LEADERSHI
LEADERSHIP
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
MORE THAN MUSIC
EMBRACE & DEFEAT
THE SHAME
T
his Holy Week prayer from the Book of Common Prayer points us to the
cross, “an instrument of shameful death,” that God made “the means of life.” The shamefulness of Christ’s death on the cross lay, in the first place, in the fact that Jesus had been spurned by his own nation, and then had been turned over to pagan Romans for a degrading non-Jewish execution. Deprived even of the benefit of a “good” Jewish stoning or even a “dignified” Roman beheading, Jesus was given over to what Scripture had always thought of as a repugnant, cursed death for infidels: hanging on a tree (see Deuteronomy 21:23).
The humiliation of Christ’s execution lay, in the second place, in the fact that Jesus, according to Roman custom, would have been cruci-
A Meditation for a Pandemic-tinged Holy Week
fied naked. Victims of what Cicero called “the unlucky tree” were stripped, and then nailed or tied to crosses prominently displayed in public places. Even into the 4th century, Christians in Jerusalem would remember “the nakedness of Christ on the cross, who in his nakedness ‘disarmed the principalities and powers, and openly triumphed over them on the tree’” (Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, Mystagogy 2). The marvel is that such shame worked such grace, such rejection effected such fellow-
B Y
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K I D D
ship, and such a curse won such blessing.
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