I thought that I had accepted the realities of life. I was startled, therefore, in church a few Sundays ago, to find myself engulfed with anger because of the human condition. To be precise, I was sad because of the illness of a loved one, and angry because we all suffer and age and die. I was asking the question that has been asked for millennia (and which has often been asked since September 11): why didn’t the all-powerful God arrange things differently?
Then I looked around me at the assembled faithful, who, if they were not in pain at the moment, would at some time in their lives have to suffer deeply. Each one was at that moment happy or sad, healthy or sick, at ease or in pain; they were all sinful; they were every one of them headed toward death — and they were all amazingly beautiful. In fact, an essential part of their beauty seemed to me to be their mortality — or rather our mortality — and our participation in the death of Jesus.
I suppose this loveliness shouldn’t have surprised me, because we share our mortality with the Son of God. I am reminded of a quote from The Chess Garden, a remarkable novel by Brooks Hansen:
…when a Christian observes the crucifixion either in the Word, in church, or, if he should be so lucky, in the moment that contains him — he sees something beautiful, and blessed and necessary and sanctifying, for there on the cross he recognizes God, and there on the cross God recognizes him. . . . [God] continues to recognize the nature of our condition, through Christ. He continues to see that we are crucified here, and we continue to see that He is crucified here as well. So we are understood, so we are welcomed to Him, so we are forgiven. (p 433)
May we have eyes to see the beauty of the crucified Christ, and the loveliness of our participation in the mystery of his death and resurrection.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
(Psalm 90:17 KJV)