8/3/26
Lent 3
Instruments of Resurrection - The Lance.
During this Lent, we are offering some homilies under the theme of ‘Instruments of resurrection’. We are beginning to discover that the most unlikely, commonplace, mundane things are actually instruments of resurrection. We discovered last week in our reflection on the hammer and nails that God can even use the implements of suffering and death as instruments of His resurrection.
Today’s reflection is on the lance that a soldier used to pierce Jesus’ side on Calvary.
But I want to begin our reflection in a different place and a different time.
The place is Wimmera Base Hospital. The date is July 22nd 2008. The time is 5:20 am. My father has suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage and has died. The nurse on duty astutely walks that delicate line between being compassionate and being professional. She courteously explains that there are a couple of minor procedures that have to be done to confirm my father's death. A doctor arrives, obviously dragged out of heavy slumber. First, a gentle light shines on my father's eyes. Then the stethoscope is used to make sure that there is no heartbeat.
I have been privileged to watch this procedure many times, and I guess if you were looking for a catchphrase to describe what is going on, you would call it ‘proof of death’ as opposed to proof of life. And I want to come back to my father's proof of death at the end of this homily.
Today I want to reflect on the lance that pierced Jesus’ side.
The story goes that to bury a corpse on the Sabbath day is breaking the Sabbath law and doing work. Our Lord died on a Friday, and so the Jewish leaders of the day did not want the bodies to remain on the cross but to be taken down by sundown.
To make sure that the criminals were really, truly, truly dead, soldiers were sent forth to break the legs of Jesus and the two criminals. Breaking the legs fast-tracks the process of crucifixion. The soldiers break the legs of the two criminals; however, when they get to Jesus, they discover that he is already dead; but just to be sure… (no funny business, the Romans were sensational at this death business), a lance is used to pierce Jesus’ side. Blood and water flow out, and proof of death is displayed for all to see. It cannot have been glossy and glitzy. In fact, it must have been a rather grisly and gruesome sight.
So for the soldiers and for us, the lance is the proof of death, and therefore it is vital for our own personal death and resurrection. Yours and mine.
Flip the argument over from the other side…
If Jesus was just pretending to die. Just sort of held his breath and somehow managed to survive and get out of the tomb, then somehow break out of the tomb, then our Christian faith doesn’t address our mortality.
God would not have made death Holy, the grave holy; he would not have embraced my own death and taken it into himself. The soldier’s lance is the proof of The Master's clinical, authentic, physical death, so that when I die a clinical, authentic, physical death…. I can also enjoy an authentic physical resurrection. The lance is like the modern-day torch in the eyes and stethoscope on the chest.
Something else the nurse also said, which has stayed with me for the last couple of decades.
‘Well, Rob, I don’t know where you are now, but you aren’t here.’
It was compassionately said, and they are wise and helpful words.
It tells death as it is, but it also gives hope. The life Rob enjoyed was no longer with us in the way that we had known him, but that doesn’t mean it was over altogether. It was just that the life he was living was being lived somewhere else in another dimension, in another way. Thus I could pray…
Lord Jesus Christ, by the three days you lay in the tomb, you sanctified the grave to be a bed of hope of resurrection.
Grant that when we lie in our own grave, we may sleep in peace until that glorious day when you awaken us to your glory.
Then we shall see you face to face and in your light we shall see light and know your splendour, for you live forever and ever Amen.