“They pierced my hands…” (King James Bible, Psalm 22:16)
Those pierced hands are the surest token of the wonderful generosity of our Saviour and our God. For they are the hands of the Giver of all good things, and how much had they already given! Innumerable were the times when he had been asked to lay those same hands on people who were sick or afflicted, and to give to them new health and strength – and never was he asked in vain.
For with his hands he was always giving, and giving – whether it was his blessing to the children, or the bread of the miracle to the Five Thousand, or the living bread of a greater miracle, the Blessed Sacrament of his own Body and Blood which he gave to us at the Last Supper.
Nor did his generosity stop there, for on the Cross of shame and glory he was open-handed to the end, giving his own life for us and for our salvation.
And his generosity was total. He kept nothing back for himself: all was freely sacrificed for us. He hung there empty-handed, save for what men had put into his hands – the nails that crucified him. He had already exchanged the unimaginable glory and bliss of Heaven for this hostile and wicked world in which, once his ministry had begun, he had nowhere to lay his head, until on Calvary he had nothing left at all. As St Paul puts it, “…you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (NRSV, 2 Corinthians 8:9).
For all he did and all he gave was wholly for his Father and for us. “I am the good shepherd”, he said, and “I lay down my life for the sheep”. And he went on, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life…No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord….I have received this command from my Father” (NRSV, John 10:14,17,18, our emphasis).
And St Paul expressed the same truth by saying, “…the Lord Jesus Christ…gave himself for our sins…according to the will of our God and Father…” (NRSV, Galatians 1:4, our emphasis).
If we had always been his faithful friends we might think that to some degree we deserved his self-sacrificing generosity. But No: our sins have turned us into rebels, so that we could be won back only by an infinitely poignant spectacle of Divine love and generosity – and that meant the Cross.
On that Good Friday when they nailed his hands to make them powerless, they unwittingly endowed them with the compelling power to draw us sinners to himself and to bring us home to his Father.
When we entered this world we already belonged to God because we were his handiwork. In the words of the Psalmist, “Your hands have made and fashioned me…” (NRSV, Psalm 119:73).
But now he has a double claim on us, for when we by our sins had passed under the effective control of the power of evil, God the Son came into this world to rescue us; and with his own pierced hands he paid the price of his coming. So St Paul reminds us, “…you are not your own…you were bought with a price…” (NRSV, 1 Corinthians 6:19,20).
And what a price it was! That is how far our Saviour has gone to meet us. How far do we go to meet him? Good Friday makes it plain that our response to the Saviour’s generosity must aim at being as generous. It can never reach the sublime height of his generosity, but nevertheless on its own level it must be open-handed and unswerving. Early in his ministry he had said to his disciples, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (RSV, John 4:34, our emphasis) – the work of the salvation of mankind. And to that end he dedicated his whole self until at last he could proclaim triumphantly from the Cross, “It is accomplished” (Jerusalem Bible, John 19:30, our emphasis).
That utter devotion of Christ to his Father in not just an ideal for us to admire but not attempt; it is not an optional extra in the life of the Christian. Rather, in its own degree, it is what marks off the inwardly dedicated Christian from the nominal one.
The Christian, in his or her relationship with the Lord, is not to remain at a distance from him, like a spectator at the back of the Good Friday crowd, but to be close to him in heart and mind like Mary and John on Calvary.
Such personal devotion can only be achieved by deliberately giving one’s whole self to Our Lord to be wholly his. And that is something we can do whenever we pray, dedicating our will to him and his service, and our heart to be his home and dwelling-place; until we find that, consciously or unconsciously, it is he who is forming the sort of person that we are becoming and the kind of life that we lead.
And all the inspiration we need for that personal devotion, we find in him, the Crucified.
Prayer for generous Christian service
Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for enduring the cruel pains of the Cross and giving your life that we might be forgiven and brought home to God our Father. Draw us to yourself and give us grace to commit ourselves whole-heartedly to you, and to work generously and tirelessly in your service. Amen.