Pastor Hugh's Monthly Meditation
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Good Friday and a Mother's Grief
I am not one to see a movie over and over again. The one exception, however, is Franco Zeffirelli's 1977 mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth. In my opinion it stands as the most moving portrayal of the life and passion of Christ to date. While Mel Gibson's, The Passion of the Christ, may have set the bar for the most realistically gruesome portrayal of Jesus' passion, it doesn't even come close to capturing the depth and mystery of his life.
Click on image to see a larger view of this detail of Boticelli's, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, in a separate window.
Over time I have, admittedly, grown desensitized to the portrayal of Jesus' passion in Zeffirelli's film. Maybe a little dose of Gibson's movie helps to establish a kind of "reality check." After all, Jesus was tortured and executed in one of the most inhumane ways know to history—crucifixion. His treatment at the hands of the Romans would have made the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib seem mild in comparison.
What catches me off guard, however—literally moving me to tears each time—is the portrayal of Mary's passion: her suffering, her grief. Zeffirelli's Mary, the mother of Jesus, is portrayed by Olivia Hussey, who had played Juliet in his 1968 film, Romeo and Juliet. And while her acting throughout the movie is admittedly stilted—as if the Virgin Mary were perpetually in some altered state of bliss or detachment—the grief she portrays as she cradles and rocks the lifeless body of her crucified son gets to me every time. The grief, after all, is a mother's grief over her murdered son. I'm not sure that there can be any loss greater than that of a parent losing a child. Other deaths are tragic, without a doubt. But a parent's loss of their child runs the deepest. It is by its very nature a crime against nature.
Click on image to see a larger view of Boticelli's, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, in a separate window.
Sandro Botticelli's, Lament, shown here, captures this mother's grief in a moving and passionate way. Here Mary has swooned, her grief so deep, her loss so great. The overwhelming finality of holding her dead son in her arms is too much to bear.
I have always wondered, even as one with decades of theological training, whether God couldn't have found a better way to redeem the world. If God is God, why was it necessary to sacrifice his son? What parent would do such a thing?
And as soon as I ask this question, I think of the countless mothers who sent their sons, and now daughters, off to war throughout our nation's history. I think, for example, of the unimaginable loss of life on the beaches of Normandy and around the globe. I touch the tragic grief of countless mothers whose own dreams died in those battles.
Sometimes, history has shown, it takes the ultimate sacrifice to bring an end to tyranny and oppression. Death brings life. Oh, we yearn for a far better way, but in the face of evil whose intent is even greater evil, such sacrifice is the price to be paid.
On that tragic Friday, one we call "Good", a mother grieved inconsolably over the premature loss, the tragic waste, of her son—her first born.
But wait! On the Sunday that follows, the one we call "Easter", death gave way to life. A mother's grief gave way to a disciple's giddy joy. Through an intervening love greater than our imagination—greater than death—that dead and lifeless son is now our risen and victorious Lord.
Hugh R. B. Haffenreffer
Pastor
April 2006
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