Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42
Ecce! is a wonderful Latin word. It means “Behold”
This word holds a very special place in my heart. The motto of the University of the South at Sewanee, where I completed my seminary studies is ECCE QUAM BONUM! It is the opening line of Psalm 133. Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum – Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in unity. A line, specifically chosen for an institution founded in the midst of the Civil War. On the Domain of the University, we know it simply as EQB! And for me, it brings to mind, verdant bluff views, the light streaming through stained glass windows in All Saint’s Chapel, and the haunting simplicity found in the architecture of the Chapel of the Apostles at the seminary.
In the Latin Vulgate, the translation of holy scripture compiled by St. Jerome, this word, ECCE, gets used quite a bit in reference to the life of Jesus.
It first appears in Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel when she is told that God has found favor with her and that she is to be the vessel through which “The Son of God,” The Messiah enters this world. ecce ancilla Domini – Behold the Handmaid of the Lord. In this moment as Mary consents her own body becomes the tabernacle in which God will dwell. Her womb becomes the Holy of holies the sanctuary of the Lord. It is by this ECCE that the Holy Spirit begins to knit in her the flesh of a baby who will grow up to be Prophet, Priest, and King by whose steps the creator of all things will walk again with the created.
Many years later, her own nephew would use this Ecce in reference to Jesus. John, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah will become a prophet of the wilderness; calling the people to repentance, baptizing them into a new purity, and preparing the way for the coming Messiah. One day he will look up from the river's bank, and being led by the Spirit he will point his disciples toward this Jesus of Nazareth with the proclaiming word Ecce Agnus Dei – Behold the Lamb of God. LOOK, BEHOLD! This is the one I have been talking about. He is the promised Lamb of God. It is he who will take away the sins of the world. Go! Follow him!
This Holy Week, this passion scene in our story is not without its own ECCE moments. Jesus has been arrested, tried, and found guilty of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin for affirming that he is the longed-for Messiah, the Son of God. And proclaiming himself equal with God by forgiving sins. He is sent before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator who has this “Son of God” this “King of the Jews” stripped naked and flogged. The soldiers mock him, dressing him in purple raiment and placing a crown of thorns upon his head.
In this famous scene at Gabbatha, so beautifully depicted by Antonio Ciseri in the painting, Pilate presents the beaten and scourged Jesus to the crowds and strips him of all the divinity just proclaimed before the Sanhedrin. This bleeding shell of skin and bones is introduced to the masses with those famous words Ecce Homo! Not behold the king, no behold the God, but ECCE HOME - Behold the Man!
Giving in to the demands of the crowd, Pilate hands Jesus over to be crucified. Here he is degraded even lower from his divine rank, being raised up, naked, on the wood of a Roman Cross.
Among the last phrases he utters from this place of shame and torture, Jesus offers his own ECCE moment. Looking down at his mother, Mary standing with the Beloved Disciple, he says to her ecce filius tuus – Behold your son, and to the Beloved Disciple, he says ecce mater tua – Behold your mother.
Here, Mary, who at the beginning of the story becomes the tabernacle of God, the mother of our Lord, in this moment she becomes Mother to all of us. And being her children we come to know her sorrow. As the words of the Stabat Mater read
Who on Christ’s dear mother gazing,
pierced by anguish so amazing,
born of woman, would not weep?
Who, on Christ’s dear mother thinking,
such a cup of sorrow drinking,
would not share her sorrows deep?
In the last two months, many in the church have found our own hearts burning with such sorrow. Beginning in late March, over a ten-day span, three predominately African-American churches in St. Landry Parish in southern Louisiana, were all set ablaze by arson.
Then on Monday, I watched in horror with the rest of the world as the nearly 900-year old roof and the spire of La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris caught fire and filled the Parisian skyline with a hell-scape of towering flames and thick black smoke. This beautiful and storied cathedral is dedicated to Notre-Dame––Our Lady, Our Mother and The Mother of our Lord. This translation should be no surprise to any of us here as thirty minutes away, a statue of Our Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary, stands vigil atop the Golden Dome of Main Building at the University of Notre Dame. And even in the shadow of that golden dome, students and staff were glued to the news on Monday as flames engulphed the great basilica for nearly fifteen hours. We each kept our own vigil, waiting to see what might remain of “the soul of Paris.” I, along with many of my pastoral colleagues could not escape Jesus own words in Matthew 24, as these Houses of Worship, were being reduced to ash.
Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. Then he asked them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
It was hard to escape that. He was speaking of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was brought down by the Romans in 70 CE. But we have built for ourselves many temples since that day. Whether they be a mud hut on the Serengeti, a wooden Kirke on a Norwegian fjord, a stone arched masterpiece of gothic beauty, or a brick and cinderblock hall to the east of Baton Rouge, they all mean something to us but often become just walls we build around our God. We sometimes hold them up as sacred calves over our care for God’s own people and God’s own creation.
This leads me to the final ECCE!
If you are anything like me, the first thing you did on Tuesday morning, was roll over,
find your glasses and check your phone for any update of the damage in Paris. One image hit me right in the gut. The shot was taken, pointing east toward the apse, over which the fire supposedly began. In the foreground lay a pile of blackened timber and ash; the remains of the mighty spire which collapsed through the ceiling bringing glowing cinders down to the transept floor.
Just beyond this charred mess, shon the golden cross of the high altar. And here is the crux, the poignant scene. Adorning this space, unharmed, is a statue of the PIETA. The lifeless body of Jesus, recently taken down from the cross and laid in his mother's arms. It is an apocryphal scene, but one that never-the-less has plucked at the hearts of the faithful for centuries.
For us today, this pieta image is the ECCE unspoken. As Mary sits silent in her grief her expression seems to say ECCE––Behold the Body broken for you. The joy of Easter is never more difficult to see then behind the smokey haze of Good Friday. Yet in this image our Mother offers us some light.
Mary has become the paten, holding the body on the altar of our lives. The tabernacle is now opened to all of us. In his death, her son no longer belongs to her but to the entire world, to all of creation. It may be difficult for us to see at times but the Good News of Jesus Christ is not for a select few but for all who need to hear it. This is why the destruction by arson of three historic African-American churches in Louisiana and the devastation at Notre-Dame de Paris are heartbreaking, yes, but they can not diminish God.
God is not contained within stone, brick, wood, or flesh. God is not frozen within bread and wine. God is not contained, NOT EVEN BY DEATH. God can not be confined, so God is free to be with us all, a true Emmanuel. This is the gift of God. Godself given up, broken, spilled out and opened for all to eat, all to drink, and all to behold. Behold your God. NOT only in the Blessed Sacrament, NOT only in beautiful architecture or solemn hymns BUT in the very chaos and mess of our lives, on the wood of the cross, on the lap of Our Mother, and on the Altars of the World. God can be found in the ashes.
So take the ECCE with you. And when you come, AND when you go, Behold the Lamb! And point him out to others. Behold the Man! And in that clay, witness the sparks of the divine. Behold your God in both the beauty and in the sorrow!
ECCE––BEHOLD––AMEN.
Rev. J. Nelson - Good Friday - April 19, 2019
St. David of Wales Episcopal Church - Elkhart, Indiana
