By Rev Omar Gonzalez
I have always loved the classic story written by Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”. The narrator tells us at the very beginning a crucial point, that Old Marley was dead. This was attested to by the clergy, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner, and even Ebeneezer Scrooge had signed it, and his word was as good as it gets. The reason that the narrator gives is that “nothing wonderful can come of the story if we are not convinced that Old Marley was dead as a door nail”.
The “Solemn Reproaches” and Good Friday share something in common with Dicken's Christmas Carol, perhaps these could be called a Good Friday Carol. Because likewise, we could begin with the same introduction. When we begin understand these Solemn Reproaches something wonderful and good can come from this day, which is why its called “Good Friday”.
In Dicken's “A Christmas Carol”, old dead Marley sends three ghosts to visit his business partner Ebeneezer Scrooge. Scrooge who is known for his selfishness, his cruelty, his cold hearted inhumanity, had unwittingly forged an invisible chain, much bigger than the chain that his partner had forged in his life. His business partner Marley explains the chain to Scrooge, “I made it link by link, and yard by yard, I girded it on my own free will and of my own free will I wore it." Scrooge naturally recoils and wants to avoid at all cost gazing on either the ghosts, chains, or the specter of death. Yet Scrooge is told that he would be visited by three specters.
It is a normal human response to recoil at the reproaches as well. I fear that there are too many a Christian who wants to bypass the cross of Golgotha on the way to the victory of Easter. Scrooge has this very reaction to the presence of the ghost that visits him next, when he admits that “he had a special desire to see the Spirit be capped, diminishing the light it provided, “What”! Explained the ghost, “would you so soon put out with worldly hands the light I give?” “Is it not enough that you are the one whose passions made this cap and force me through the train of years to wear it low upon my brow!” When scrooge asks what brought the ghost to see him, the ghosts states, “Your welfare... Your reclamation”.
Likewise the “Solemn Reproaches” are given to us as a gift from the church, from our ancestors for our reclamation and for our welfare. They are an ancient text in Christianity with the ending for a Good Friday service. The reproaches follow the pattern set forth in Psalm 78, which rehearses God's acts of faithful in the light of Israel's continued rebellion. Each reproach follows this pattern, we read the loving acts of God followed by the unfaithful and cruel human response, and the words, “but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.” We respond with a prayer for mercy, “Lord, have mercy upon us.” The dark sorrows that we bear witness on Good Friday is the result of our sin.
The sin and evil that humanity visits on our siblings, the emptiness and darkness of what our work has wrought, the invisible chains that we have forged, or the chains that others have forged for us threaten to wrap strongly around us. These bind us, they oppress us, they wear us down. The sin and evil we have visited upon our neighbors, upon our world and upon God are the chains we forge for ourselves and others. Jesus entered into our world to be the breaker of those chains, to face the injustice of humanity and to forever put an end to this needless suffering.
Both the oppressed and the oppressors, those that are of broken by the cruelty of others, and those that inflect cruelty on the innocent, these are both groups that Jesus came to die for. There are so many people, very much like Scrooge, who care very little for the plight of others, and actively take advantage of them. Jesus came to face this evil, and in doing so, gave us everything that he had, his very life. So, Jesus says to us, “I have given you everything, I came to bring healing, to give you words of life, I fed you with the bread of heaven, I showed you my presence in and among your world and in yourselves, I showed you a different way to live”. Yet, how have we responded? “We crucified the very one that was so good and gentle among us”. The one that gave of his very being, we rejected.
Yet, if the reproaches show us anything, they show us God's immeasurable grace. Because it is into this world of pain and suffering that God enters with us and for us “he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, despised and rejected, a person of suffering, and acquainted with grief. Such was the love that God had for us, the Great Mystery that God came into our broken world to redeem, to free, to reconcile and transform. God didn't remain uninvolved, but came into a world in which he lost his only son, a part of his own Self, given for the love and for the sake of humanity, for our freedom and restoration.
The Reproaches have this same unique ability to transform. They come to us as a gift. What appears to Scrooge to be something horrible becomes in reality the means of his salvation and transformation, the means of grace in our sacramental language of the church. Scrooge understands his business only in a worldly manner, but the ghosts come to change his way of thinking, to show him a new way of being. Where Scrooge believed himself to be a good man of business, the ghost cries, “business?” “Humanity was our business, the common welfare was our business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all our business, the dealing of our trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of our business.”
Scrooge opens his cold closed heart to the message of the Spirits and recognizes that another reality is possible. So likewise we are invited to open our hearts to the Solemn Reproaches. When we as both victims and victimizers, the hurt and those hurting others, when in our humanity, when we see both the consequences of our actions, and the loving response of our savior, we too experience a resurrection and a transformation. Like old Scrooge in the final scene, who leaps out of bed, his eyes wet with tears, a hearty laugh of joy in his belly, his is the realization that its never too late to experience new life. We are invited into this new life that breaks with the the dawn of Easter morning. A new possibility of living in the grace of God that brings healing to ourselves, to our neighbor, to our enemies, to our world.
May we linger at the cross this Good Friday, hear and read the reproaches, gaze upon the wounds of our savior, not to wallow in self pity, despair or in false guilt but to recognize just how valuable and loved we are. May we marvel at God's transforming incarnational love, the kind of love that got involved, that cared, that entered into a hurting world, and that now calls to us and sends us into the same world rejoicing and bearing the body of the living and resurrected Christ, into a new Easter Morning as our eyes greet the rising son.
Take a minute to read through these reproaches carefully, thoughtfully and prayerfully.
SolEMN REPROACHES OF THE CROSS -
O my people, O my church,
What have I done to you,
or in what have I offended you?
Answer me.
I led you forth from the land of Egypt
and delivered you by the waters of baptism,
but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
I led you through the desert forty years,
and fed you with manna:
I brought you through tribulation and penitence,
and gave you my body, the bread of heaven,
but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
What more could I have done for you
that I have not done?
I planted you, my chosen and fairest vineyard,
I made you the branches of my vine;
but when I was thirsty, you gave me vinegar to drink
and pierced with a spear the side of your Savior,
and you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
I went before you in a pillar of cloud,
and you have led me to the judgment hall of Pilate.
I scourged your enemies and brought you to a land of freedom,
but you have scourged, mocked, and beaten me.
I gave you the water of salvation from the rock,
but you have given me gall and left me to thirst,
and you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
I gave you a royal scepter,
and bestowed the keys to the kingdom,
but you have given me a crown of thorns.
I raised you on high with great power,
but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
My peace I gave, which the world cannot give,
and washed your feet as a sign of my love,
but you draw the sword to strike in my name
and seek high places in my kingdom.
I offered you my body and blood,
but you scatter and deny and abandon me,
and you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
I sent the Spirit of truth to guide you,
and you close your hearts to the Counselor.
I pray that all may be one in the Father and me,
but you continue to quarrel and divide.
I call you to go and bring forth fruit,
but you cast lots for my clothing,
and you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
I grafted you into the tree of my chosen Israel,
and you turned on them with persecution and mass murder.
I made you joint heirs with them of my covenants
but you made them scapegoats for your own guilt,
and you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
I came to you as the least of your brothers and sisters;
I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me,
naked and you did not clothe me,
sick and in prison and you did not visit me,
and you have prepared a cross for your Savior.
Lord, have mercy.
