“I can count all my bones.”[1]

That’s what hit me the other day, Palm Sunday, those words from the Psalm: “I can count all my bones.” You know how it is when one word, one phrase will do it—in a song or movie or in a bit of poetry—when you get choked up, tear up, when the wound is opened by that one thing that’s said. That’s what I’m talking about; that’s what happened to me hearing those words. “I can count all my bones.” I can’t explain why, of course, but it’s just that I’ve since been thinking about it all week. Over and over, haunted by it almost: “I can count all my bones.”

I don’t know how, but they’re words which evoke extreme pain. It’s poetry, isn’t it? Good poetry, that’s what good poetry can do. It can make you feel something with words. “I can count all my bones.” The feeling of these words is terrible pain. That’s the feeling that took my breath, gave me tears—to think of the pain, the horrible pain. So comfortable am I, so wounded is he. Beholding the man is a frightening thing—to think of it, how it must’ve really been. “I can count all my bones.” I am still haunted by it.

Christians, of course, think of the Lord here. These words, we believe, are his. As Saint Augustine put it, “the words of this psalm are spoken in the person of the crucified one.”[2] These are prophetic words, words Jesus speaks from the cross, sharing in our humanity. “My God…why have you abandoned me?”[3] This is Christ speaking, speaking for us these words about a death he died for us. Which makes these words so heartrending. “They have pierced my hands and my feet; I can count all my bones.”[4] The mind thinks of it—the nails, the hammering, the pain. It’s almost as if the Scripture, the Church too, wants us to see it, to hear it, to feel it. So comfortable are we, so wounded is he. Don’t think about Easter too much just yet. “I can count all my bones.” We need to experience that first, to feel it; maybe tears are good here. We must see it. We must see him die.

There is something about seeing the Crucified that matters very much. I’m trying to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing today. You need to see Jesus Christ crucified—liturgically, spiritually, mystically, of course. We need to see him. If you’ve spent any time with John’s gospel, you know this. Jesus talked about seeing the kingdom God; he was talking to Nicodemus. To see the kingdom, one had to be born again, born from above; and one had to see the “Son of Man…lifted up.”[5] Nicodemus didn’t understand what he was saying. Later in Jerusalem, Jesus said that when the Son of Man would be lifted up, then “you will realize that I AM.”[6] And then a little later he healed the man born blind, and he scorned the presumptuous Pharisees for remaining in blindness. To come to see is another way to describe faith and what early Christians called illumination—baptism—and even salvation. Seeing Jesus—that’s it, that’s the thing, the task, what your soul wants, what you’ve been wandering around looking for all your life. Simply to see him, the one you can see today.

But how will you see him? Again, that haunting verse: “I can count all my bones.” In the very next verse, it reads: “They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots.”[7] Clearly, it is possible to see the Crucified with the wrong sort of eyes. It’s possible to see the Crucified with cynical, flippant eyes; the jokers, all the sophisticated wits of the world: that’s how they see him. It’s possible to see him and still think of oneself, to be so trapped in materialist greed that all you can do is wonder what’s in it for me, wonder how to divide Christ’s garments, wonder what I can get out of it for myself. There’s always that person, isn’t there, when someone’s dying, that person who needs to show out, make it all about themselves, who’s already thinking about the will; you know you what I mean. It is possible to fail to see.

This, by the way, is the moral point of all that I’m talking about—our ability or inability to see other people, to recognize suffering in others, to practice empathy. This is what Pope Francis has been talking about: our tendency “elegantly,” he said, to shift our gaze from those in our world who suffer—alongside the unborn: the poor, the migrant, the exploited laborers at the ends of the supply chains that make our lives so next-day deliverable and comfortable.[8] These are what the Texas writer, Lawrence Wright, calls the “shadow people.”[9] They comprise what Michael Harrington half-century ago called the “other America.”[10] Not seeing them truly and not seeing Crucified truly are indeed the same thing, but I don’t want to get into a fight about it. I don’t think we’re spiritual enough to argue about it; in any case, my theme today is more mystical than moral. I simply want to suggest that what we do here—in trying to see Christ well—should make us more moral. Seeing him suffer should help us see them.

How we see the Crucified matters. As I said, it is possible to see the death of Jesus with the wrong sort of eyes—with faithless, selfish eyes. Saint Augustine talked about this too. There were people, he said, who had eyes to see his body but who had not the heart to see the Word.[11] They saw him crucified, but “in no way were they changed,” he said.[12] Which really is the test of Good Friday. How do you see him? Are you moved by what you see? Are you changed by what you see? That’s what we’re about to do. Again, the way Augustine put it is exactly right: the Crucified today “is now presented throughout the whole world to the gaze of faith as though it were happening today.”[13] What we do here is meant to move us, he said, “as if we were actually watching our Lord hanging on the cross, but watching as believers, not mockers.”[14] How will we see him?

When I sing to you to behold the wood of the Cross, what will you see? I hope you see what God has done for you, for love of you. I hope you’re moved a little, wounded a little, changed a little. For who doesn’t cry at the death of those one really loves? And who doesn’t know that things have changed? Amen.

[1] Psalm 22:18

[2] Augustine, Exposition 1 of Psalm 21 1

[3] Psalm 22:1

[4] Psalm 22:17-18

[5] John 3:3, 14

[6] John 8:28

[7] Psalm 22:18-19

[8] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 76

[9] Lawrence Wright, God Save Texas, 300

[10] Michael Harrington, The Other America

[11] Augustine, Exposition 2 on Psalm 21 19

[12] Augustine, Exposition 1 on Psalm 21 18-19

[13] Augustine, Sermon 218B 1

[14] Augustine, Exposition 2 on Psalm 21 1

© 2024 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield