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It is finished, and he gave over his spirit to the father.
Frederick Nietzche, the 19th century German philosopher,
wrote a lot about evil and good.
He struggled with greatly with Christianity.
In particular, our fixation on the cross.
He said, “How can men and women, boys and girls
walk around with a cross around their neck?
The sheer brutality of the crucifixion is a pathetic symbol.”
He challenged all Christians to abandon it
and said that it is a worthless symbol.
He did not understand Christians
because not only is it a symbol,
but it is the power of the cross that makes Christianity.
What Christ did was not come as Nietzsche wanted,
as a God of strength, a God of power,
a God that forces his will on his people, even as a human.
Instead God came as, as a gentle little baby in the form of Jesus,
just like every one of us,
human in every way except sin.
He submitted himself to the human enterprise for all his life.
What he did was at every point along the way,
was showing us the way to live in this human condition.
When we are pushed to the edge of our humanity,
which happened for nearly all of us and
will happen to all of us when we die, then what?
That was where the cross gave the answer.
What Jesus did on the cross was
to stitch the edge of humanity to the edge of divinity
and made it a seamless garment
that we will never need to fear death or suffering
because we enter into the very self of God.
That sounds great and it is great theology
but the reality is when we enter into that suffering,
that edge of humanity, it does not feel so good.
When we are pushed to the edge of what we think we can stand,
there are three edges that I can think of that are powerful,
that are imminent and powerful in our lives.
First, when we witness the horrific brutality of violence in our world.
When we look at innocent young children and women
being tortured and beaten and their houses ransacked in Ukraine,
never having done anything other than to have lived
in that place all their life and with all their family.
They are taken out and their children are forced to watch
their mothers and their grandmothers raped and then killed,
and their fathers and their grandfathers murdered.
Then they are sent by brutality to the edge of humanity.
What we witness of so many people,
children, men, women and children
being used as human shields in Gaza
and the violence and the brutality
that is brought to us every day.
We are brought to the edge of humanity
and it is hard to find an answer.
The second edge is when we meet our own limits,
the edge of our own humanity, when we find ourselves suffering,
whether the pain of betrayal,
whether because a friend betrays us
or whether our boss no longer believes us or values us.
Whether we find ourselves suffering
because of the illness of cancer,
or we find even harder a loved one suffering dreadfully
because of some human condition, again,
brought to the edge of humanity.
Then there is the third edge that is all too common,
one of indifference to the suffering of other people.
That I pretend to not see,
or maybe I do not see because of ignorance
or of callousness of heart.
We do not see the suffering of those around us.
Those who have lost loved ones who suffer
because of the pain of racism, of prejudice
because they have a certain gender or struggling with their gender identity
because of LBGTQ+ issues,
or because they are divorced
or because they are from a different country
or because they have done many different things.
We are in indifferent and we are brought to the edge of our humanity.
So what are we to do?
Christ tells us that he came as a human
and his response on the cross shows us the way to see
in the face of all that suffering and the edge of humanity.
What did he do?
He takes in all of that bitterness,
that anger, that war, that brutality, that hatred,
and he absorbs it, he transforms it, and he gives back
kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, peace and love.
The cross is the bridge from the edge of our humanity
to the divinity of Christ in God.
So what are we to do?
Saint Ignatius gives us a really powerful way to do it on Good Friday.
As part of his spiritual exercises,
he invites us into a unusual exercise, but it is powerful.
If you allow me to instruct you for just one moment.
In the third week of the exercise,
which is a metaphorical week,
we ponder the cross of Christ
and are called to look upon Christ on the cross.
And when we reach the edge of our humanity,
we talk to Christ as we would a friend.
We look upon him and we talk to him as he suffers on the cross
and we have a conversation.
What would we say to him as he is bridging the gap
between our humanity and his divinity?
That is what we do today.
We look upon Jesus on the cross and
we take all our suffering wherever we have been,
whether we have witnessed it,
whether we are currently in the middle of it
or when we are indifferent to it,
and we talk to Christ and accept his invitation of the cross
to move beyond the cross.
In the end, God has the final word, and it is on Easter Sunday.
It is the resurrection, and it can only be had through the cross.
That can only be had to the response he gave, which was love.
Love, in the end, is the only way to bridge the gap
between the edge of our humanity and the edge of the divinity of God.
Today, as we hold up the cross and we venerate the cross,
talk to God and talk to Christ in our hearts,
whatever it is that weighs our hearts down,
whatever it is, that suffering that we have had
or have been indifferent to come before the cross,
behold the cross, behold the cross.
It is finished, and he gave over his spirit to the father.
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