Because the services of the Triduum are one very long continuous service, I chose not to pray before I started. Instead...I picked up on this one section of John's Passion Gospel. And--truth be told--I cribbed quite a bit from some previous blog entries to write this one. It helps that I was one deep theological thinker for years before I was even allowed to go to seminary. LOL!
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“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and
his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus
saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to
his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple,
"Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into
his own home.” (John 19:25b-27)
Last night…Jesus taught us through a meal and
foot washing how to love and be true friends to one another.
Here…at his final hours of his life…most of
the inner band of beloved friends have disappeared.
Love is left vulnerable and suffering.
He cries out for God: My God! My God! Why
have you forsaken me?
Where are you?
It is an intense scene. It is also this
experience of agony that for so many who have felt themselves pushed into the
margins of society…this is how they see God as having been through the same
wringer…the same hardships and sting of rejection…and as the hymn says, ‘the
strife is o’er, the battle done. The victory of life is won!’ Because this is not the end of Jesus. He is
winning…even as it appears on the outside that he’s losing. God is taking the
world’s sins into the grave and will resurrect Jesus on the third day.
I quoted at the start some lines that struck
me. As I’ve said, even after Jesus has shown his disciples how to be friends,
most of them have run away in the face of Jesus’ arrest. But the women…three
Marys including his mother…are standing in the crowd…watching him die. With
them is the beloved disciple…John. Jesus,
as he is dying this excruciating death, gazes down…and brings together two
people into a familial kinship of mother and son. Before this moment,
Mother Mary and Disciple John may have been, at most, acquaintances. But
Jesus is providing the bond that draws two strangers together in Love.
In suffering, pain, and heartache…John and
Mary cling to each other and he takes her into his home.
Another verse in the Gospel passage from
tonight also caught my attention. It’s in reference to the criminals executed
with Jesus:
There they
crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between
them.
John's Gospel doesn't elaborate on this
moment in the way that Matthew and Luke feel the need to discuss the ones
hanging alongside Jesus. Matthew would have us believe that the
criminals, who we believe are justly accused as opposed to innocent Jesus, join
with the crowds in mocking him. Luke, on the other hand, gives us a more
hope-filled moment where one criminal is mocking Christ, and the other criminal
comes to Jesus' defense and asks Christ to remember him. And Jesus, again
during his own physical pain, assures that criminal that today, he will be with
Christ in Paradise…redeeming the dead.
Jesus' arms, stretched out on the hard wood
of the cross, is reaching out to those condemned to die with him. That
reach, extending forward to us today, invites us, too, to die with Christ to
all those various sins of failure to love more fully, pay attention to those around
us, reach out to those in need. This is the day of recognition,
reconciliation, and repentance.
It seems fitting, then, that Good Friday
represents the day that hangs in-between Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday and
the Easter Vigil proclamation that Christ has risen. It is the middle
ground between Thursday night's shared meal, foot washing, and final
instructions to love one another as Christ has loved us and made that love a
visible sign in going to the cross to claim the ultimate victory over sin and
death.
And…just in case we still didn’t get it…the
empty tomb of Easter shows us that nothing, absolutely nothing, will destroy
Love and separate us from God. Ever!
The solemness and the hard wood of the Good Friday
cross remind us that we must endure and pass through this pain before we can
celebrate on Sunday morning.
Good Fridays happen….and I know we have all
been living through what might have felt like one extremely long Good Friday
period.
But Easters will follow.
Jesus’ place, in between two acquaintances
and two strangers, is the constant reminder that even as we are in pain in our
Good Friday moments, we are not exempt from reaching our hands forth in Love to
the other, all of those we call "other." Keep
the faith, dear Easter people of God!
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