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Father,
Into Your Hands I Commend My Spirit
The
Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor
Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy
Piedmont College
Demorest, Georgia
According
to Luke, Jesus' dying was not only painful to him. It was also painful to the
whole creation, which twisted and gasped in its own way as he did on the cross.
As his light began to go out, darkness came over the whole land. The sun hid
its face and for three hours the world lay sleepless through this unnatural
night as Jesus' breath grew shallower and shallower. Finally there was the
sound of something ripping--a cloth, a shroud, the sky itself?--followed by
a loud voice from the cross: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Then
he let out his last breath and every creature left alive learned the meaning
of silence.
For Luke, Jesus' last words are not a cry of abandonment but a giving
of himself back into the hands that made him. At an ordinary funeral,
this is called the
commendation. The officiant stands near the body and commends the person who
has died to God. "Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed
rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light."
There was no one to do that for Jesus, which may have been why he did it for
himself. He was the rabbi at his own funeral, and at least some of those who
heard it were scandalized. He had no business commending himself to God. He
was a blasphemer, a heretic, who had presumed upon God's name and trespassed
on God's sovereignty. That was why he was being put to death, and scripture
was very clear about people like him. According to the book of Deuteronomy,
When
someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death
and
is executed, and you hang him on a tree,
his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree;
you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under
God's curse. --Deuteronomy 21.22-23
He was
under God's curse, which rendered his last words absurd. How could
he commend himself to the God he had defied? It was as if a murderer
were commending himself to the family of the person he had murdered,
or a traitor were commending himself to the ruler he had betrayed.
As far as the authorities were concerned, this was no funeral service,
with time out for the dying person's last delusion. It was an execution,
for God's sake, at which the prisoner ought to have been gagged.
But the prisoner was not gagged, and by saying what he did, he shifted the
entire context of his death. Until he said it, it looked to everyone as if
his life were being taken away from him. His perverse religious cult had been
stopped. His sinful scheme had failed. He was on the receiving end of the worst
punishment the empire knew how to inflict, which should have made him their
victim.
But by saying what he did, he took himself out of their hands. By commending
himself to the God whose enemy they said he was, he redefined what was happening
to him. He gave away what they thought they were taking away from him, and
the whole scene lost its balance. One moment there was a tug of war going on
between the good guys and the bad guy. The next moment Jesus simply opened
his hands and those who thought they had him nailed fell right on top of each
other.
Thus Jesus introduced us to the shocking power of sacrifice, which can turn
something that looks for all the world like loss into something that feels
for all the world like gain. According to Frederick Buechner, "To sacrifice
something is to make it holy by giving it away for love." Even if someone
is trying to pry it out of your hands. Even if those standing around you laugh
and shout that you have no choice, you have a choice. You can still decide
how you will let go. You can still open your hands at the last moment and give
up what others thought they were taking from you. You can even make it holy
by doing it for love.
This miracle can happen anywhere, at any time. Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl
says he even saw it in the Nazi death camps, where people were made to stand
in line for the ovens. Even there, he says, he watched them exercise choice--some
of them turning into wild animals in their fear, while others ministered tenderly
to those around them.
They all suffered, and they were about to suffer more, but some of them would
not allow the punishment being inflicted on them to become the meaning of their
lives. Even there, with so few choices left, they reserved the right to make
their own meaning--and the meaning was what they made out of what was happening
to them. It was how they stood there. It was whom they loved while they stood
there. It was what they said before they died.
Copyright ©2000
Barbara Brown Taylor.
An earlier
version of this sermon appeared in Home By Another Way (Cowley
1999).
This homily
was delivered at the Lenten
Noonday Preaching Series at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee,
on April 21, 2000.
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