“Crucify Him”: The Place of God Amidst Evil
Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14—27:66
The blame game is all about the fear of death: we all want to go to heaven, apparently no one wants to die! Since we cannot take COVID-19 to court and make it feel the power of our democracy and a taste of our jail, in fact, it is the Coronavirus that has imprisoned us, from the greatest to the least, in our homes, castles and presidential residences, there must be a scapegoat somewhere—God! We blame God for the COVID-19 and the other ills of our lives. Well, Israel did that some millennia before us. But are we justified in blaming God?
God finds himself in the dock today, in the narration of our first reading. The returnees from Babylon, the survivors of a long exile took God to task for an explanation as regards whether God has mutated from one who loves and keeps his covenants forever or not. The experience of exile in Babylon was a sign of divorce and repudiation, they surmised: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce, with which I sent her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you?’” (Isaiah 50:1). The exile was a huge deception for Israel. And, God borrows the mouth of a prophet to make his case, no matter how unconvincing it was to Israel, because Israel already had its mind made up that God was unjust to have allowed the exile to take place. After all, an invisible God, a Spirit-God, is simply incapable of comprehending human beings and feeling pains.
The explanation of God, in our first reading, bears a lot of lessons for human relationship with God—resilience and fidelity. Isaiah says: “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back. I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting”. The imageries of “tongue,” “weariness,” rebellion,” “back,” “cheeks,” and “spittle” all bear the hallmark of the experiences of Israel in slavery in Egypt and the treatment the Israelites meted out to God on their way to the Promised-Land. When they cried to God, in Egypt, he heard them, and liberated them from servitude to the Egyptians: “Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert” (Isaiah 50:2). The reward God received from the Israelites immediately after liberation from Egypt were complaints, seditions and infidelity. Even now, today’s reading, that they are on their way back to the land of Israel from Babylon—it is another déjà vu! Do human beings ever learn?
If anything, God’s consistency speaks volumes—he saves despite all. Isaiah reassures us of God’s fidelity and unconditional love: “The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame”. Salvation, from all circumstances, belongs to God. Human complaints do not hijack God’s salvation, because it is in his nature to save. Little wonder he speaks through a prophet, whose name means God-saves (Isaiah). But does it make any difference? Will human beings ever understand God?
“Crucify him,” in today’s Passion reading, is the verdict meted out to God, when he became one of us—human. Haven refused to listen to and understand the workings of an invisible God, a spirit-God, he took flesh to live among us, still the complaint was that Israel was insecure with his presence: “It is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to be destroyed” (John 11:50; 18:14). “Jesus” —God-saves— as the Son of God fared worse than Isaiah: he was killed. Our gospel today narrates the pain, humiliation and death of God. Yet, do we really think that God cares? That COVID-19 is the work of God, when he opts to suffer and die for human beings, innocent though he was? Do human beings learn anything from God?
Indeed, all his disciples ran away at the approach of those who arrested Jesus; Judas led the executioners to arrest Jesus. Although he was God-man, Jesus was spat upon, took many a beating, Peter denounced him, God his Father was nowhere to be found! As a matter of fact, our responsorial Psalm says it all: “My God, my God, why has thou abandoned me!” In spite of this, Jesus refused to confront violence with violence, while acknowledging that his Father would send armies to defend him, had he requested it. Jesus ordered Peter to re-sheath his sword, while he healed the ear of the person Peter chopped off. What more could God have done to escape the human blame-game for every ill and trial, not least, COVID-19?
There are many explanations for “evil” or whatever we consider unpleasant. Paul, in our second reading, uses the events of Christ’s life to teach us what our response to “evil” should be, if we are Christians: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave . . . becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”. The point is whether human beings would leave God in the driving seat of their lives. When all is well, not many remember God, but we ask his whereabouts when things don’t add up. We are selective in our criticism of him; his example doesn’t make it to our imitation list.
Tell me about it! Divorce is on the increase, as COVID-19 recedes in China. The survivors of Coronavirus are navigating and piecing together whatever is left of their lives. The threat of death is out the window, economic needs top the scale of preference; our mortality is threatened differently, by different circumstances. How true, when the music changes, the dance follows suit. But what will be the preoccupation of the residents of other countries, when COVID-19 is behind them? Do human beings ever learn the lesson of life?
“Crucify him” is the human parting gift to God-man, Jesus, who carried their diseases, raised their dead, walked on the sea, and stilled their storms. “Crucify him” was the reward Jesus received for multiplying bread for the hungry to eat, taking the side of the poor against their oppressors, for restoring the dignity of prostitutes, women, tax collectors and sinners. “Crucify him” was the last hymn to Jesus, before whom demons convulsed, cringed and vamoosed, but human beings crucified him pitilessly! What a God, and what a humanity!