March 31, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
That Loud Cry
Rev. Loren McGrail
The Passion of Jesus Service
Holmdel Community United Church of Christ
March 29, 2024
What Our Lord Saw from the Cross by James Tissot
Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
Mark 15: 37
Dear Ones, this evening I am going to do something I have never done before. I am going to center my Message to you not on the Word---not something Jesus said, but on a sound, his last sound, a loud cry. In other Gospels, Jesus utters, “It is finished.” In Mark we have only this loud wordless cry.
Mark, the first Gospel writer, believes Jesus died of suffocation, while using his last strength to gather all his energy to give one last outburst. With that, he breathed his last breath. He died fully conscious, alert, and alive.
Jesus, the Human One, continued to show us the way of nonviolence, did he not? He didn’t raise his voice to defend himself against his persecutors, either the Roman occupiers or the Temple Elite or even God, his Father. Jesus had always lived a life of total nonviolent resistance.
Catholic theologian and activist, John Dear, believes that Jesus, with his last breath, was leaving us with one last gift, one last act of protest against the world of killing, war, and empire. Dear says that Jesus gathered every last ounce of strength, took one last deep breath, and instead of dying quietly, burst out with a loud cry.
Dear Ones, after all his teachings, parables, commandments, beatitudes and blessings, Jesus cried out loudly for all to hear. Jesus challenged the empire and its injustices and paid the price knowingly and willingly. The cross was chosen not foreordained by God. Jesus did not die for our sins rather because of them. Jesus died loving and forgiving even the ones that executed him. Because the Human One did this, so can we. He modeled how to die just like he modeled how to live.
Dear Ones, I invite you to hear the loud cry of the crucified nonviolent Jesus. Where do we hear it tonight? I hear it in the cry of the poor and oppressed throughout history and throughout the world; in the victims of all wars, injustices, and empires; in the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from Auschwitz and Dresden to Vietnam and Central America, to Haiti, the Sudan, and Gaza. I hear it in our school children hiding under their desks hoping not to be shot at. In that loud cry, I hear Jesus begging us to wake up, reject the insanity of violence, become nonviolent, and turn with compassion toward others and welcome God's reign of shalom. I hear the guttural pain and desperation which is strong enough to rip the Temple’s veil in two, separating the holy of holies from humanity. I hear the rip and take in that there is nothing now that separates us from God’s love.
Jesus, like a mother hen, gathers the cries of all the world’s poor and oppressed people; the marginalized and the bullied; the discriminated and exploited. His last breath was/is their cry. Listen to this prayer from the Corrymela Community about the repetition of Jesus’ death and the hope for a renewed humanity.
God of nailed flesh,
God of finished breaths:
the death of Jesus is repeated
in countless ways each day
as our inhumanity is marked
by our cruelty to others.
May this day be for us
a death to that life.
May the day then dawn
of a renewed humanity:
one that truly bears your image
in its flesh;
one that breathes with a spirit
of your undying love.
Amen.
This Good Friday I also hear in that loud cry the last breaths of the creatures we are killing off, and all the weeping trees that give us oxygen so we can breathe. I hear the icebergs melting, the polar’s stomachs rumbling for food. I hear in that cry the silence of thousands of species that are no longer.
Dear Ones, as you hear his loud cry, let your hearts be broken open and disarmed so you can surrender to the God of peace your repentance for your participation, your complicity, your silence. When we choose to listen to the cries we are following Jesus’ last cry. Let us become then people of the loud cry, resisters of death and children of nonviolence. Let all who have compassionate hearts and ears to hear: “the killing must end. The violence stops here, in his body, in our bodies now.”