a series of reflections based on this online stations of the cross
At the center of our faith practice is the sacrament of Communion, where we extend our hands as we hear the words “the body of Christ, given for you…the blood of Christ shed for you.” While the scene of Jesus’ physical suffering is often the most gruesome in movies, it’s often the most sanitized in our daily faith life. I can extend my hand and receive a wafer, or a small piece of tasty bread. I can extend my hand and taste a drop of wine or grape juice. The body and blood of Christ don’t taste too bad, if you ask me!
But Jesus is stripped of his garments. And somehow (in ways I’m still trying to figure out how to articulate), his physical vulnerability is part of what makes his act on the cross redemptive. The narrator for this station points us to a verse:
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him…
(Col. 1:21-22)
This concept of reconciliation happening through the fleshiness of Jesus’ suffering is hard to understand. I have heard of communities that take this idea of Jesus’ human suffering so literally that on Good Friday they cause themselves equal physical suffering through self-whipping. I don’t think that’s what Paul or Jesus are talking about.
There’s something important about the fact that Jesus’ suffering was a physical suffering. It wasn’t just a metaphorical or spiritual suffering. He took on the brokenness in the world in his body. He was stripped of his garments. He did not protect himself from vulnerability and shame. He did not stop the suffering when it got too personal.
I don’t quite understand what it means to be reconciled IN HIS FLESHLY BODY, and I’m not exactly sure I understand how what Jesus went through really changes things between me and God. But there is something deeply profound about someone who does not deserve it giving himself over to being stripped of his garments and all that comes with that. Something is going on there.