When you reach a certain age you walk into a room and ask yourself, “Why did I come here? What was I looking for?” Your keys? Your glasses? Your hat? That question is not limited to a faulty memory but can expand into life itself. Why am I here? What am I looking for? I’m looking for family harmony. I’m looking for financial security. I’m looking for someone to share life with. I’m looking for good health. I’m looking for happiness. However, maybe what I’m looking for is the wrong question. Jesus posed a different question in the garden of Gethsemane: “Whom are you looking for?” It is not so much a question of “what” we are looking for but of “whom,” not a thing but a person. When we shift and ask a “who” question we are surprised to find that the best answer is: I am looking for the crucified one. Not the best and the brightest, not the young and the restless, not the bold and the beautiful – whether we know it or not, at the deepest level we are looking for the crucified one. When we see the crucified one we know that no matter the difficulty, God will make a way. When we see the crucified one we realize that God’s will is always for the best even if it would not have been what we would have chosen. When we see the crucified one we learn that the path up Calvary’s hill is the true road to glory.
Ecce homo, behold the man, Pilate said. However, it is not simply a matter of beholding, we must also listen. What we hear from the crucified one is “I thirst.” I thirst for a more just and peaceful world where violence and strife are replaced by compassion and mercy. I thirst for a society where instead of divisions and prejudices and hatred we can spread our arms and say “You all are my sisters and my brothers and my mother.” I thirst for a place where all those wounds and hurts receive a healing touch. I thirst for a community which works to ensure that no one is ever hungry, no one lacks a home, no one is abandoned. I thirst for the world God intended.
Certainly wonderful things to aspire. Then we hear an additional word from the crucified one: “It is finished.” How can it be finished when injustice and hatred and pain and poverty still exists? At that point we notice the pierced side of the crucified one, pouring out blood and water, blood and water that anoints and consecrates us. The work of the crucified is finished because he has passed it on to us. His thirsts become our thirsts, his efforts ours. Because we are washed in the blood of the lamb we are commissioned to make this world become the place of peace and harmony and joy and plenty that God intends. The crucified one is counting on us to continue what he had begun. And if we do so, one day when our time comes and we say “it is finished” we will be able confidently approach the throne of grace and join with the crucified one in glory as we await the ultimate triumph that is soon coming.
