And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him, and put his own clothes on him, and led him out to crucify him.”
Mk. 15.20 KJV
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“The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or not be a Christian at all…” Karl Rahner wrote that sometime in the early 80’s, in the final years of his life. He wrote it a few times, in fact, and in every case that I’ve found, he immediately added a clarifying remarking, trying to make clear that by mysticism he meant not the experience of the paranormal or supernatural but “a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence.” This clarification is everything, especially for those of us raised in or around churches and ministries in which the “supernatural” was regarded as proof of God and of our godliness.
Ours is not so much a secular age as a stupefied one. And as Bonhoeffer remarked in a letter from the last years of his life, “stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice…” Saying this, he was not merely wisecracking or blowing off steam; he had realized a truth about the state of things:
Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed… [U]nder certain circumstances, people are made stupid or… allow this to happen to them… The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity.
All to say, if we want to be saved from this stupidity we must become mystics, as Rahner said, awakened by the experience of God from our stupor. That’s not something we can do for ourselves, of course. We can’t make ourselves mystical. If we were to try, we’d succeed only in mystifying ourselves and others, becoming stupider. What we can do, however, is let ourselves be made mystical. By turning our attention to Jesus, training the eyes of our heart on him, letting ourselves be mysteried by the Spirit into Christ. And we can do that by doing what we are doing now: putting our body where he said he would be, listening to his word as it is given in the mystery of these texts, longing for his presence as it is given in the sacrament of this meal of bread and wine.
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It is difficult, nearly impossible, not to be stupid right now. Not only because we’re intoxicated with fear and ungrieved loss. Not only because we’ve drugged ourselves, literally and figuratively, against every pain. Not only because we’ve indulged and amused ourselves into oblivion. Treated for so long as line items—human “resources”—, we’ve gotten ourselves stuck in plan-making, problem-solving mode, confusing means for ends and use for enjoyment, allowing our tools to use us until we have become tools ourselves, dead as hammers.
As a result, despite unpredictable outbursts of hysteria and rage, we’re increasingly dissociated from ourselves and disconnected from reality. Languishing in powerlessness, flattened by overstimulation, we’re paralyzed by self-analysis, emotionally and physically exhausted by the traumatic speed at which we’re made to live our lives, conformed more and more to the likeness of our dumb idols of safety, superiority, and success.
Nearly fifty years ago, John McKnight, a professor of communication studies, said in a paper at a bioethics symposium in Montreal that professional service industries threaten to help us into helplessness. They deliver three messages to us, he says: “You are deficient. You are the problem. You have a collection of problems.” Under the spell of those lies, we are left increasingly unresponsive and irresponsible. And such stupefaction leads, as Bonhoeffer saw, to a stupidity capable of any evil.
Rūmī, the 13th century Sufi theologian and mystic, has a poem about Christ fleeing from fools. He flees up into the mountains, as if fleeing form a lion. A questioner runs after him, begging to know why he’s afraid. But Jesus does not stop to answer. “O Noble and Generous One,” the questioner cries out, “aren’t you the Messiah, the one who speaks the Word of God over the lifeless to bring life?” “I am,” Jesus answers. “O Fair One, you can make happen whatever you wish; so, why are you afraid?” Without slowing down, Jesus shouts back: “I spoke the Name of God over the deaf and dumb, and they were healed. I spoke the Name over the mountains, and they were rent like a robe. I spoke over the body of a dead man, and he sprang to life. I spoke over nothing and it became something. But when I said those same words with loving-kindness thousands upon thousands of times over a fool—he was not cured.”
We have to flee fools, too. We have to flee to the mountain where Jesus is hiding. That is why we’re here now, and why we keep showing up, presenting ourselves together before God in God’s house. And what does he say to us? Exactly what he said to Peter, James, and John: “This is my Beloved Son; listen to him!”
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Today’s Psalm tells us that Christ on the cross felt himself useless, confessed a sense of failure. “I am as useless as a broken pot.” And yet, accepting that brokenness, that failure, he trusts himself to God: “My times are in your hand; rescue me…”
Isaiah 50, which we’ve just heard, reminds us that he faced this end with courage, fully awake to the last dregs of the pain:
The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious,
I did not turn backward.I gave my back to those who struck me,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;I did not hide my face
from insult and spitting.The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near.
The Gospel—I hope you noticed—says they tried to give Jesus wine mixed with myrrh, to dull his senses. But he refused. Insulted and spat-upon, he did not succumb to shame and self-loathing. Abused, he refused to be disgraced. Doubted, he did not doubt—either God or himself. And, as Philippians 2 reveals, because of the way he bore his humiliations, God has exalted him and us with him into a share in the triune life in which there is no risk of exploitation, abuse, or rivalry.
This is the hope the gospel awakens in us. We can, thanks to the Spirit who is the Father’s love for us, live as Jesus lived and die as he died. Even when we cannot set our faces like flint; even when we are consumed with sorrow and wasted with grief; even when our strength fails because of our affliction; we can trust ourselves defiantly to God: “It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?”
Something of this truth comes home to me, for me, in a line from today’s Gospel: “After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.” In the end, all that is false, all that is mock, is stripped away. He is led to the cross in his own clothes.
Nothing happened to Jesus but what the Father meant to happen differently for us. All that happened to him, happened for our good. The powers meant to disgrace him, to shame him, but rejection and ridicule were converted in him to graces for us, tools of conviviality. Evil meant to destroy him, but his death liberated us from the fear of death and destroyed the one who had used that fear against us all our lives. Now, because of what he suffered and because of how he suffered it, all we suffer works life for us, not death. Now, despite what our enemies want or intend, God works all in all that happens to bring about our liberation, healing, vindication, blessing.
Bored with their game, the Roman guards stripped Jesus of the purple robe and put him in his own clothes, clothes the tradition suggests were made for him by his mother, who had been from a child a seamstress in the Temple. The torturers meant it as a taunt, a further indignity. But it is a sign of healing for us, a promise of a good God means to do. As we draw near to Christ and his sufferings, as we watch and pray with him, the Spirit will strip from us all the accusations that have been thrown on our shoulders, all the lies that have been wrapped around us, all the half-truths we’ve woven for ourselves. He will divest us of the garments of the powers, the garments of heaviness, and return to us our own clothes, the robes he had made for us, the garments of salvation.
Each time I read this text, I’m reminded of a sermon by Gardner Taylor, the American Baptist preacher and a grandson of emancipated slaves. Let me quote a portion of it to you now (although you really do need to hear it in his voice):
To see him marching up to Calvary in his own clothes draws forth from our hearts the question that was on the lips of that lyrical poet, Isaiah: “Who is this that cometh out of Edom with dyed garments, clothed from Bozra, traveling with his glorious apparel? Wherefore art thy garments red like one that treadeth in the winefat?” In his own clothes, he paid the price. In his own clothes, he lifted up every valley and brought down every mountain, made the crooked way straight, the rough places plain, pulled down the barrier, opened the highway from earth to great glory, called the prisoner, made the prisoner free, called the prodigal home, restored the exile to his citizenship. In his own clothes, he fixed it. And it's all right now. It's all right now. It's all right now. I told you last night that I want to see him, but what will I see? I will see him in his own clothes. No longer with that royal old faded cloak around his shoulders. No longer with the handcuffs of chains on his wrists. No longer with the crown of thorns on his brow. No longer with the pain lining his face. No longer with the hurt of the world upon his heart. No longer— But I will see him in the glory of his Sonship. We shall see him in the beauty of his holiness and in the holiness of his beauty. With the ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of angels all around him singing “Worthy is the Lamb to receive blessing and honor and wisdom and power and thanksgiving.” And the great orchestra of heaven and the choirs of heaven singing his praises, and the great organ of heaven in diapason notes singing his praises, and all of our voices together as the angels announce: "The marriage supper of the lamb is come.” And we shall be there to see him and to cry, “Thank you, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, thank you, Lord. Thank you for every tear. Thank you for every care. Thank you for every sorrow. Thank you for every ache. Thank you for every heartbreak. Thank you for every trial. Thank you. Thank you."
Why are we thanking him for heartbreaks and trials, for aches and for tears? Because that is how he stirs us from our stupor, how he strips from us the purple robe. That is how he returns to us our own clothes, the clothes he had made for us, so we can finally be ourselves, can finally be seen in the beauty of our own holiness, which is his gift to us. You can’t face God until you’re dressed in your own clothes. But when you are, the Father says of you what the whole company of heaven says of the Son: “You are worthy. You are worthy. You are worthy.”
This: “Why are we thanking him for heartbreaks and trials, for aches and for tears? Because that is how he stirs us from our stupor, how he strips from us the purple robe. That is how he returns to us our own clothes, the clothes he had made for us, so we can finally be ourselves, can finally be seen in the beauty of our own holiness, which is his gift to us.”
Also it sometimes takes courage and flying in the face of real anxiety to shuck off the fake clothes your family thinks fit just right and put on your right clothes. Nevertheless not I but Christ liveth in me. Bishop Barron quoted Isaiah, “You have accomplished all we have done” in a talk with Jordan Peterson.