{"id":3110,"date":"2015-03-22T18:20:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T01:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=3110"},"modified":"2016-10-10T13:09:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T20:09:36","slug":"the-isenheim-crucifixion-homily-for-the-fifth-sunday-of-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/the-isenheim-crucifixion-homily-for-the-fifth-sunday-of-lent","title":{"rendered":"The Isenheim Crucifixion – Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Isenheim<\/a>Do you remember the first picture of Jesus you ever saw?
\nWas it a picture in a children\u2019s Bible?
\nA coloring book page from Sunday school?
\nThe actor Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth?
\nThere are many famous images of Jesus,
\nand some of them hang on the walls of our homes.
\nThere\u2019s the famous Warner Sallman painting of the Head of Christ,
\nwhich has sold over 500 million copies.
\nThere\u2019s the familiar Sacred Heart of Jesus,
\nand the Divine Mercy image.
\nAnother popular painting of Jesus
\nis the one where he stands outside the door knocking.
\nWe could run through an entire catalog of famous paintings of Jesus:
\nin the manger at his birth, sitting on a bench surrounded by children,
\ncarrying a lamb on his shoulders.<\/p>\n

If the Greeks in today\u2019s gospel had come to us and said,
\n\u201cWe would like to see Jesus,\u201d
\nwe have many paintings we could show them.
\nAnd yet, none of them would be the real Jesus.
\nAll of them would be artistic interpretations of who he is.
\nThey each reveal an important aspect of Jesus,
\nbut none of them is complete.
\nWe all carry around inside of us an incomplete picture of Jesus.
\nWe carry these images in our minds
\nand they form our view of who Christ is.
\nIt\u2019s like seeing a movie before reading the book.
\nNo matter how hard we try,
\nFrodo Baggins will always look like Elijah Wood;
\nAtticus Finch will always look like Gregory Peck;
\nThe Godfather will always be Marlon Brando.
\nWho does Jesus look like to us?<\/p>\n

The Greeks had heard all kinds of things about Jesus of Nazareth.
\nI wonder how they pictured him.
\nI wonder who they expected to see when they asked to see him.
\nJesus the preacher? Jesus who turns water into wine?
\nJesus who walks on water?
\nAnd what about us?
\nWho did we expect to see when we came to Mass today?
\nLike the Greeks, each of us has come here to see Jesus.
\nEach of us has an image of Jesus in our mind when we pray,
\nwhen we come to communion.
\nWho is the Jesus we have come to worship?<\/p>\n

Whoever it is the Greeks wanted to see,
\nJesus surprises them.
\nAnd maybe he surprises us.
\nHe says that he is troubled.
\nHe, who is usually so confident and divine in John\u2019s gospel,
\nis disturbed that his hour has come.
\nHe tells the Greeks and us
\nthat unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
\nit remains just a grain of wheat;
\nin other words, he has come to die,
\nhe has come to be the grain of wheat
\nthat will become food for the world.
\nHe is the one who has come to serve and be obedient
\nand who asks us to do the same.
\nBoth the gospel and the letter to the Hebrews show us a Jesus
\nwho learned obedience through suffering,
\nwho offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.
\nThat\u2019s not an image we see in paintings very often\u2014
\na Jesus sobbing in prayer for his people.
\nBut that\u2019s what we hear today: loud cries and tears;
\na grain of wheat about to fall to the earth and die.
\nIt\u2019s a difficult Jesus to look at,
\nbecause that is who we are called to imitate.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re preparing for the holiest times of the year.
\nToday\u2019s liturgy challenges us to seek the Christ who really is,
\nto get beyond images of our youth and get to know the real Christ,
\nnot Christ as we want him to be.
\nIn these remaining two weeks of Lent,
\nwe\u2019re asked to take some time to ourselves and ask
\nis there an aspect of Christ we have been avoiding?
\nIs there a part of Christ\u2019s life and mission that we would rather not see?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another famous painting of Jesus,
\none that you probably won\u2019t find in anyone\u2019s house.
\nIt\u2019s disturbing, ugly, and very hard to look at.
\nIt\u2019s called the Isenheim Altarpiece,
\nand it was painted by Matthias Grunewald around 500 years ago.
\nIt\u2019s made up of four panels, but the main scene is the crucifixion,
\nand it would be hard to find a more gruesome portrayal of Christ\u2019s death.
\nIn this crucifixion scene,
\nGrunewald paints Jesus with his hands gnarled and twisted,
\nfacing up as if clawing to pull the spike out of the wood;
\nand his feet are all twisted together in an almost impossible position.
\nThe body of Jesus is full of wood splinters and thorns.
\nBut maybe the worst thing about the image is the color of Jesus\u2019 flesh.
\nIt\u2019s a sickly green color, covered with spots, like it\u2019s rotting.
\nIt really is a hard painting to look at.
\nI\u2019m not doing it justice at all, trying to describe it you.
\nIt isn\u2019t a painting that you just look at;
\nit\u2019s a painting that you experience.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Jesus that is speaking to us today,
\nthe Jesus of the Isenheim crucifixion.
\nThe suffering servant who prays for us with loud cries and tears.<\/p>\n

When we imagine Jesus, when we think of Jesus,
\nare we imagining who we want Jesus to be,
\nor are we willing to discover who Jesus really is?
\nIt\u2019s essential for us to really know Jesus
\nso that we can be his disciples.
\n\u201cWhoever serves me must follow me,\u201d Jesus says,
\n\u201cand where I am, there also will my servant be.\u201d
\nWe are called to be that grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies.
\nAnd when we look at a painting like the Grunewald Crucifixion,
\nwhen we see that disturbing scene of Jesus on the cross,
\nwe get a better understanding of what it takes to be a follower of Jesus.
\nMaybe that frightens us.
\nMaybe we\u2019d rather just look at the Jesus who knocks at the door,
\nwho carries the lamb on his shoulders,
\nthe Jesus of our childhood images.<\/p>\n

But we don\u2019t need to be afraid of what we\u2019ll find
\nwhen we approach the real Jesus,
\neven if what we see is the Isenheim Altarpiece.
\nBecause with Jesus, there\u2019s always more than what meets the eye.
\nWith Jesus there\u2019s always hope in the midst of horrible suffering.<\/p>\n

You see, what\u2019s even more unusual about the Isenheim Altarpiece
\nis that it wasn\u2019t painted to hang in a museum.
\nIt was painted for the front of the altar in a monastery church,
\nthe Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim, Germany.
\nThat\u2019s one of the things that makes this painting so famous.
\nIt was used in a church.
\nCan you imagine coming to Mass here
\nand seeing this disturbing crucifixion scene in front of us
\nweek after week?
\nWhy would Grunewald paint such a horrific picture for a church?
\nIt seems sadistic, perhaps.
\nBut with Christ, suffering never has the last word.
\nHistorians tell us that the monks of the Monastery of St. Anthony
\nspecialized in hospital work,
\nespecially for patients suffering from ergotism,
\nor what came to be known as \u201cSt. Anthony\u2019s Fire.\u201d
\nErgotism was a horrible condition that occurred
\nwhen people ate grains or cereals that contained a certain fungus,
\nand it was almost like a plague during the Middle Ages.
\nIt caused the skin to rot and shed,
\nand patients often had to have their limbs amputated.
\nPeople came to the Monastery of St. Anthony to be treated for ergotism,
\nand while they were there, they would go to Mass.
\nGrunewald painted his crucifixion scene for them.
\nThe crucified Jesus of the Isenheim Altarpiece
\nhas the symptoms of ergotism.
\nWhen the patients of the monastery came to Mass
\nthey saw a God who suffered with them.
\nWhere we see horror, they saw hope.
\nThey saw a God who loves them.
\nAnd if God can take on that kind of suffering
\nand transform it into resurrection,
\nthen our suffering can be transformed into resurrection.
\nThat is the hope of Easter.<\/p>\n

The challenge of today\u2019s liturgy in these closing days of Lent
\nis to move beyond the images of Jesus
\nwe\u2019ve carried with us since childhood
\nand see the real Jesus;
\nto meet the Jesus we have been avoiding,
\nthe Jesus we haven\u2019t been seeing,
\neven if the sight is disturbing,
\nso that we, too can see in him the hope of Easter.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/stpeter\/SP-2015-03-22-478.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: RSS<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you remember the first picture of Jesus you ever saw? Was it a picture in a children\u2019s Bible? A coloring book page from Sunday school? The actor Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth? There are many famous images of Jesus, and some of them hang on the walls of our homes. There\u2019s the famous Warner Sallman painting of the Head of Christ, which has sold over 500 million copies. There\u2019s the familiar Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Divine Mercy image. Another popular painting of Jesus is...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Isenheim Crucifixion - Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[349],"tags":[354,585,108,584],"class_list":["post-3110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homily","tag-gospel-of-john","tag-isenheim-crucifixion","tag-lent","tag-matthias-grunewald"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/crucifixion.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-Oa","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3113,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions\/3113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}