Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA GOOD FRIDAY, 2007

"But the tunic was without seam, woven from top to bottom." (John 19:23)


Every profession has its perks. The salespeople at Whole Foods, I am sure, get to buy all the delectable goodies offered at that emporium at a discount. Flight attendants who work for USAir get free travel for themselves and their families. In ancient Palestine, the Roman guards assigned to crucifixion detail also had a fringe benefit. In appreciation for their gruesome work, exacerbated by the fact that they had to hang around for a long time in the noonday sun, there was a time-honored tradition that the guards got to keep the clothes belonging to the condemned criminals.

To understand John's account of the soldiers' dividing up Jesus' clothes, we must remember that people were usually crucified naked. The loincloth that is a standard feature on all depictions of the Crucifixion has been added as a concession to our own sense of modesty and decency. But the fact is that Jesus was exposed to the common gaze. It was considered part of the sense of humiliation and degradation of this severe form of execution which epitomized cruel and unusual treatment.

If Jesus' garments conformed to the normal mode of dress at the time, he would have been wearing a loincloth, an undergarment or tunic, an outer garment or cloak, a belt, a head covering and a pair of sandals. The soldiers apparently divided up most of these items, as equally as they could --- or perhaps according to their respective needs. The tunic, however, presented a problem, because, as St. John tells us, it "was seamless, woven from the top to the bottom." While not necessarily an intrinsically valuable item, it was rare, and suggested that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it, instead of sewing together disparate pieces of cloth, as would have been the normative method for a garment which, for the most part, would not even be seen. "They therefore said to one another, 'Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it will be.'"

Much has been said and written about this so-called "seamless robe of Christ," and why the Fourth Evangelist seems to pay so much attention to this detail. I would like to concentrate this afternoon of two interpretations. The first is that the garment is likened to the robe of the high priest, which by Levitical law, had to be seamless, and which the high priest was forbidden to tear. When others were "rending their garments" as a sign of penitence, the high priest's garment remained whole. The role of Jesus the High Priest is a theme which is central to the Epistle to the Hebrews. Is argument is that whereas the high priest enters the holy of holies once a year (on Yom Kippur) to offer up sacrifices on behalf of the people, Jesus the High Priest made on Calvary a once-and-for-all sacrifice, or, in the words of the canon of the mass, a "full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." What is more, Hebrews tells us, he was not only the priest who offered the sacrifice, he was the sacrifice. He is, as the great hymn reminds us, "both priest and victim in the Eucharistic feast." That "the veil of the Temple was rent in twain" is a reference to the fact that the Temple sacrifices were superseded by the sacrifice of Jesus.

I would like to think that the soldiers on crucifixion detail were not unmoved by Jesus' Crucifixion. Just as the penitent thief came to grips with his own sinfulness and was promised Paradise by Jesus, and just as the centurion came to believe, is it not possible that the guards sensed that this was no ordinary crucifixion, and that there was something sacred and inviolate about this seamless priestly robe?

The second theory is that the tunic woven from a single piece of cloth is symbolic of the unity of the church, the church which Jesus actually founds from the Cross in the very next verse when he commits his Mother and the Blessed Disciple to each other's care. The word for "church" is ekklesia, literally a community that has been called into being, and it is such a community that comes into existence at Jesus' behest when the disciple took Mary into his own home.

The unity of Christ's Church, alas, has been an ideal to which Jesus' followers have never realized. Somebody said that the difference between Europe and America is that in Europe, where the Roman Catholic Church dominates, people at variance with the church just leave it, and give up on organized religion all together. In America, where Protestantism holds sway, when people are dissatisfied by the church they belong to, they just start another one. There is even an apocryphal tale about the foot-washing Baptists, who split over a disagreement as to whether the foot-washer should wash and dry the believers' feet, or whether the drying function should be assigned to another disciple.

Such an approach to religion has seemed to permeate thinking about the faith even in high places. In his "Reflections on the Anglican Communion" issued last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, you may remember, pointed to the possibility that Anglicanism might have two tiers, made up of constituent and associate members respectively, depending on what people believe. This caused the Archbishop of Cape Town to decry the tendency of believers to look to schism as the only remedy for differences. As another prominent African churchman has said recently, "diversity is not the same as division."

Perhaps the soldiers saw in Christ's seamless robe a symbol of the church's wholeness, the church's catholicity, and decided that it should not be destroyed. Maybe they saw in it some healing power, as did the woman who touched its hem to receive the power of Jesus. It is amazing that although Christians have moved heaven and earth to find relics of the true Cross on which Christ was crucified, to recover the Holy Grail which he used at the Last Supper, and to preserve the Shroud of Turin which some believe to be Jesus' burial cloth, there has never been, to my knowledge, a search for the Seamless Robe, or a claim that it, or a shred of it, has ever been found. But stay tuned. Its discovery may be a sequel to the recent news that the box containing the bones of Jesus and his "family" has been found.

But I would be remiss if I suggested for a moment that our Christian faith depended on talismans or relics or lucky charms. If we are to recognize Christ as the eternal High Priest, and if we are committed to working toward the unity of the church of which his seamless robe is a symbol, we must make efforts to piece it back together even if we believe it is in tatters. About two weeks ago, I was at a luncheon at which five priests of this diocese, admittedly representing at least two disparate points of view about the possibility of unity, broke bread. It was a beginning, an inroad toward building up the Body of Christ, for which I am most grateful. Each of us, working out our own salvation, must find ways to restore Christ's church under his high priesthood to the seamlessness which he hoped for, a vision shared even by the soldiers at the foot of the Cross.

Let us pray. O wounded hands of Jesus, build in us thy new creation Our pride is dust, our vaunt is stilled, we wait thy revelation. O love that triumphs over loss, we bring our hearts before thy cross, To finish thy salvation. [The Hymnal 1982, 598]