He Opened Not His Mouth

Lamb of God (in Latin, Agnus Dei) is an oil painting by the Spanish Baroque artist Francisco de Zurbarán (1635–40).

It’s Holy Tuesday.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
 we have turned — every one — to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
 the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
 yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
 and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
 so he opened not his mouth. 
 Isaiah 53:6–7

I cannot keep my mouth shut in the face of injustice, particularly when it bears down on me. I must confront. I must be vindicated immediately and completely. And if it seems at all right that I should be in and not out, I will wedge myself between the jam and the door being closed upon me . (In modern Enneagram parlance, I am an eight. Don’t judge me. I will fight for you, too.)

Honestly, I cannot be held up too long in the grocery line and made to see outlandish celebrity news magazines unless I can be expected to condescend their readership in proportion to the amount of time I am there, waiting with just milk in hand while someone figures out why the basmati rice is not ringing up on sale. I want more than justice or fair treatment or equality. I want my way in my time. And it is most dangerous when my way appears right and fair and reasonable.

Christ did no such thing, and this may be the most startling aspect of his willingness to be unjustly accused — quietly. He suffered for the very pride that distorts my convictions for justice into a warped, self-defined demand for importance and fairness. And he opened not his mouth.

Humility is able to hold a word. Love is patient. Staring into an absolute vacuum of reason and justice, Jesus didn’t state his case. He didn’t argue. He didn’t protest. He opened not his mouth to suffer for a whole world still spinning in the void of fairness or reason, with us still upon it. He opened not his mouth that he might expose injustice for all time.

How many crosses still adorn homes, churches and necks? And do they still mean that this unjust world steals and kills innocence without a qualm? Does a cross still mean an innocent God suffered silently for a people who have far too much to say for themselves , an endless bevy of curses to spit upon him and each other in the name of our own versions of what’s rightful? Yes, it does. It still means that.

He opened not his mouth to suffer in solidarity with the voiceless — those who presume to have no say in a world that would prefer they keep it that way. The cross of Jesus means the world is, after all, still hurried, hateful and harangued. And Jesus still suffers it with and for us. For every sin suffered - great or small (if degrees of trespass are such a thing) - he takes it away without a self-preserving word. He takes it upon himself without complaint.

But make no mistake, when it lands upon him with its full weight, he cries out in agony. He cries out as a forsaken Son: “Eloi eloi lama sabachthani!”

“My God, why?!”

This is what injustice feels like and what it sounds like when it feels that way. And then Jesus cries out again, finally, about those who take their heavy tolls and boldly hurl their insults. What does he say? “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” How is this even possible?

Saint Peter knows…

“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.”
1 Peter 2:23

The Collect for Holy Tuesday
O Lord our God, whose blessed Son gave his back to be whipped and did not hide his face from shame and spitting: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.