Good Friday – What is not assumed is not healed
In the Crucifixion, God takes all of human experience and pain onto God’s Self, entering into the deepest crevices of death to heal the pain of our lives. By reflecting on God’s all-embracing love, we see that we have no reason at all to fear death.
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Transcript
One of the first lessons we learned in theology class in seminary was this: don’t split the Trinity.
We all know, at least in theory, that God is triune, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Or Lover, Beloved, and Love. We at least know some language around the Trinity.
God in three persons, Blessed Trinity, as the hymn says.
Or as the Church says:
And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost.
This is from the 6th century Athanasian Creed, and you can probably imagine why we don’t use it in services! Who could get the words straight!
The truth is that, while we may know some language around the Trinity, we do not live into the reality of it. Put another way, rather than letting the dynamic, mystical truth of the Trinity reshape the way we see the world so that we see one another and all life in terms of a mutual indwelling, we project our own frameworks of human relationship onto God. In so doing, we end up with some tangled theology that reinforces our own tangled behavior.
We see this tension with the Trinity play out in texts like the one we just read: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? What a painful moment as we reflect on this.
What do we presume is happening here at this moment in the Crucifixion?
On one hand, we can see how we project our frameworks around human relationships onto Jesus at this moment and imagine that “God” is, at this moment “allowing his Son to die.” Or worse, “God” is killing “his Son” and through Jesus being a sacrificial victim here, somehow our sins are atoned for. There is an entire branch of theology that arose around this, with the notion of an atoning sacrifice.
The problem is, of course, that such a theology splits the Trinity. There is not a separate “God” that is either allowing this to happen–or, worse, doing this to Jesus. Jesus is God Incarnate, therefore, there is no separation between Jesus and the Creator in the moment of the Crucifixion. God is not sacrificing Jesus in order to save us; rather, something much more profound and mysterious is happening.
The deep truth of the Trinity tells us that, in the moment of the Crucifixion, God in God’s Self so fully incarnated into human life, that death itself was taken up into God’s own being. God so filled life that even the deep crevices of death were saturated with God’s presence.
Oh, death, where is thy sting? St. Paul would later write.
God incarnated into and through death itself!
No part of the experience of being human was neglected in God’s Incarnation, so no part of human experience was neglected in the Crucifixion–even the painful human experience of feeling abandoned: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…
As St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the most important Christian theologians in history, wrote in the 4th century: “What has not been assumed has not been healed.” All of human existence, including pain was taken into God so that all of human pain could be healed.
Here’s why this matters: if we have a theology that sees God as condoning violence or cruelty, even supporting it, then we can condone it or support it as well with one another, with how we treat other human beings who share the same planet and who were created by the same God who fills all life. No matter what country they come from, no matter who they are.
Sometimes we need to say difficult things, and Good Friday is a time to say them.
If we see the story of Jesus–and the story of our lives–through the dynamic and mystical reality of the Trinity, we see that all of life is interconnected in the fluid divinity of God’s own being.
We see the sacred dance between Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer in which we participate–in which every soul on this planet and all of creation shares.
God did not condone or cause violence or cruelty here. God assumed all of life, took it and all the pain that is expressed in Jesus’s humanity into God’s own Self, and in assuming it into God’s very being, we can experience healing and hope.
This is why they started theology class by saying “Don’t split the Trinity:” because by holding the Trinity together, even when it makes no rational sense, we hold ourselves together, and we hope for the day that our eyes are opened to see that all is held in God’s loving embrace. And when we can hold this space, we realize that we have absolutely no reason to fear death. Absolutely no reason at all.
That, my friends, is the deep wisdom of the Crucifixion. And that is how healing can truly happen in this world.
Thanks be to God.