Sermon 3/17/13
Isaiah 53:1-7
New Arrangements: O Sacred Head Now Wounded
O Sacred Head Now Wounded is a very old hymn, the oldest
of any that we’ve looked at during this season of Lent. The hymn is based on an
ancient poem – written in probably the 13th century, possibly by
Arnulf of Leuven, a medieval poet, abbot of a Cistercian Abbey in Belgium,
ascetic, although the poem’s authorship is not totally clear. The original
poem, called Salve Mundi Salutare, Hail, Salvation of the World, in Latin, was
a tribute to the parts of the body of Christ – starting with his feet, then
knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and finally, his face. The poem was divided into
seven cantos, or sections, with each section focusing on a different part,
ending with the head of Christ. This last section became the inspiration for
the hymn we know today. Listen to the translation of the Latin of this canto:
Hail, bleeding Head of Jesus, hail to Thee! Thou thorn-crowned Head, I
humbly worship Thee! O wounded Head, I lift my hands to Thee; O lovely Face
besmeared, I gaze on Thee; O bruised and livid Face, look down on me!
Hail, beauteous Face of Jesus, bent on me, Whom angel choirs adore
exultantly! Hail, sweetest Face of Jesus, bruised for me-- Hail, Holy One,
whose glorious Face for me Is shorn of beauty on that fatal Tree!
All strength, all freshness, is gone forth from Thee: What wonder! Hath
not God afflicted Thee, And is not death himself approaching Thee? O Love! But
death hath laid his touch on Thee, And faint and broken features turn to me.
O have they thus maltreated Thee, my own? O have they Thy sweet Face
despised, my own? And all for my unworthy sake, my own! O in Thy beauty turn to
me, my own; O turn one look of love on me, my own!
In this Thy Passion, Lord, remember me; In this Thy pain, O Love,
acknowledge me; The honey of whose lips was shed on me, The milk of whose
delights hath strengthened me Whose sweetness is beyond delight for me!
Despise me not, O Love; I long for Thee; Condemn me not, unworthy
though I be; But now that death is fast approaching Thee, Incline Thy Head, my
Love, my Love, to me, To these poor arms, and let it rest on me!
The holy Passion I would share with Thee, And in Thy dying love rejoice
with Thee; Content if by this Cross I die with Thee; Content, Thou knowest,
Lord, how willingly Where I have lived to die for love of Thee.
For this Thy bitter death all thanks to Thee, Dear Jesus, and Thy
wondrous love for me! O gracious God, so merciful to me, Do as Thy guilty one
entreateth Thee, And at the end let me be found with Thee!
When from this life, O Love, Thou callest me, Then, Jesus, be not
wanting unto me, But in the dreadful hour of agony, O hasten, Lord, and be Thou
nigh to me, Defend, protect, and O deliver me.
When Thou, O God, shalt bid my soul be free, Then, dearest Jesus, show
Thyself to me! O condescend to show Thyself to me,-- Upon Thy saving Cross,
dear Lord, to me,-- And let me die, my Lord, embracing Thee! (1)
The poem,
a song a loving thanksgiving for the gift of Christ’s life to us, went through
several variations and translations, and eventually versions of the hymn began
to focus just on the section meditating on Christ’s head. The first English
translation of the hymn appeared in 1752, and the version we know and sing
today is closest to an 1830 translation by the American Presbyterian minister
James Waddel Alexander.
Our scripture text today is from Isaiah 53, one we will
hear again on Good Friday. It, too, is a poem, or song, and like our hymn for
today, it focuses on the suffering of a messiah. The reading is the last of
four poems found in Isaiah (40-55) which are known as Servant Songs because
each speaks of a “servant” of God and the people. I don’t know what Isaiah was
imagining, exactly, when he penned these words, but Jesus spoke of himself as
fulfilling Isaiah’s words, as did the apostles. Surely he has borne our
infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck
down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed
for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his
bruises we are healed. In Acts, when the apostle Philip happens upon an Ethiopian
eunuch reading these words from Isaiah 53, Philip tells him that this suffering
servant was Jesus.
I will admit to you that I’m not one who often focuses on
the suffering of Jesus on the cross as the most important part of Jesus’ life,
Jesus’ message to us. When the movie The
Passion of the Christ came out nearly 10 years ago now, I was troubled by
the reaction to it, the acclaim surrounding it, and it took me some time to
figure out why. The gift of Jesus’ life to us on the cross is not the gift of
Jesus suffering, not the gift of him
experiencing more pain than anyone else ever has. His death isn’t about the manner of his death. Unfortunately, our
human condition is such that the suffering we’ve inflicted on one another seems
to know no depths, and many have experienced pain beyond our imagining. Jesus’
suffering is not a unique gift to us, experienced by no other. It’s not that
Jesus suffered, but that Jesus suffered. Do you hear the
difference? The point is not that Jesus experienced suffering, but that Jesus experienced suffering. Our God,
rather than being too awesome, too high and mighty to get hands dirty, to mix
with us, to go through the trivialities of human life with us, our God became
one of us, and Jesus, God-in-the-flesh,
suffered, like us, for us, with us.
I’m
reminded of a Robin Williams movie called What
Dreams May Come that came out when I was in college. I don’t want to outline the whole plot, but basically, in this
artistic fantasy of a movie, a man and his children have died, and they find
themselves in a beautiful heaven, created of their hopes and dreams and
imagination. When the wife and mother dies, though, her grief, even in death,
prevents her from joining her children. The husband, Robin Williams’ character,
finds her, and tries to bring her back to the beautiful heaven he’s been
experiencing, but she cannot be comforted. He can’t pull her out of her
despair. Finally, at a loss, he decides that if he can’t take her out of her
sadness, he must join her in it, and he sits down to weep with her. Suddenly,
his wife is freed from the prison her mind has created, and she can join her
husband and children in the paradise that awaits. Theologically, the movie
makes a lot of claims I disagree with. But I find that pivotal scene so
compelling – it is only by joining her, sitting with his wife, experiencing the
pain and sorrow that she’s experiencing, that she can, in turn, finally
experience the freedom he knows.
We speak
of Jesus as our savior, one who sets us free. Truly, he is. But I think
sometimes, we are waiting for Jesus to rescue us out of our lives, to come and
snatch us up and away from the trials we face, the suffering, the pain, the
confusion, the struggles, the challenges. I think we especially are waiting for
that when we personally or as a community try to make sense of senseless
violent acts, of the heartache that we experience right in our midst. I think
we’re waiting for God to intercede in some supernatural way, take us away from
it all. It’s beyond our understanding, but that kind of rescue plan isn’t
enough. It doesn’t go deep enough. It doesn’t really free us from anything! Jesus
saving us that way – that doesn’t transform our hearts and souls. That doesn’t
make us into the new creations God promises. And like the wife in the movie,
grieving, I don’t think we’d really believe in that kind of rescue, something
that snatched us up out of our lives. Instead, Jesus saves us by coming to sit
beside us, walk beside us, suffer and rejoice beside us. God saves us by
becoming one of us.
Most of
you know that I've been rehearsing these past several weeks to be in our local
production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
This is something I’ve wanted to do for the past twenty years, since the first
time I saw Superstar on stage. It has
always been more than a musical for me – it was an avenue, as a teenager, for
exploring my faith, deepening my relationship with God, because seeing the
events of Holy Week unfold on stage made the gospels come alive for me. I
wanted to be a part of it. I wondered how I would react if I had been there,
where I would have been in the crowd. Now, being in the show, I have to wrestle
with the strangeness of starting out as a townsperson who is cheering Jesus on,
and ending up as someone yelling for his crucifixion. What I find most
compelling, though, is watching the actor playing Jesus bring Jesus to life on
stage. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that this is the same actor I had a crush on
as a teenager that started my love of Superstar
to begin with!) As “Jesus” walks through the crowds, whether looking at people
who are singing his praise, or people who are begging for healing, or people
who are betraying, denying, and deserting him, or people who are sentencing him
to death, I see eyes full of compassion, a drive to make us understand and
believe God’s love for us. And I find myself again learning from this story, as
I understand a little better how Christ saves
us by becoming one of us.
Incarnation
– what we emphasize at Christmas – God becoming one of us – isn’t just the gift
of Christmas. I think that God-with-us is what we experience in the cross, too.
God, who became one of us, who would suffer for us, who would sit with us,
experience it all with us. Understanding that gift to us is what made the
prophet Isaiah write the Servants Songs, write of the Suffering Servant, the
text we heard today. Understanding that gift to us is what made Arnulf of Leuven
write a poem, meditating on the passion of Christ, what made hymnists over
centuries write and rewrite the hymn we study today.
Our task goes beyond understanding, or
beginning to understand, how God reaches us by becoming one of us. We are
called to do likewise. So often, when we try to reach others – when we try to
help people through struggles, when we try to serve, when we try to give, when
we try to be in mission and ministry, we forget to follow the example of Jesus.
We try to reach down, and pull others up, make them like us. We try to make
ministry and service something we offer to
others, a gift from someone with power to someone without, even when our
intentions are the best. Jesus calls us to be in ministry with, to serve with, to experience life with each other, as we are
one in the body of Christ, part of one another. Are you willing to sit down
beside someone, and be with them in their pain? In their struggles? So that
when they rejoice you can be truly with them in joy?
But he
was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was
the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. O sacred
head, now wounded. Amen.
(1)
http://www.cin.org/bernard.html
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