The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
We hear the words of this familiar Negro spiritual this day, knowing our journey in this “Great Week” and on this second of the three holiest days ritualizes God’s powerful action of love and freedom for our lives. For the Christian, the action we are invited to is the deepest of intimate moments. The spiritual we sing is crafted by one who clearly is not reflecting ABOUT Jesus on the day of his crucifixion, but instead is a love song being sung by one who KNOWS Jesus. This KNOWING is clearly expressed with a depth of love and intimacy. This Jesus is one who is named as Lord, declaring the author’s willingness to adore, love, and to follow Jesus. To declare as Lord is to find a deep intimacy that leads to complete trust and faith in the one who leads. To declare as Lord is to lose one’s own need to control, to protect, to play it safe, and to risk the losing of much in the hope of gaining something new and unexpected. This is intimacy and trust-defined faithfulness, to follow wherever this Lord may lead. Not without uncertainty, not without trembling, not without grief, but following in spite of it. In this case, the following leads perhaps to the most unexpected of places, to a tree, where there are nails and torture and death. The one who sings this song KNOWS this Lord. What else would be a response to such a circumstance than the very trembling professed, surely a trembling in disbelief, deep grief, and disquiet.
I might suggest this day, as you approach the experience of this ritual, that you consider the question of how we receive the story. Do we receive the story as those who hear about Jesus of Nazareth? Or do we engage the story of one we KNOW, intimately, lovingly, beautifully, in the depth of love, one to whom we dare give our hearts over and follow because we have claimed him and trust him as LORD!
Claiming Jesus as Lord is not an easy thing. First of all, in modern times and in our culture, to call one Lord invites us into a fear that we might be “LORDED OVER” and for a politically-free people, this has negative connotations. Secondly, depending on how we are wired, we may find ourselves of the ilk whose default mode is to manage things on our own. We are apt to be trained to find that extra effort and skill to resolve things on our own. This, in itself, is not a bad approach to life, but oft times, in spiritual matters, is met with futility. Beyond that, we are human beings living in a world where we may not easily become vulnerable to another, vulnerable enough to show our tender spots, our roughest edges, our greatest weaknesses. To do so takes so much trust. Ask yourself this day, really, “Who do you trust?” Who do you trust to be most vulnerable with? Do you feel you KNOW Jesus well enough to let go? To expose your tender spots, your roughest edges, your greatest weakness? To hand your heart over and call him Lord, trusting that he will meet you in those tender places, to meet you in those rough edges, to meet you in that greatest weakness, and not only meet you there but invite you to meet him in his?
I submit to you this day that this meeting of Jesus in this most intimate circumstance is where we may find power and meaning of this day we dare call “Good.” Meeting Jesus in his most vulnerable and tender moment, in his roughest edge, meeting him in his greatest weakness, NO, following our Lord into his greatest weakness, this is perhaps where God’s mysterious power waits for us.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Come and know him, see what God can do with the most vulnerable of circumstances. See the paradox of how weakness becomes the crucible for power and new life. It was not a tree, of course, but a tree, if you will, in the shape of a cross that Jesus hangs on today, dies on today. Make no mistake, the cross in Jesus time was a symbol of power, the power of an occupying Roman government that chose crucifixion as the method of capital punishment for those who broke the laws of Rome and for those who posed a political threat. Jesus, our Lord, was executed as a criminal, make no mistake. Remarkable then, isn’t it, that this symbol of judgment and murder would become for followers of Jesus a symbol of God’s power. Why? Because God’s ways of power would be strikingly opposite to the ways of an oppressive government that ruled by fear, instituted a system of economic injustice for the powerful’s gain, and to keep the poorest poor; and whose response to conflict was war and terror. Instead, God would choose to transform the world by showing another way of being whose most powerful weapon was compassion and forgiveness, the core values of Jesus’ life and teaching. For those who follow Jesus to the cross, there we find a symbol not of execution, but of God’s turning weakness into power. For all who KNOW Jesus know that our weakness, our rough spaces, our tender spots, are offered to the world as compassion and forgiveness, the ointment of transformation. Knowing Jesus means knowing God is banking on this power, and it is in you and it is in me.
So we follow our Lord and offer him our hearts, grateful for our meeting him. And on this day, we lay him in the tomb and we wait, for we KNOW there is another day coming.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
