The series of etchings which caught my interest in particular are entitled: “Christ crucified between Two Thieves: the Three Crosses.” I first saw two states of this drawing in Melbourne at a big Rembrandt retrospective ten years ago and then in the Pierpoint Morgan show last year there were two more. I have copied the two I saw in Melbourne, one from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England and the other from the National Gallery of Victoria, for you to look at. You will see that they are similar but different. But what is important to realize that both are different states of the same etching. As I said earlier, what is remarkable is how Rembrandt experimented between printing off various states of the etching. What you see before you in the two states of the Three Crosses is not simply the alteration of a detail here and the way the ink is distributed but rather a radical reworking of the plate in between printings. While keeping the overall plan of the drawing with the three crosses being the focus for and giving structure to the whole what Rembrandt in fact did was to polish back the plate as far as he was able and to rework the subject in a fresh way. This process has been called one of “most inspired defacements in the history of art.” What Rembrandt achieved in what is the fourth state of the etching was a different interpretation of the same event. In other words the artist highlighted the essential paradox at the heart of Good Friday. For the Cross of Jesus we are soon to venerate liturgically is at one and the same time the Cross of Desolation as well as the Cross of our Salvation.

Just look at the darker version of the Rembrandt’s “Three Crosses” which in fact is the later version of the etching. The scene is enshrouded in gloom and darkness with groups of indistinct figures blurring into the background. A somewhat sinister figure with a tall hat sits motionless on a horse with a spear or lance in his hand. A figure to the right of Jesus, John the beloved disciple, has his arms outstretched in a despairing motion. The Mother of Jesus lies swooning at his feet in the arms of some women. To the left you can make out several grim looking soldiers with their weapons and a wildly rearing horse which adds threat to the grim scene. The atmosphere is one of unrelenting gloom, of despair and suffering and death. It makes a fitting climax to the agony in the garden, the betrayal, the arrest, the trials, the suffering of Jesus through mocking and scourging, and finally the horror of crucifixion. It was a dark moment indeed. But it is to that dark moment precisely that we as human beings so readily relate. For the suffering of Jesus on the cross somehow focuses all our human experience of suffering both personal and communal. Be it the death of a dear friend or partner; or coping with a life-threatening illness or mental breakdown; or dealing with a 911 or the experience of war or major disaster; all these can be identified with the Cross of Dereliction. For those of you who know Mexican Catholicism will be familiar with the very bloody figures of the Crucified Christ which adorn Mexican churches. My first reaction to them was one of shock and distaste. But the more I reflected on and learnt about Mexican history both pre and post Columban and how bloody it was, I realized that that was the only way to show the suffering Christ, wounds and all, rather like Mel Gibson’s Passion.

“Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pains poured for me the life blood from his sacred veins!”

As you come to venerate the cross in a few moments place your suffering, your woundedness, your fears, anxieties, losses and griefs, and those of our world at the foot of the cross. Identify them with the Passion of Jesus on the Cross. Like St Paul nail them one by one to the cross.

Years ago in a little book about prayer called “Prayer for the Secular City” by Douglas Rhymes I came across a story which I find so appropriate for today. It tells of a father who regularly visited his daughter in hospital where she was desperately ill with leukemia. On his way home he would often call in at a church and pray before the crucifix. On his daughter’s birthday he purchased a cake on the way to the hospital. When he got there he found his daughter dying and indeed she died within the hour of his arrival. Deeply grieving he eventually made his way home. Passing the church he slowly walked up the aisle and stood before the lifeless crucifix. Suddenly filled with rage he hurled his dead daughter’s birthday cake at the crucifix, splattering it all over the wall, and he fell to the floor and wept.

But there is the second image of the Rembrandt etching and I want to direct your attention to it now. In fact it is an earlier state than the dark state on which I have been focusing. Once again it is the scene of the Three Crosses at the Crucifixion of Jesus. But what a contrast this state is to the darker later state. Here the scene is suffused with an almost golden, ethereal light. The surrounding figures are all much clearer and you can see details of terrain and foliage. The sinister figure on the horse is not present but rather at the foot of the cross is the centurion mentioned in the synoptic gospels who cries out in Matthew, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” This depiction of the Crucifixion is not all gloom and defeat but has a more redemptive feel about it. This is the scene transfigured by the eyes of Faith; by the post-Resurrection church; by St John with his theology of Glory. Here death, desolation and despair do not have the final word. Rather there is in this scene the hints of something more. The gesture of amazement by the centurion points to another reality at play. And so does the almost golden, ethereal light. It is John’s gospel which builds on this in his understanding of the Cross of Jesus as the moment when we see the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is the Hour when the Son of Man is glorified by the Father. It is precisely at the moment of self-effacing, sacrificial love by the Son, at that moment when he is lifted high upon the cross that the Glory of God is revealed. It is that understanding which transforms the Cross into the instrument not of shame but of our redemption. “When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died.”

Let me tell you a story of one of my favorite twentieth century saints to illustrate this. The name Mother Maria Skobtsova may not be familiar to you but she came to my attention when she was honored in the Chapel of 20th century Martyrs in Canterbury Cathedral in England some years ago. In reading her biography by Sergei Hackel I discovered that she was a Russian Orthodox nun who worked with Russian refugees in Paris in the 1920’s and 1930’s. There she got caught up in the plight of Russian Jewish refugees in occupied Paris and did all she could to help them. Eventually she was arrested by the Gestapo for her work and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she was a point of sanity for the inmates in the midst of the insanity and cruelty with which the camps were synonymous. She maintained a kind and joyous presence there and gave hope and comfort in dreadful circumstances. Eventually on Good Friday 1945 with the Russian guns booming in the distance Mother Maria took the place of a young mother who had been selected for the gas chamber. And so she went to her death on Holy Saturday, the Eve of Easter. The desperate camp administration sought to enrich the earth sloping down to the nearby lake by scattering the prisoners’ ashes there, including those of Mother Maria. The Nazi officials little appreciated that a life such as hers was capable of nourishing the world on quite a different plane. And they falsely equated the brutality of death with its finality. Here I quote from Hackel’s book: “But it was Mother Maria’s conviction that “death has lost its devastating sting.” Several years later one of her friends, Georgii Raevskii, was to be reminded of this in a simple, vivid dream. He saw Mother Maria walking across a cornfield at a steady pace. He was surprised and said, “But Mother Maria, they told me you were dead.” She looked at me over the top of her glasses kindly, but with a hint of mischief. “Well no matter what they say. You can see I am alive.””

It is our faith in the Cross as both a sign of Dereliction and Suffering as well as of Redemption and Salvation that enables us to call the day of the Death of Jesus, Good Friday. “Lift high the Cross the love of Christ proclaim.”   Amen

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