Eamonn Clark

Just a few points for your own meditation on this Good Friday, and through the Easter season.

Covering and uncovering of flesh is an important theme in Scripture. Here is a very quick glimpse:

Genesis 3:21 – The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

Amos 2:16 – And the most stouthearted of warriors shall flee naked on that day, says the LORD…

John 20: 5-7 He bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

Romans 13:14 – Instead, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.

The removal of a garment implies vulnerability, putting one on implies protection. Adam and Eve are strong in their “weakness” before the Fall, as they are constituted in a special state of grace. When they lose their innocence, blood is spilled for the first time in Scripture… Their own meager attempt at clothing themselves with leaves will not do. Instead, something has to die in order to cover them up. A brute animal will work – there is nothing better, for the moment.

We ourselves have just been in the Garden with the Lord – not Eden, but Gethsemane, its antithesis – and soon we will see Him in another garden. Moments before entering Gethsemane, He had taken off His outer garment in order to wash the feet of the disciples, the entire process of which was a catechesis on the kerygma… He rises up from the throne of the Godhead, removes the outer glory which is rightly His, takes on human nature as its servant, has mercy, puts on his outer glory again, and then returns to His throne. Finally, He commissions them to imitate Him. This is the whole Life of Christ.

Then in Mark we read of a man who runs away naked (14:51-52)… Perhaps it is Mark, perhaps it is Lazarus, perhaps it is some other person whose identity needed protection. Whoever it is, instead of leaving everything to follow Christ, this poor soul leaves everything in order to run away. No doubt he had high hopes of the advent of an Israel more like a New Rome than the New Jerusalem of Jesus, which would be won with swords and clubs by zealous warriors like Simon Peter. Instead, this Yeshua does not go about expelling the pagans as the old one did when he led the Israelites into Canaan, with violence of His own. Instead, this one makes himself vulnerable to violence, and eventually is stripped naked and put on a cross to die. How unlike the Joshua of old! Perhaps the rebellious murderer Barabbas would give the Jews the kind of Christ they wanted…

The Lord is dying, and the Temple’s own “garment” is ripped, as if to let God loose from the Holy of Holies, out into the Nations, to save the Gentiles. Meanwhile, the soldiers divide Jesus’ clothing among them, casting lots for the outer garment. Relics of a famous criminal, artifacts of a failed rebellion, prized items of curiosity which would one day certainly make for good conversation pieces. “This was Jesus of Nazareth’s cloak – do you remember him?” That cloak which held no seams, in which Christ could hide nothing to keep for Himself, which had been the instrument of healing, which protected the human dignity of God incarnate, was now itself given to the world, almost as if to pay respect to that command of the Baptist: Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none… (Luke 3:11) He is willing to give away not only His Divine dignity but also His human dignity in order to save us.

A day comes, a night comes, and then in the morning we see the Lord again, alive, but He does not look the same… He is changed in the flesh, mysteriously. He has become in His humanity something more suited to His Divinity, and yet His humanity is the same, even with His Body having the same wounds. His Flesh is perfected, becoming the completed New Adam, the fullest expression of all that humanity can be. In this Garden of the Resurrection, where He meets the Magdalene, He is the champion of death, having willingly gone under the knife as that animal in Eden did unwillingly to clothe our first parents. Now He will clothe us with His own Flesh and Blood, with His own Love, with His own Life which has now sprung up from the Earth, like a seed that dies to give forth its fruit… Changed, yet the same. He has left the old garment behind.

And the Magdalene was right: He is the Gardener.