MEDITATION DELIVERED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
GOOD FRIDAY 2006

 

 
"He was numbered among the transgressors."  (Isaiah 53:12)
 
 
When I was rector of St. Monica's, Washington, in the 70s, I observed the same church-hopping ritual almost every Good Friday for nine years.  Since our principal Good Friday liturgy was in the evening, we had a short service of Stations of the Cross at noon.  Immediately after that, I drove across town to the Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes to make my confession.  After being duly shriven (my confessor, Father Meisel, always added to the absolution the words "Go in peace; the Lord has put away all your sins" and "Pray for me, a sinner, too") I jumped into my car again and went a few more blocks west to St. Luke's Church, for the last hour or so of their Three Hour service.  That was just fine with me, because it was during this final hour that St. Luke's renowned choir, in a tradition dating back some thirty or forty years, sang "The Seven Last Words of Christ"  by Theodore Du Bois. It is a sublime piece of music, which we shall hear presently, but I have always been especially drawn to the tenor solo of the Second Word, in which Jesus, hanging from the Cross, says to the thief "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
 
These words come at the end of a fascinating conversation.  The two thieves  --- the KJV calls them "malefactors" (funny how "benefactors" has survived modern English but "malefactors" has not) --- are arguing with Jesus.  In Luke's Gospel, one of them taunts Jesus, saying, in effect, "If you are the wonderful miracle-working Messiah, why don't you save yourself, and us, while you're at it?"  The other malefactor, a bit more humble and perhaps somewhat more theologically astute, tells the other thief that he should be ashamed of himself even to think such thoughts, since the two of them had been justly condemned, whereas Jesus is faultless.  He ends his discourse with the entreaty: "Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom," and it is to this plea that Jesus responds: "Verily, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
 
The fact that Jesus spent his dying hours in the company of thieves should not surprise us.  The fact that Jesus endured a method of execution reserved for common criminals should not surprise us.  The fact that the man called the Prince of Peace would have his last conversation on earth with men who had been found guilty of violent deeds should not surprise us.  The fact that Jesus, who began his ministry preaching in the Temple on a hill within the walled city of Jerusalem, now ends his earthly ministry on a hill, which one hymn reminds us is "far away" and another reminds us is "without a city wall," because Crucifixion was too ugly a thing to take place within the sacred precincts of the city --- should not surprise us.  Jesus, who spent much of his short life scandalizing the establishment because he cavorted with tax collectors, prostitutes and other low-life, now endures the ignominy of a slow and painful death in the company of  bandits.
 
How different we are from Jesus.  We seem to be obsessed with making sure we are in "good" company.  My first home was in a Brooklyn brownstone also inhabited by various members of the extended Lewis clan.  My paternal grandmother would periodically quiz me about whom I was playing with, where they lived, and who their parents were.  What as a child I took as the idle curiosity of an old woman, was in fact, a serious probe into social standing.  We are told that in big cities like New York, certain parents believe that the ultimate success of their children, both academic and social, depends on the pre-school to which they will be admitted, and the application process begins soon after conception, lining up references, making sure the parents sit on the "right" philanthropic boards, so that they may be deemed worthy of forking over $25,000 in tuition for their three-year old.  After that, life is a quest for the right schools, the right job, the right spouse, and, in some circles, even the right church, all of which win approbation from our peers.
 
Often, disapproval from our peers is earned when we dare to associate with, advocate for or befriend those deemed to be less worthy.  Virginia Durr is hardly a household name.  Her role in history was a walk-on part, but like many walk-on parts, a significant one. She was a wealthy white woman from the upper crust of society in Montgomery, Alabama.  She associated with the "right" people, wore her grandmother's pearls at her debutante ball, and married a successful attorney.  But she earned a footnote in history when, fifty years ago, she and Mr. Durr went to the Montgomery Jail and posted bail for Rosa Parks.  From that moment on, she was shunned by the society that had produced her, and her husband lost his practice.
 
William Sloane Coffin, the activist chaplain of Yale University who later became senior pastor at New York's Riverside Church, died this past week.  A man who traced his ancestry to the Mayflower, he ran afoul of the establishment when he questioned the morality of the Vietnam War and when he was arrested in civil rights demonstrations in the South.  He offended many people when he said from the Yale Chapel pulpit something totally consonant with Jesus' theology: "Every minister is given two roles, the priestly and the prophetic.  The prophetic role is the disturber of the peace, to bring the minister himself, the congregation, and entire moral order some judgment."
 
Like it or not, our Crucified Lord was not a member of the religious establishment.  He was not politically connected, and certainly not politically correct.  He was not one of the good, upstanding people who were the pillars of the community.  My Grandmother Miriam might not have approved of the people he played with.  Rather, Jesus was, as the Prophet Isaiah foretold, "numbered among the transgressors."  Moreover, he died, exposed to the common gaze, on a splintery cross.
 
"Old and rugged" the Cross may be. Nevertheless, we sing "In the cross of Christ I glory." Nevertheless, we sing, "Old and rugged" the Cross may be' yet we sing, "My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross."  The real challenge of Good Friday is to make a transition from being like Malefactor #1, who could see no power in a weak, exhausted man on the Cross, to Malefactor #2, who saw the Cross as a throne, and the dying Lord as King, who could say with confidence, "Verily I say unto thee, today, thou shalt be with me in Paradise."