narrative continues the healing, forgiving, reconciling ministry that filled
his public life… In loyalty to a Lucan
Jesus who told of the mercy of the father for the prodigal son, should we not be challenged to go further and
forgive even those who do know the
wrong that they are doing?
Raymond
E. Brown
According to traditional Christian
theology, Jesus bears on the Cross the sin of the world. This cry gives voice to the separation from
God that is the consequence of sin. It is
dreadful beyond the telling. Yet at the
end of a century like our own, where the cry of dereliction has been heard
again and again, we do well to note that even at this most agonizing moment,
Jesus calls upon God as “my
God.” And so, following him, may we.
Mark
A. Noll
From the throne of his cathedral,
Jesus proclaimed the most beautiful and powerful word of life. In a world poisoned and torn apart by
violence, vengeance, betrayals, abandonment, insults, and indifference,
forgiveness is the only way to inner freedom, peace, and tranquility. Without forgiveness, life is worse than
death, and death is eternal torment.
Virgil
P. Elizondo
Not my will, but thy will be
done! And when you can cry that, you
stand up amid life with an exuberant joy.
You know that God walks with you.
Even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you know
that God is there. Even though you stand
amid the giant shadow of disappointment, you don’t despair, because you know
God is with you.
Martin
Luther King Jr.
There are moral philosophers who
believe we can capture and summarize the moral life in rather the way some of
the language philosophers believe we can pin down words. There are lists of do’s and don’t’s, each calibrated
under the framework of a simple moral code and arrayed around a single
overarching human good: justice or utility or some such. The last utterances of Jesus the Christ tell
us a very, very different story about the moral life. They are words of life and death, rich,
evocative, embrocated with potent emotion.
They are words that invite various responses, that perplex us and call
us out, and that force us inward to examine our own wellsprings of meaning and
purpose. The moral life, they tell us,
is not a checklist but a way of being in the world with and among others in all
of life’s griefs and joys, including its final moments.
Jean
Bethke Elshtain
from
the chapter entitled Christ’s Final
Utterances in Today’s World
In Jewish mysticism there is a
concept called tzimtzum –
“contraction.” According to this idea,
in order to create the world God needed first to withdraw from it – so that the
earth and her creatures wouldn’t drown in an ocean of divine omnipresence. What we view as God’s distance can be, in
truth, just the opposite. What seems to
us like indifference can be, to God, an expression of love – a way of letting
destiny unfold, of preserving human freedom, of giving us room to breathe.
Niles
Elliot Goldstein
We dare not rush to the glory of
Easter morning seeking a too easy release from the tragedy of the death of
Jesus. Human beings do face evil and are
overcome by it. That is what makes it
evil. Light is only a gift because it
relieves us from the depth of darkness.
Joan
Brown
The symbolism of John, even in the
words of his Jesus “I thirst” is unmistakable to any attentive reader of John’s
rhythmic, meditative, iconic account of the death of Jesus. And yet the words of Jesus “I thirst” are not
merely symbolic. “I thirst” is the cry
of a dying man whose mouth is parched in the moments left from his approaching
death – a death of shame and tortured pain.
The cry of Jesus in John – “I thirst” – disrupts even John’s profoundly
symbolic and all too continuous account with a moment of unmistakably human –
all too human – pain.
David
Tracy
Jesus took time out from dying to
reconcile, restore, and reconnect us to each other, to make us accountable for
each other, so that we would not become the modern day Pilates, seeking to wash
our hands from each other’s responsibility.
Michael
L. Pfleger
Until he had fulfilled his mission to
be afflicted and suffer and shed his blood as an atonement for the sins and
sorrows of all, the Savior of the world had no thought of himself. Only when his incomprehensibly painful burden
had been carried to its appointed conclusion, only when he had accomplished his
mission, did he yield to the physical pain.
He did so with only two words: “I
thirst.”
Dallin
H. Oaks
There are some willing to “dip the
sponge in the vinegar and gall” for you too, my friends, so that whatever agony
you are experiencing can be endured more easily. But what about when others are suffering? Will you be among those who will lessen their pain, even when being merciful is
inconvenient?
T.L.
Barrett
The prism of each Gospel refracts a
different spectrum of light from the last hours of Jesus’ life. For Mark and Matthew, the great cry of
desolation dominates the narrative and casts a monochromatic light upon the
scene. The Gospel of Luke has light shot
through with multiple hues of forgiveness, deliverance of the outsider, and
confidence in the love and healing power of the One whom Jesus called
“Father.” The light of the Gospel of
John sheds upon this landscape of blood and agony reflects yet other
aspects. For in John’s three “words,”
Jesus offers the only self-referential words, “I thirst,” that escape from his lips during the three hours upon
the Cross. He then turns to Mary and
John at the foot of the Cross, offering a new triangulation of the loving bond
involving mother, son, and friend.
Finally, the gasping cry “It is
finished!” declares the end at hand.
Grover
A. Zinn
from
the chapter entitled The History of
Meditation on Jesus’ Seven Last Words
Whether we sincerely ask for
forgiveness or whether we seek to forgive others, ultimately we know what we
really desire is reconciliation.
Reconciliation goes beyond forgiveness in an attempt to expunge from our
minds and from society all those obstacles that prevent all of us from living
truly good, humane lives, concerned about the good of all.
Rembert
G. Weakland
In the midst of the story of God’s
love and the salvation of humankind, there is a personal encounter: a mother
and her son, a son and the friend he loved – a small personal anecdote to
remind us that his love is intimate and personal. It embraces us as we, too, watch as he dies.
John
M. Buchanan
How about you? Does Jesus Christ’s example truly make the
difference in the way you treat those who hurt, ridicule, or abuse you? Does his example truly make the difference in
the way you face life, and the way you must ultimately face death?
Addie
L. Wyatt
Jesus’ thirst is also laced with
irony. His executioners’ act of mercy is
linked to a Psalm about scorn and rejection.
His body’s compelling sense of thirst says, drink and live. Yet Jesus knows that he will die. The one who promised, “If anyone is thirsty,
let him come to me and drink… Streams of living water will flow from within
him.” – that person is now dying of
thirst.
David
Neff
In trying to match the tone of this
music [It is finished] to the deeper
significance of the text upon which it was based, Haydn was searching for ways
to lift the burden, release the tension, allow the music to
“breathe” more freely, and even let it begin to “dance.” How ironic: crucifixion, which causes death
by asphyxiation, is portrayed by music that “breathes!” How inconsistent with the narrow logic of our
preconceptions: crucifixion music that “dances!” With this musical “ending,” then, we can look
back with a sense of fulfillment at what was accomplished, while also looking
ahead to the possibilities of new “beginnings.”
Once we have reached that point, once we understand why this music must “breathe” and “dance,” we will have “come full circle.”
Richard Young
from
the chapter entitled The Words and the
Music
Jesus wasn’t crucified between two
candlesticks in a cathedral in a sacred place.
He was crucified on the rubbish dump outside the city wall. He was crucified in a cosmopolitan,
multicultural place where the inscription above him had to be written in Greek,
in Hebrew, and in Latin. He was
crucified in a place where soldiers gambled, where smut was talked, and where
criminals shrieked in agony as they died.
Tim
Costello
The word of Christ at the moment of
his greatest agony was a radical word of love and grace. His message: You belong to a family which not
even death can destroy. Earthly fear or
ignorance, weakness or bigotry or even violence may tear into pieces the world’s
affirmation of your value and goodness.
But I say to you, there is a God who surrounds you with the true love of
a mother and the faithfulness of a true child.
That love and faithfulness may not be where you had hoped or
yearned. But it is there. I give it to you – without conditions.
Gregory
Dell
No one else can surrender the very
Spirit of life, the Spirit who descended upon Mary a Jesus’ conception in her
womb, the Spirit who came upon Jesus in the River Jordan, the Spirit who sustained
Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and Judea.
The Spirit returns to the Father so that Jesus, risen from the dead, can
send this same Spirit to give life to the Church, which is his body here and
now. All is surrendered, given freely,
without reserve, so that everything given can be shared.
Francis
George
We who take comfort in Jesus’ words
of forgiveness must also accept the challenge.
No matter how we have been wronged, no matter how deep our pain, no
matter how unjust the act against us, we must forgive – even as God, for Jesus’
sake, has forgiven us.
Dick
Staub
As someone who pursued his teaching
vocation for four decades only two blocks from the chapel in which I have heard
the Haydn work and the comments in many different performances, I have often
thought of the limits to the meaning of “we” and “our,” inclusive words spoken
within the community of faith. What do
these performances as a whole say to the many who are there as devotees of Haydn
and the Vermeer String Quartet, but who come for a performance and emphatically
not for worship? They are always
encouraged to feel equally welcome at the side of the believers present. There are no faith-security checkers at the
door; there is no calling for credentials, no code word passed around for
insiders. There is no assumption that
everyone present is a believing Christian, or that anyone would become such
when “we” are through with them, as if these are evangelistic rallies… “We” and “our” words mean something different
to those worshipping and those enjoying a performance. But on our various levels of engagement, and
with respect for the “other” bordering on awe, we all take something profound
from the encounter.
Martin
E. Marty
from
the chapter entitled Looking Back, Summing
Up
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