“What Shall I Thee Give?”

A Good Friday Homily Inspired by the Poetry and Meditations of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg

Jesus! What shall I Thee give, who didst give Thyself to death, thyself for myself.

These words open one of many devotions in Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg’s Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ. With them, she asks the reader implicitly, ‘What is the proper response to the cross?’

Her conclusion? We are to do everything our instincts tell us not to when it comes to the bloody, awful reality of crucifixion.

To look, rather than turn away. To embrace, not retreat. To linger, instead of moving on.

What I appreciate most about the 17th-century Lutheran poet is that she doesn’t really attempt to resolve the cross. She tires, instead, to revere it. Her language drips with paradox and irony, or what theologians have long called the ‘scandal of the cross’ Throughout both her verse and her meditative prose, she wrestles with mystery.

I think it’s good for Christians to join her, to walk with her through mystery, to stare into sorrow, and worship.

Jesus! What shall I Thee give, who didst give Thyself to death, Thyself for myself.

Here is the shape of substitution, the contours of vicarious love. Jesus didn’t come to give us a second chance. No, He came to give us Himself.

“I live by faith in the Son of God,” wrote the Apostle Paul, “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Christ didn’t die because death was strong. He died because His love was stronger. “Thyself for myself,” that Great Exchange of the holy for the unholy. The innocent for the guilty. The Son of God for the enemies of God.

Jesus! What shall I Thee give, who didst give Thyself to death, Thyself for myself. That Life should be meant to die, This I can’t conceive.

How can we?

And if it ever were that we thought we could, to say too easily “Jesus died for me,” maybe we’re not saying it right.

Or, at least, maybe we’re saying it rushed.

But Greiffenberg won’t let us rush past the terror of the trade. She stops mid-sentence:

This I simply cannot grasp.

Good.

We aren’t supposed to explain the cross. We are supposed to behold it.

Let’s linger in the mystery by walking with Greiffenberg through the ironies she names, those divine reversals and sacred contradictions of Calvary. Drawn from her poetry and her meditations, each one is meant to hush us.

Each one invites awe.

Each one pulls us closer to the scandal and the splendor of the cross.

Irony 1: That The Author of Life Was Crucified Between Criminals

Greiffenberg writes in her Meditations:

The Prince of Life Himself was the companion of murderers!

The Word for whom and through whom all things were made (see John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 2:10) was flanked by men who used their lives to take life. The Life-Giver entered death row, surrounded by the condemned.

Not just theirs, but ours.

As Luke records, Jesus was “numbered with the transgressors” (Luke 22:37). That doesn’t just mean He was surrounded by them. It means He was counted as one of them.

Crucifixion wasn’t just execution; rather, it was identification.

Christ died next to the guilty as though He were guilty.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

 Irony 2: The Head of All Creatures is Brought to Golgotha. 

O Jesus! Thou head of all living creatures, indeed, of life itself, Thou art brought to the dead place of a skull.

Golgotha means “place of the skull.” It’s a hill shaped like a head. And it’s there where the Lord of life was lifted up.

The “place of the skull” is crowned by the dying King of Kings whose own skull was crowned not with gold but with thorns.

It’s as cruel as it is fitting.

There’s theological poetry here. In Eden, the first Adam lifted his head to find knowledge but received death. On Golgotha, the Last Adam bowed His head to death to bring us life.

Paul says, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).

Do you see the exchange?

Adam wanted to be like God, the Everlasting Life. But Adam died.

The Son of God became like man, and died, so we might live.

Irony 3: Christ Walked With Sinners to Death, to Lead Sinners to Life.

Because He is to be executed at the same time as sinners, they too are to be resurrected with Him.

We like to imagine we’d be at the foot of the cross, admiring His courage.

But we weren’t.

We were in the crowd, mocking. In the Sanhedrin, shouting. In the soldiers, gambling.

This is the upside-down kingdom. The Righteous One walks the road of shame so the unrighteous can walk the road of joy. The Shepherd becomes a Lamb so His sheep might never be lost. The Judge is judged, so the guilty can go free.

But by grace, we are now in the tomb, buried with Him. And, wonder of wonders, we shall be in the garden too, risen with Him.

“It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).

Irony 4: “Inconceivable torture when creation martyred the Creator.”

In one of her most searing lines, Greiffenberg writes:

Oh! Inconceivable torture when creation thus martyred the Creator, when God thus suffers like a human being.

What a line.

The One who invented skin is pierced through His.

The One who brought for trees with the power of His word is now nailed to one.

The One who commands angel armies allows Himself to be seized by a Roman garrison.

The One who speaks storms into silence now speaks no defense.

The One who breathed life into dust now suffocates in ours.

The One who formed the world by speaking falls silent beneath its curse.

This is not a god made in our image.

This is the God who remakes us in His.

No other religion dares say this. Other gods demand worship; this One descends in weakness.

Other gods require sacrifice; this One becomes it.

Irony 5: The Watchers Feel Nothing While the Sufferer Feels Everything.

Greiffenberg reflects:

And the people stood by, watching . . . They regard Him without feeling sympathy, Him who, filled with compassion, turned around their suffering and transformed it into joy.

This may be the most haunting irony of all: the One who feels most deeply is surrounded by people who feel nothing.

And still, He loves them.

“Father, forgive them,” He prayed, “for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

Greiffenberg is exposing something we’re often too ashamed to name, which is our numbness at the foot of the cross.

How often do we stand before it—metaphorically or liturgically—unmoved?

But Christ’s compassion never cools.

Even when our hearts are cold, His mercy is fresh.

Even when our prayers are wilting, His intercession is strong.

A Mystery: The One Torment He Refused

 Greiffenberg also notes one final mystery.

She reminds us that on the cross, Christ refused one thing: the wine mixed with gall (see Matt. 27:34). It was a bitter sedative, like first-century morphine drip.

But Jesus turned His face from it.

Why?

Because He would feel it all.

He would drink the cup of wrath unmixed.

No shortcuts.

No numbing.

No compromise.

Not because He loved pain, but because He loved the pained.

What kind of God does that?

Only one.

What Shall I Thee Give?

Let’s return to where we began

Jesus! What shall I Thee give, who didst give Thyself to death, thyself for myself.

This is not a question asked to earn grace. It is the cry of someone undone by it.

 Greiffenberg sees the crucified Christ and realizes she has nothing to offer in return, nothing but awe.

That is the only right response.

You can’t pay Him back.

You can’t balance the scales.

You can only do what she does: marvel, weep, and worship.

“This I can’t conceive,” she says.

Neither can I.

Neither should we.

 We are not meant to reduce the cross to a formula.

We are meant to behold it as mystery.

As gift.

As gospel.

Jesus! This I can’t conceive, all my senses fade away. This I simply cannot grasp: that Life should be meant to die.

Thou [Greater] Isaac, who wast cut down and whom no angel delivered, didst, half dead, bear the wood cross there to the Place of the Skull! Blessing’s son, blessing’s bestower! Source of all delight and joy! My sun art Thou and Thou only, my heart’s peace and jubilation.

True[r] Joseph, who did descend into the black pit of hell, whom they intended to sell and put in the hands of heathens, who was falsely vilified. But Thou couldst lift up Thy head out of the fear, so as ruler thou wouldst be shown to the world.

It’s madness.

It’s mercy.

It’s Good Friday.

But Sunday is coming.

And until then, we pray praise with Greiffenberg:

Be Thou praised with all my might! Praised with the strength of my heart, praised with the sap of my veins, praised with my spirit’s pondering. Praised with all my soul and senses, praised with inmost enterprise! Praised with all that is in me! Be Thou evermore, O Jesus!

—
Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ, ed. and trans. Lynne Tatlock (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).