Tenderness: the Other Side of the Passion

Today, Palm Sunday, marks the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, the place of his suffering and death.  He comes riding on a donkey, greeted by crowds waving palm branches and crying “Hosanna!”  This also marks our entrance into the place of suffering and death, into the sanctuary of Holy Week.  We, too, bear palms in our hands and cry “Hosanna!”  We do this year after year, knowing that our journey will take us through the darkest of valleys, but that this will give way to the triumph of our Lord and King over sin and death.

What strikes me about St Mark’s Passion, which we will hear today, is that, for all its starkness, the violence perpetrated against the Son of God is framed and infiltrated by scenes of exquisite tenderness.  These hints at the triumph over violence and death include the anointing at Bethany, the institution of the Eucharist and the deposition and burial.

Anointing
No sooner have we heard of the plotting of the chief priests to put Jesus to death, then this looming event is interpreted by a symbolic action.  The woman comes in with “an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard” (Mk 14:3).  Everything points to the preciousness of this object, its unique value.  Is it a symbol of herself – and in her, each one of us – her unique beauty and precious life presented to Christ as gift?  Is it Jesus himself, the unique Beloved of God, who is the precious object carried in with ceremony?  We are caught up in admiring it, in pondering its meaning and purpose, when abruptly she breaks the jar, destroying its beauty and function in the act of pouring out its contents.  We are shocked by what can only be called wasteful extravagance.

Jesus himself interprets the symbolic action, saying: “She has done what she could.  She has anticipated anointing my body for burial.” (Mk 14:8).  The woman – and we in her – anoints Jesus’ body with her life poured out.  Why anoint the dead, whether beforehand or afterwards?  Everything done for the dead goes into the earth or the fire and perishes.  It all comes to nothing, practically speaking.  But this is not a practical matter.  In matters of the heart, it is good to waste: perfumed oil, a life poured out.  She does what she can, not what she cannot.  She cannot prevent suffering and death, whether of Jesus or of others, but she can minister to his body with tenderness, and to that of others, wherever there is someone to be anointed.  She holds nothing back, even allowing the vessel to be broken as it is emptied.  Jesus, the precious jar of oil, is to be broken and poured out upon all those destined to die.  The memory of what this woman has done, of her symbolic action, will stay with us as we walk with Jesus to his death.  By it we will understand that the pouring out of his life is not a waste, but an anointing that will save us from death.

Eucharist
The Last Supper is a moment in which Jesus tenderly entrusts himself, his body and blood, to his disciples, even as they are about to abandon him.  No-one has been accused, no-one thrown out into the outer darkness.  His blood is poured out over deserters and deniers and traitors in wasteful extravagance.  But Jesus is at peace with this.  His eyes are on the kingdom, where he will drink new wine.  He is clear about what he is doing and for whom.  He knows that they will not stand up before temptation, and yet he entrusts himself to them, placing himself in their hands.  He trusts them, though they are untrustworthy, because he sees how he will make them trustworthy.

We too stand before him to receive his body, placed in our hands with tenderness.  We know how untrustworthy we are, and yet we are those to whom Jesus entrusts himself.  And we too are called to entrust ourselves.  We place our lives, tenderly, in his hand.  Dom Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, Abbot General of the Cistercians, brings this out:
“The Christian offering always has a Eucharistic nature, is always the placing of ourselves like bread and wine, or like the five loaves and two fish, into the hands of Christ the Redeemer, who unites us to his offering to the Father for the salvation of the world.” (Dom Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, OCist)
Can we do this when it means placing our life in the hands of others, who seem no more trustworthy than ourselves?  Can we give ourselves into the hands of this community, of this Church, of this world, as Jesus does?  Like the pouring out of oil, the giving of our life can feel like a waste, that we are not accomplishing anything by our so-called sacrifice.  Dom Mauro describes the insight he received while gazing upon a Christ of the Passion at the end of a long day in which nothing he planned had been accomplished:
“The problem is not for life to be organized, ordered and efficient, but that it be given.  And I understand that, for it to be truly given, life must be Christ’s, must belong to him, in his hands or, though it is the same, in his Heart.  For Christ, God, never keeps anything for himself.  Christ gives all, all that he is and all that he has.  If he keeps me, he gives me.  If I belong to him, he gives me away.  If I am entirely his, I am all things for all.”
If we are Christ’s, then he will hand us over to others, in wasteful extravagance.

Hands
The Passion is a story of handing over.  Three times Jesus is said to be handed over: by Judas to the chief priests, by the chief priests to Pilate, by Pilate to his executioners.  These are the hands of sinners, irreverent hands, hands which are strangers to tenderness.  The Jewish guards and Roman soldiers do what others will not dirty their hands to do, but there is blood on everyone’s hands.  Accounts of betrayal, abandonment, cowardice, blind self-interest, verbal intimidation, mockery and derision, physical degradation, shaming of body and soul land like blows upon the heart.  Surely it is not just a matter of feeling compassion for Jesus, but of knowing that these same blows rain upon the bodies and hearts of people in all parts of the world, day after day, seemingly without end.  It is enough to make us cry out: “Get your filthy hands off him!”  But then, we begin to wonder about our own hands.  Are my hands like those of Judas, the chief priests and Pilate, who pass others around like pawns without recognizing their sacredness?  Are my hands like those of the guards and the soldiers, who treat the body of Christ with sacrilegious violence?  

Burial
All of a sudden, once Jesus has died, a quiet descends upon the scene.  We no longer hear only of the false, the cowardly and the violent, but of the faithful and true, the courageous and the gentle.  Now we realize that there were many women with him when he died – powerless, yes, but present.  They look on, they watch, they see; they adore him with their eyes.  This is our role, too.  When action is brought to nothing, we do what we can: we look deeply at our world and see God, bleeding.  We adore with our eyes.  The hands that take down Jesus’ body from the cross are gentler than those that put him up there.  These hands tenderly wrap him in linen and lay him to rest.  This is our task also, as Good Friday gives way to a silence full of expectation.  Holy Saturday is a day of tenderness, of holding within us with gentle hands the body of Christ.  We can live this tenderness every day, if we remember to wrap in the linen cloths of our compassion all those who fall victim to the violence of our times.  Out of the dark stillness emerges a prayer:
“You will not leave my soul among the dead,
Nor let you beloved know decay.” (Ps 16:10)
Our tenderness is but an echo of that of the Father, who receives his Son’s body into the depths of his earth.

As we enter upon the most solemn days of the Church’s remembrance of Christ’s Passion and death, even here, we find moments of exquisite tenderness: the anointing at Bethany, the giving of the Eucharist, and the deposition and burial.  What these moments tell us is that violence and death do not have the last word.  By the handing over of his body, by the pouring out of his life, Jesus opens for us another way: a way of tenderness.  In the face of violence and death, can I choose tenderness?  Am I ready to do what I can, making my hands gentle like the woman who anoints a body for burial, and like those who wrap the body in linen and lay it in a tomb?  Do I dare to join with Jesus, who hands over his body to each of us with breathtaking trust, who pours out his life in wasteful extravagance?

Image: Unction of Christ by Julia Stankova