Good Friday and Modern Evil

Last night, as we stripped the altar, one of our members read Psalm 22.  It's a Psalm that always hits me, but in different ways each year.

I have spent part of the week reading about the horrible prison in El Salvador where the Trump administration is shipping people without giving them their day in court.  I realize that there are many abuses of human rights in the world, but that's the one that has seemed inescapable this week.  This week is the first time I've seen more pictures than just the one of a bent man with a shaved head.  The pictures of men forced to kneel with no space between them has made me ache in all sorts of ways.

sketch by Jill Ross

 

I have forced myself to look at these pictures.  My brain reminds me that the federal government through the decades has always been in cahoots with shady/criminal people/governments, but it's often been at a remove:  the CIA does the dirty deed, while the administration claims surprise.  Now we have a president who muses about sending citizens to prisons abroad, a vomitous development.

Last night I thought of innocent people whisked away, all people whisked away without a chance to defend themselves.  When the lector read verse 11, I almost cried out loud:  

"Do not be far from me, 

for trouble is near,
and there is no one to help."

On this day when we remember the crucifixion of Jesus by a variety of earthly powers, it is good to remember all the ways that the power of empire has not been transformed.  But it is also imperative to remember that every faith proclaims that the powers of evil do not have the final word. 

Psalm 22 ends this way, declaring that the power of good will not be overcome:

"future generations will be told about the Lord
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it."

My Good Friday Sermon

When I was a child, I loved the Good Friday service. Along with Christmas Eve, it was one of my favorites. I went to a church that did a Tenebrae service, and I loved the lights dimming down until we sat in total darkness. With a huge boom, the pastor closed the big Bible, and we filed out in silence. I loved the service because it was so different than what we did every Sunday.

In my adult years, I’ve grown frustrated with Good Friday for many reasons. Often the church service makes me yearn for more: more drama, more sadness, more shock at the horror of the story. Often the theology makes me queasy as well, with all that focus on sin and worthlessness; Jesus as blameless, God as stern, and we are at fault. Parts of that theology ring true, but there are so many ways that the theology of substitutionary atonement can go wrong that I hesitate to preach from that position.

Many of the earliest Christians, who were still Jewish after all, saw Jesus as both Messiah and prophet, one who came to announce the inbreaking Kingdom of God, but also one who came to let society know where God saw that the community had gone astray. Old Testament prophets spoke of the sins of society as a whole, not individual sins; for example, an Old Testament prophet would criticize policies that left citizens without enough food, and worry less about whether or not I ate every scrap of food on my plate. Many church denominations through the ages have been much more focused on individual sin, not societal sin, like injustice. Did Jesus really have to die on a cross because I would be mean to my baby sister two thousand years after his death? My fifth grade Sunday School teacher told me he did, and even at the time, I thought this idea was much too simplistic.

When I discovered the theologians who focused on crucifixion as capital punishment, I felt like I had discovered a way that the story made more sense to me. Jesus was crucified; he wasn’t stoned to death or beheaded with a sword or thrown to lions (or other cruelty in the Coliseum). Crucifixion was a Roman punishment reserved for enemies of the empire: revolutionaries, insurrectionists, and runaway slaves and those who would upset the social order. Christ crucified meant that he had so upset the social order that he needed to be dispatched in this public way that would also serve as deterrent to others who might be considering similar actions.

With crucifixion in mind, does the story of Jesus’ life make sense to us? Is his message that revolutionary that Rome would step in and kill him? But the more important question to me now: why do so many denominations focus more on the Crucifixion than on other elements of the story? I’ve been to more than one Easter service that seems stuck in Good Friday with lots of talk of sin and worthlessness than the amazing act that God performs.

These days, I approach the Good Friday story by seeing lots of people in the grip of something they don't understand, working within power structures they can't control, power structures that are spiraling away from what people thought they understood towards chaos and pandemonium. I see people with great disappointment that Jesus was not like Barabbas, the insurrectionist.

Once we might have thought of the chief priests and Pilate as the ones having the power. Now I think about the larger sweep of history, and even Rome's power seems fleeting. These actors have political power, true. But political power can be so precarious. The last few months and years have reminded us of that fact over and over again.

The story of the Crucifixion reminds us that we all suffer--even God who comes to be human with us suffers. There are some Christians out there who would tell us that if we just pray hard enough, we can avoid the sadness that's out there: our illnesses will go away, wealth will fall into our laps, prosperity of all kinds await us if we just trust in God enough. While these things can happen, they are not promised. More than once, Jesus seems to say that followers can expect to suffer just as he did.

The Good Friday story tells us what is at stake. Even God must suffer in the most horrible ways. God comes to earth to show us a better way of living our human lives, and in return, the most powerful earthly empire at the time arrests him, spits on him, presses a crown of thorns into his flesh, tortures him in other ways, and crucifies him, making sure that he is dead.

It's good to remember on Good Friday, and during all of our Good Friday times, that God can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness. We will explore that idea more on Easter and the weeks following Easter.

Good Friday reminds us of all the ways our hopes can be dashed, of all the ways that we can be betrayed and abandoned, of all the ways that it can all go so terribly wrong. N. T. Wright says, "The greatest religion the world had ever known and the finest system of justice the world had ever known came together to put Jesus on the cross" (How God Became King, page 208). It’s no wonder that we’ve spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what it all meant.

For today, let us sit with Good Friday: the sadness, the horror, the wishing that our salvation did not have to look this way. Let us remember how much our societies want to break anyone who offers a different vision of a more just world. Let us stand in solidarity with those who are shattered by our societies. Let us trust in a God who gives us free will to make disastrous decisions, but who will also show us in spectacular ways that the forces of death and destruction will not have the final word.

Judas and Why We Take Classes

 Today, a quick post before turning my attention back to seminary writing.  Actually, my attention is never very far from seminary writing, but today I actually need to get some words recorded.

Yesterday morning, as I was thinking and reading, I had that stray thought flit through my brain, the one that wonders why I bother to go to seminary.  Couldn't I achieve the same thing by reading and writing on my own?  Granted, I wouldn't have the credentials at the end that might open up new career doors--but in terms of intellectual stimulation, couldn't I achieve the same thing?

Last night's class on the Gospel of Luke reminded me of the benefits of taking a class that's happening in real time, instead of just watching recorded lectures.  We had a great conversation about Judas Iscariot, a conversation that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been there asking questions.

I asked what had been on my mind--could we really be sure that he exists, since he is such a perfect foil as a character.  We concluded, after fruitful conversation, that he probably did exist.  The early church would have been embarrassed by him.  The early writers would have had reason to keep him out of the Gospels.  He's an embarrassment and a puzzle--how could he have spent so much time with Jesus and acted the way that he did?

We talked about how little is known about him in the Gospel of Luke.  It's other Gospels that mention that he holds he purse or that he is greedy.  But Luke does include the bit about Satan entering Judas, which led to some interesting conversation.  We talked about agency.  I said that Judas still had free will, even after Satan entered him.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus prays for all the disciples because Satan will be doing winnowing and coming after all the disciples.  We see different outcomes of that prayer.

My professor said that Judas still has agency, even after Satan entered him.  I said that Judas could have said no, just like Mary could have.  My professor said, "Satan entering Judas doesn't immobilize him any more than the Holy Spirit entering Mary immobilizes here--what is true of good entering us may also be true of evil."  I do realize that others may have a different view of possession and how the forces of good and evil work.

One of my classmates put the idea in terms of remembering, both the kind that involves the memory and the kind that involves putting body parts back together.  She theorized that Judas had gotten lost, that he couldn't remember himself, as happens to all of us from time to time, for so many reasons.  And that's when we need Jesus to re-member us.

The other reason for the language of Satan, my professor said, is that it moves the story from one of a friend betraying a friend.  It is that story--but it is much more cosmic.

And here's one more nugget.  My professor acknowledged that the Gospels don't answer all the questions that she has.  She said that when she keeps coming back to a question that the Gospels refuse to answer, that maybe it's time to ask a different question.

In short, it was a great class, with lots of interesting give and take, throughout the class.  It was a great reminder of why it is worth it to take classes, instead of just watching YouTube videos or doing readings on my own.

Did We Need to Have Judas?

A week ago, my World Religions seminary class met for one of our two week-ends that we met in person.  We discussed the book Silence by Shusaku Endo.  We primarily looked at it as a springboard to talk missionary work, but it's also clearly a Christ story of some sort.  We disagreed about the ways it represents a Christ story, but that didn't worry me too much.  It's an ambiguous book, and we're not in training to be literary scholars.

We are in training for various types of religious mission, and it was interesting to hear various responses.  I was surprised to discover how many of my classmates believe that Jesus is the only route to salvation.  I was also surprised to find myself thinking of Judas Iscariot after one of my classmates said that we had to have Judas, because without Judas there's no betrayal which means there's no salvation.

That started me thinking about how much we need Judas.  I firmly believe that had there been no Judas, we'd have had a crucifixion.  The fact that Jesus was crucified, not stoned or beheaded, tells me how much that Rome felt Jesus was a threat to the empire.  They didn't need Judas to identify him.  

So why have the Judas thread of the story?  The most obvious answer is because it really happened.  Maybe that's true. It does appear in all four canonical Gospels, which is rare, for an event to appear in all four Gospels.

But I've spent the last week thinking about how convenient it is to have the story of Judas.  It gives us a way to talk about betrayal, all the ways we can betray God.  There's the Judas way and the Peter way as part of the Good Friday story.  As we look at the rest of the canonical Gospels, we see that there are any number of other ways to betray God.

I've talked about the theology of the cross, about substitutionary atonement theology and how I don't believe it anymore.  I don't believe that God required this kind of sacrifice--if so, why would we want to worship such a God?  I do believe that the powers of evil, the powers of injustice, the powers of empire--I do believe that all these powers and principalities are very strong.  While I hope that they will eventually be defeated, I do think that if someone like Jesus comes along, there will be a temporary defeat, and it's more about the powers of evil than it is about the weakness of good/God.

And the powers and principalities don't need a Judas to help them.  The powers and principalities will use a Judas, certainly, but they don't need a Judas.

The world shows so many ways to betray God.  The Easter story shows us that the betrayals and defeats are temporary.

The Brokenness Before the Beauty

Today, much of Christendom will celebrate Good Friday, the day that remembers the Crucifixion of Christ. This is the day that no bread can be consecrated. Many Christians will fast today. Some will fast until Easter morning.

I have already heard a great Good Friday sermon.  At seminary chapel on Tuesday, we had a Holy Week theme, and our guest preacher preached on the crowds demanding the release of Barabbas, not Jesus.  Our guest preacher cautiously approached the substitutionary atonement theology that rears its ugly head on Good Friday and beyond.  He reminded us that this theology comes to us from Anselm in the 12th century, not from God.

He said that humans required the crucifixion of Jesus, in the way that human brokenness so often does.  God did not require the sacrifice of Jesus.  He talked about Jesus and the ways that Jesus sought to heal the world.  He ended his sermon by saying, "Jesus released Barabbas.  Let us have the strength to release Jesus Christ." 

Tonight I will go to a Good Friday service at another new church of mine, the one near my North Carolina house.  It will involve Stations of the Cross and walking outside.  I'm interested to see what they do with all the potential.  I have not done much with Stations of the Cross in the past, just a Good Friday service here or there, plus a few encounters with art that uses the Stations of the Cross.

from Mary Button's "Stations of the Cross:  Jesus at the Border"

It is good to remember how much of the world is stuck in Good Friday.  It is good to remember, as our guest preacher did, how we are called to stand in solidarity with those who are broken by the world.  It is good today to reflect on God, who can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness.

Good Friday in a Week of Depressingly Ordinary Violence

Holy Week 2021 been an interesting experience.  We've seen a surge in mass killings by young men with guns in the U.S., a surge just in the past two or three weeks.  We've seen a surge in violence against Asians in the U.S., along with coverage of who fights back, who intervenes, and who closes the door, thus refusing to get involved.  This week has brought coverage of the trial of the police officer accused of killing George Floyd, with testimony from the people who witnessed the event.

I wish that I could say that this violence is out of the ordinary, but it's not.  We have increased coverage, but communities of color would tell us that they've always endured violence, both from their fellow citizens and from officers who took an oath to protect us all.  Even during the time of lockdown, 2020 was one of the deadliest years for gun violence, even if we had fewer mass shootings (see this article in The Washington Post for more details).

Diana Butler Bass has written a powerful essay for Good Friday 2021.  She considers the issue of the crowd, both the one in Minneapolis watching George Floyd die, unsure of what to do and unable to do much even as they wished they could, and the crowds at the time of the trauma of Jesus, crowds who were surely feeling the same thing:  "The imperial police were torturing a man who was most likely innocent as they forced him through city streets to his death. Some may have turned their heads, not wanting to see the same scene again, having witnessed far too many victims taken down this very route toward the same end. Others might have been horrified by the whipping, the cold cruelty of the Roman soldiers. A few reached out to offer comfort, to plead with the executioners for mercy."

She says, "This week, we are reminded that the trauma of oppressive systems isn’t borne only by its most direct victims. Imperial violence spreads from the knee on the neck and the cross on a back of individual sufferers to the bystanders, the witnesses, others on the way. Here we see the powerful truth — those on sidewalks become casualties as well."

Good Friday comes around again to remind us that the problem of violence isn't new to our generation.  It wasn't new to Christ's generation.  I was taught that Jesus had to come to the world to save us from our habit of violence, that he had to die on the cross to appease his angry father God--otherwise, that harsh punishment would have fallen on our heads.

I could make the argument that harsh punishment is falling on our heads day after day, year after year, century after century.  What difference does the death of Christ make anyway?

Let me be clear:  I do not believe in the substitutionary atonement theory that explains the death of Jesus as necessary to keep us all from going to hell.  I believe that Jesus was killed because he was a threat to the Roman empire.  Crucifixion was the punishment for terrorists; other types of criminals were stoned or beheaded.

I can't find the Richard Rohr quote that I'd like to end with, so I'll paraphrase.  The cross is not God's requirement to love us.  Crucifixion is the world's response to God's love.  Jesus comes to show us of the depth of Divine love, and for his trouble, the Roman empire crucified him.

And yet, God can use this ugliness too.  The empty tomb tells us that empires and other powers will not have the last word.  Out of utter cruelty and depravity, we can find new life, new hope.

Good Friday: Power so Precarious

Today is Good Friday.  Much of the Christian world will consider this man hanging on a cross.  Will we think about Good Friday differently in a time of plague, in a time of economic collapse caused by this pandemic?

Christians have had some fairly common approaches to the Good Friday story.  Most Christians say that Jesus had to be sacrificed because of the sin of us all.  Some of us have been deeply uncomfortable with that narrative:  what kind of God would require that kind of sacrifice?  Some scholars point to the temple sacrifice traditions to explain this narrative.

Some Christians focus on the role of empire in this story.  They point out that crucifixion was the death used for those who were seen as enemies of the Roman empire.  A far more common form of capital punishment would have been stoning.

These days, I approach the Good Friday story by seeing lots of people in the grip of something they don't understand, working within power structures they can't control, power structures that are spiraling away from what people thought they understood towards chaos and pandemonium.

Once we might have thought of the chief priests and Pilate as the ones having the power.  Now I think about the larger sweep of history, and even Rome's power seems fleeting.  These actors have political power, true.  But political power can be so precarious.  The last few months and years have reminded us of that fact over and over again.

The story of the Crucifixion reminds we all suffer--even God who comes to be with us suffers.  There are some Christians out there who would tell us that if we just pray hard enough, we can avoid the sadness that's out there: our illnesses will go away, wealth will fall into our laps, prosperity of all kinds await us if we just trust in God enough.

The Good Friday story tells a different tale. Even God must suffer in the most horrible ways. God comes to earth to show us a better way of living our human lives, and in return, the most powerful earthly empire at the time crucifies him.

It's good to remember on Good Friday, and during all of our Good Friday times, that God can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness.

This year, that message resonates more than ever.

Waiting with the Bloody Cross

First the meal, then the ordeal.  And now, we wait.

I think of those first disciples, both the ones we know of, and the ones that will forever be unnamed.  I think of them stunned by a variety of grief.  There's the primary grief of death:  our loved one will never return.  We've lost them forever.

There's the grief of unresolved outcomes:  the words we never got around to saying, the emotions we held choked up in our bodies for fear of expressing them.  There must have been the grief of how it might have been.  I think of the disciples, some of whom must have been saying, "I thought he was going to get away with it.  He pulled it off for so long, this speaking the truth that we've been told must be left alone.  I thought they might let him live."

I imagine the disgruntled ones, the ones who could see this outcome coming from miles away, the ones who say, "Well, I knew this wouldn't end well.  I told Jesus . . . "  I think of the ones who might have even argued with Jesus and tried to convince him to try a different approach, to fly under the radar where he could live and continue his incredible work.  What good is a savior who is dead?

I think of the ones who feel betrayed--so many ways to feel betrayed.  I think of the ones who might have said, "Well, he's hanging on a cross of his own making."  I think of the ones who wanted a more violent revolution, the ones who were so disgusted that they were ready to burn it down (it being society or the other disciples or Jesus himself or  . . . well, anything at all).

I think of the ones who must have felt stranded or marooned.  What to do next? 

The women point the way, as they so often do.  Saviors come and go, compelling ideas collapse, communities lie in ruins, but the daily work must be done.  There are mouths to feed and dead bodies to wash, and spice mixtures to create to cover the stench of death all around us.

It's interesting to think about how the Gospel writers handle the resurrection part of this story.  It's the women who return to the tomb because they see the work that is still left to be done.  In doing the drudgery work of dealing with the body, they are the first witnesses to the resurrection.

As we do our own drudge work, cleaning up after those in our communities who leave chaos in their wake, let us remember that the payoff may be that we are the first to witness the miraculous.

For those of us who are grieving for those who are crucified, hanging on crosses of their own devising or being tortured by the government/society, let us remember that the bloody cross doesn't have to be the final answer.

Good Friday: Empire and Modern Stations of the Cross

Today, much of Christendom will celebrate Good Friday, the day that remembers the Crucifixion of Christ. This is the day that no bread can be consecrated. Many Christians will fast today. Some will fast until Easter morning.

When I was a child, Good Friday was my favorite service.  The Lutheran church of my childhood didn't offer much variety in terms of what happened from Sunday to Sunday.  In retrospect, it may be that my childhood self had a different sense of time.

Good Friday offered a sharp difference to what we usually did in church:  lights dimming to darkness, the book closing with a big bang.  I always deliberated whether I loved Christmas Eve best or Good Friday.

Now I see Good Friday as highly problematic.  Unlike many Christians, I don't believe that Jesus had to die for my sins so I could get into heaven.  I don't believe in substitutionary atonement.  I've done some research, and I know that idea is much newer to Christianity than many of us know.  I know that the ancient world would have caught the subtle ways that the original Christian church was trying to undercut the priests and organized religion of the day by suggesting that we didn't need those methods of redemption.

Frankly, I don't understand how anyone could worship a God who would demand that horrific blood sacrifice of crucifixion before loving us.  Moreover, it doesn't square with many of the presentations of God in our scriptures.

But I do know how hard it is to get away from that idea.  Many people are not trained to think critically, and even if they are, there are many topics that feel too scary to apply those critical thinking skills.  I understand that, but I'm still flabbergasted that this idea of Jesus dying for my inability to live a sin-free life has such a powerful hold on us.

So then why did Jesus die?  He was crucified, which was not the way that most people were put to death in the Roman empire.  Ordinary criminals were stoned.  People who posed a threat to the state were crucified--a very public execution that served as a warning and a deterrent.

I'm also uncomfortable with how Good Friday has been used as a reason to oppress/slaughter Jews.  Many Good Friday services have not gotten all the anti-Semitic aspects out of the liturgy.  It's problematic.

Good Friday does give us a great opportunity to think about our systems of empire and how they are still a threat to those who are lower in the power hierarchy of our social structures.  My church bought prints of the Jesus at the Border stations of the cross series by the artist Mary Button, and they now hang around the sanctuary.  My Lenten journaling group spent time with the installation on Wednesday night.  It was a powerful experience.

The artist has used this stations of the cross approach to several social justice issues, like climate change and mass incarceration.  It's an interesting way to move away from the traditional ways that Good Friday is so problematic.

The Manger and the Tomb

I've been thinking about the tomb, mainly because I plan to write a poem in the voice of the tomb.  I feel like I know that tombs in the time of Jesus would have been more like caves, and not caves that were carved out for the sake of being a tomb, but structures that already existed.

I'm also thinking about the stable and the manger--here too, we've been told that it wouldn't have been a stable like the kind we might find on farms in the U.S., the kind of stable with haylofts and feed troughs.  The stable, too, was more likely to be more like a cave than the wooden structures that many of us associate with the Christmas story.

Yesterday at the noon Tenebrae service, I thought about coming full circle--the baby in the manger in the cave of a stable is laid to rest in a cave of a tomb.  I thought about all the life-in-death and death-in-life situations in which so many of us wait.

Today on this Saturday, the day before Easter, we wait.  We are lucky, some of us.  We wait for the end of the Easter story that we already know.  We have heard the Good News that He is risen.

Some of us will go to Easter vigils.  Some of us will bake bunny cakes or create unicorn frappucino drinks.  Some of us will go to choir rehearsal, while others are preparing the property for Easter.  Some of us wish we had a new Easter outfit.

Some of us are marked by cinders and can't imagine how new life can rise out of the ashes.  Maybe we go through the movements anyway.  Maybe we transform our sorrow into some sort of quest:  for justice, for change, for a better vision of the world.

It's been interesting to participate in Holy Week with the news stories of shootings--the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings and the police shootings--always in my mind.  I am haunted by the juxtaposition of the women weeping at the cross with the news stories of immigrant families ripped apart both in the U.S. and elsewhere.  I cannot see how we move forward, but it feels so important to both move forward and move carefully.  We seem just steps away from complete self-immolation as a society.

Christ's passage from the cross to Easter morning is a promise to us all, even if we're unsure of the process.  God can take the most profound ugliness and transform it into a thing of beauty.

Good Friday Services

Today, much of Christendom will celebrate Good Friday, the day that remembers the Crucifixion of Christ. This is the day that no bread can be consecrated. Many Christians will fast today. Some will fast until Easter morning.

Today I plan to go to the noon Tenebrae service.  It's always strange to go to that service at high noon.  Our church doesn't have many glass windows, but it's still too light in the sanctuary.

I say I plan to go.  I'll be at work, so it's always hard to know if I can be sure I can get away.  Fridays are usually easy days for a noon appointment, but this is the week before a new quarter starts on Monday, so it's hard to know.

It's interesting to think about the Holy Week journeys of past years.  Some years I can get away from work at noon, but other years, no.  Some years I can get to church at night, but other years we've been travelling or had family in town.

I grew up in the kind of family that went to church even when we were on vacation, so even when I haven't attended church regularly, I've always known where we were in the liturgical year. 

Good Friday reminds us of all the ways our hopes can be dashed, of all the ways that we can be betrayed and abandoned, of all the ways that it can all go so terribly wrong. N. T. Wright says, "The greatest religion the world had ever known and the finest system of justice the world had ever known came together to put Jesus on the cross" (How God Became King, page 208).

Good Friday shimmers with meaning. There are some Christians out there who would tell us that if we just pray hard enough, we can avoid the sadness that's out there: our illnesses will go away, wealth will fall into our laps, prosperity of all kinds await us if we just trust in God enough.

The Good Friday story tells a different tale. Even God must suffer in the most horrible ways. God comes to earth to show us a better way of living our human lives, and in return, the most powerful earthly empire crucifies him.

It's good to remember on Good Friday, and during all of our Good Friday times, that God can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness.

Good Friday Thoughts

Last night, instead of writing a meditation on Good Friday for my church, I went out to dinner with a friend.  We had planned to go see A Wrinkle in Time, then it looked like she had to cancel completely because of home inspectors coming, then she suggested dinner.  We hadn't seen each other since summer, so we had lots to catch up on, and much of it was tinged with sadness:  hurricane repairs, the school shooting a month ago, the state of the larger world.

In times like these, the Good Friday part of Holy Week shimmers with additional meaning.  There are some Christians out there who would tell us that if we just pray hard enough, we can avoid the sadness that's out there:  our illnesses will go away, wealth will fall into our laps, prosperity of all kinds await us if we just trust in God enough.

The Good Friday story tells a different tale.  Even God must suffer in the most horrible ways.  God comes to earth to show us a better way of living our human lives, and in return, the most powerful earthly empire crucifies him.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Jesus suffers several betrayals by his closest friends.  Good Friday gives us a way to think about betrayal and how we can respond.  The Good Friday message is that we will all betray God.  But some of us will try again, while others will give up in abject despair.

I also find myself thinking about the tree that must wish for a great destiny, but is transformed into an instrument of torture.  Likewise, Jesus, who has been in some amount of control of his own actions, but finds himself handed over to others.  In this past several years when I've watched so many friends and colleagues battle cancer--handed over to the medical-industrial complex--the idea of the Passion takes on an excruciating hue.

Easter promises us that our efforts will not be in vain. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says forcefully, " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (208).

We may not understand how God will transform the world. We may not be able to believe that bleakness will be defeated. But Easter shows us God's promise that death is not the final answer.

Cold Tombs

When I was a child, Good Friday was one of my favorite services, with the lights going out throughout the service and the slam of a big book.

As an adult, I have yet to find a satisfying Good Friday service.  The Good Friday service at my current church is interesting, in its way, but it doesn't move me the way I wish it would.  We focus on the 7 last words, and our pastor invites people to offer meditations on the words.  Thus, it is often much too much tied to personal, modern experience, which is valuable--but I'd rather focus on the experience on the cross.

My favorite part of the service was the trio who sung "Beautiful Things," with its key refrain:  "You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of dust.  You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us"--evocative!  Here's the link to the group who created the song originally.

Throughout the night I found myself thinking of that time in the garden.  I had read a piece earlier in the day (on Martha Spong's blog?  I can't find it now) about the kiss that Judas gives Christ, and that both men understand its significance--that both men understand it's the last time they'll see each other alive in this particular physical world.  This year, that pain of separation spoke to me.

I had thought I wouldn't do sketching last night, but I really wanted to.  So, I took out my 2 gray markers and one black.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I had this idea of a tomb.  Earlier, driving home from work, I was thinking about how I had spent much of the time alone on a very quiet hallway, working in the accreditation room. A phrase came to me "the quiet tomb of the classroom," which made me think about tombs and what keeps us entombed. I was thinking about snapping the thin skin between my thumb and forefinger as I closed a binder. That happened on Thursday--I was thinking about Good Friday, and suddenly a poem came to me:  "Good Friday in Binderville" (Binderville has become my shorthand way of referring to all the work that must be done for an accreditation visit).

As I sketched, I was also thinking about the idea of hope, the idea of what brings redemption.  I thought about the Emily Dickinson poem that tells us that hope is a thing with feathers.  Ultimately, I came up with this sketch:

After the service, we stayed to help set up for Easter.  That juxtaposition was also odd.  It was fun to work with people--we started with no preconceived ideas.  Tomorrow, I'll show you what we came up with.

It was strange to be going about our Good Friday activities while various world leaders are making bombastic declarations about who has the biggest weapon and who is not afraid to use it.  We finished our Good Friday by watching the rebroadcast of the News Hour on PBS--how comforting to be watching the commentators Shields and Brooks with my parents.

I have a strange reading plan for the upcoming days.  Before the service I read parts of Henri Nouwen's journals.  I felt a bit of sadness that I hadn't thought to reread Nouwen's Latin America journal during Lent.  So that will be my post-"The Handmaid's Tale" reading--what juxtapositions will I see?  At one point, the problems in Latin America seemed so insurmountable.  I first read this journal in the early years of the post September 11 world, which colored my reading.  What will I see in this reading?

So here we are, at the strange Saturday between Good Friday and Easter.  In many ways, it is so much like the rest of life:  resurrection is on the way, but we're not there yet.  Redemption waits in a cold tomb that will soon be empty.

The Work of Good Friday

It has been a long time since I had to work on Good Friday.  But in a few hours, I go to the office.  I will continue with the week's work:  reassembling binders, getting the room ready for the accreditation visit, observing a faculty member who is new--I hope that she remembers that we do not have Good Friday off.

I'm usually travelling on Good Friday or preparing to travel--I often go on a retreat that happens the week-end after Easter, and I leave on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Easter.  Again, this year, I'm staying put.  It's too close to the accreditation visit for me to feel OK about a multi-state trip, and I have no vacation time earned at this point.

Journeys on Good Friday make a sort of sense, as the Good Friday narrative is one of journeying from one world to the next.  Jesus would experience a time out of time that many of us never will--but travel gives us a taste of that.

This morning, I got up early to take my sister and nephew to the airport--lots of people are travelling today.  Now I will do some laundry and go to the grocery store to buy a few items for the week-end.  Later today, I'll go to Good Friday evening service with my spouse and parents. 

I will miss the Good Fridays that I've had in the past:  time with friends or helping with a midday service or a walk in the labyrinth.  But I will try to stay alert through the day for God breaking through into the world.  I am not the only one who has to work today, after all.

Book Ends: The Feast of the Annunciation and Good Friday

It's hard to believe that a week from today will be Good Friday.  In an interesting juxtaposition, the kind that Holy Week often brings us, it will also be the Feast of the Annunciation. 

My latest piece at the Living Lutheran site explores this juxtaposition.  Here are some quotes to whet your appetite:

"I realize that churches that celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation will move the feast day if it falls in or near Holy Week. But as Holy Week approaches, let’s think about how these days are more similar than different – even if they seem like book-ends to the incarnate life of Jesus."

"You may or may not remember that the feast day of the Annunciation celebrates the appearance of the angel Gabriel who tells Mary of her opportunity to be part of God's mission of redemption."

"In many ways Jesus has an experience similar to Mary’s. He, too, must wait for the time to be right for his part in the story. He, too, has a relationship with God that most of us will never have. Most of us are just too busy."

"God chooses the least likely for the greatest tasks, as the Feast of the Annunciation celebrates. Good Friday, on the other hand, reminds us of all the ways our hopes can be dashed, the ways we can be betrayed and abandoned, and the ways that it can all go so terribly wrong."

Read the whole piece here.

Flunking Holy Week

Two weeks ago, we'd have been getting ready to go to the airport to make our way to Hawaii.  Because we knew we'd be leaving early, we didn't go to Maundy Thursday services.  Because we were in the air all day, we didn't go to Good Friday services. 

But because the stream of the liturgical year is always moving below the rocks of my regular day, I was aware of what I was missing.  I did my own recognition of the holy days, but it was strange to observe them alone.

Wendy has a post about flunking Lent.  I flunked Holy Week.  Or maybe I just made a D.

On Maundy Thursday, I did have communal meals, but nothing like some Maundy Thursday meals I've had in the past (the occasional Seder, the pot luck dinner).  A group of work friends went to lunch in our work neighborhood; someone paid for our lunch, including the to-go lunches that we were taking back to colleagues who couldn't leave their desks.  That would have been strange any day, but it felt especially weighted with meaning on Maundy Thursday.

On Maundy Thursday evening, while the rest of the Christian world washed feet and stripped altars, we shared a simple meal of hamburgers with a friend and then did our final packing.  Again, our activities fit a Maundy Thursday theme in a way, but a strange way.

We got up early on Good Friday and made our way to the airport.  We waited for our first flight, and one of our fellow travelers told us about his recent heart attack and renewed life:  an Easter story!

In the Dallas airport, an announcement invited us all to the chapel for a Good Friday service, but didn't tell us where the chapel was.  I wondered if the worship planners did what they would normally do, or if a Good Friday service in an airport chapel would be substantially different.

And then we got on the plane for our almost 9 hour flight to Hawaii.  I thought about all the mortifications of the body that a long flight requires.  I won't go as far as to call it a crucifixion; I'm very clear about the agony involved in that punishment.

We flew west, so the falling of the night was always behind us.  I'd love to be the kind of person who sleeps on a plane, but even on overnight flights, I have trouble.  On a flight where the sun doesn't set, it's even harder.

We ended Good Friday sitting by a pool under the light of the full moon.  We drank tropical drinks and ate fried chicken.  Even my best poet self can't make that experience fit into a Good Friday theme.

It's strange to be in the Easter season, having missed Holy Week and having had a very simple Easter.  I like Wendy's assertion:  "Now it’s Eastertide, a new season, a new day, a new opportunity. I am trying to practice creativity this Easter. I am following Christine Valters Paintner’s book The Artist’s Rule, and seeing what I can do over this season to be contemplative and creative. So far I am at a brilliant so-so."

A brilliant so-so--at least it's better than flunking!

Good Friday: A Photo Essay

When I was young, Good Friday was my second favorite service of the year.  My very most favorite, of course, was Christmas Eve.  But I LOVED Good Friday with a passion that might have frightened people if they had known.

For several years, the pastor of my childhood church, Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Montgomery, Alabama, read an article that recounted the crucifixion in medical terms.  The article was quite clear about the agony that Christ suffered, hour by hour on the cross.  I remember hearing about wood scraping against scourged flesh and the suffocation that crucifixion brought about.  And the nails--through the wrists, not the palms, since the flesh in human hands won't support human weight on a cross.

I loved that the lights went out as the Good Friday service went on, and eventually there was the big bang when our pastor slammed the big Bible shut.  I loved the drama.  I loved that the service was so different.  I don't understand why churches don't do more with that.

There are so many ways this service can go wrong.  It's too easy to get bogged down in what I call the Old, Rugged Cross school of theology.  That script can get dangerously simplistic:  that Jesus had to come to pay for my sin because 2000 years later I would get into fights with my baby sister.

Of course, my theology of the cross can get dangerously simplistic too.  I focus on the fact that Jesus was crucified.  Ancient Rome had many crimes that warranted death as punishment, but crucifixion was reserved for those who were seen as a threat to the State:  terrorists and insurrectionists and such.  Jesus was seen as such a threat to the social order that the government had to kill him.  But of course, the crucifixion of Christ was about so much more.

I love the way that Nora Gallagher describes the cycle in Things Seen and Unseen:  A Year Lived in Faith:  "I kneel down in front of the cross.  I've come full circle from Ash Wednesday, on my knees for the imposition of ashes, to kneeling here to kiss the cross.  I am marked here, in the same way I was marked with ashes, in the same way I was marked at my baptism.  As my lips met the wood, I'm pierced by a shaft of pain so tender I sob.  A last layer cracks" (page 128).

Good Friday reminds us of all the ways our hopes can be dashed, of all the ways that we can be betrayed and abandoned, of all the ways that it can all go so terribly wrong.  N. T. Wright says, "The greatest religion the world had ever known and the finest system of justice the world had ever known came together to put Jesus on the cross" (How God Became King, page 208).

It's good to remember on Good Friday that God can make beauty out of the most profound ugliness, wholeness out of the most shattered brokenness.

Meditation on Holy Week and This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, April 5, 2015:

First Reading: Acts 10:34-43

First Reading (Alt.): Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Second Reading (Alt.): Acts 10:34-43

Gospel: Mark 16:1-8

Gospel (Alt.): John 20:1-18

Finally we move through Holy Week to Easter Sunday. At last, our Lenten pilgrimage draws to a close.

But perhaps you still linger back at Ash Wednesday. Perhaps you find the Good Friday texts more evocative than the Easter texts. It's interesting how our emotional lives aren't always in sync with the liturgical seasons or the Lectionary.
Maybe this year we can approach the Holy Week stories differently.   Maundy Thursday gives us a view of how to love each other.  Notice that it's about what we do:  we eat together, we wash each other's feet, we anoint with oil.  It's not about an emotion--it's about an action.  It's not a theory of love, but a concrete way of being loving.

We are called to break bread together, to drink wine together. We are called to invite the outcast to supper with us. We are called to care for each other's bodies--not to sexualize them or mock them or brutalize them, but to wash them tenderly. Thus fortified, we are called to announce that the Kingdom of God is breaking out among us in the world in which we live, and we are called to demand justice for the oppressed.

Perhaps we find ourselves more like the disciples who would transform the loving act of anointing with oil into a way to help the poor by selling that oil and giving the money to the poor.  It seems a good way to show love.  Jesus rebukes this way of thinking.  We will always have the poor; we won't always have the ones we love.  This year, a year when so many mourn such severe losses, those words speak to me.

Good Friday gives us a way to think about betrayal and how we can respond.  The Good Friday message is that we will all betray God.  But some of us will try again, while others will give up in abject despair.

I also find myself thinking about the tree that must wish for a great destiny, but is transformed into an instrument of torture.  Likewise, Jesus, who has been in some amount of control of his own actions, but finds himself handed over to others.  In this past year when I've watched so many friends and colleagues battle cancer--handed over to the medical-industrial complex--the idea of the Passion takes on an excruciating hue.

Easter promises us that our efforts will not be in vain. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says forcefully, " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (208). We may not understand how God will transform the world. We may not be able to believe that bleakness will be defeated. But Easter shows us God's promise that death is not the final answer.

Spring reminds us that nature commits to resurrection. Easter reminds us of God's promise of resurrection. Now is the time for us to rekindle our resurrection selves.

Heading To Holy Week

As we head to Holy Week, how can we hear the familiar stories with fresh ears?  How can we move closer to this story that's so distant from us in time and place?

Do the palms obscure the real Jesus?

What feet are waiting to be washed?

What table waits to be set for a meal made new with meaning?

The soldier looks impassively at the Passion.  How are we colluding with our empire?

So many wounds to bind.

How can we celebrate Easter with the taste of ashes still in our mouths?

Lent of Many Cancers

Our Good Friday service includes a series of meditations on the 7 last words of Christ.  Our pastor asks for volunteers from the creative writers and thinkers at our church.  I volunteered for "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

At the time, I thought I'd talk about the times that we feel abandoned, that if even people like Jesus and Mother Theresa felt abandoned, that we shouldn't let those feelings of abandonment unsettle us too much.

Then I experienced the Lent of many cancers--none of them mine, let me hasten to add.  But all of them afflicting people who are my age or slightly older.  I know that at age 48 I'm officially at midlife, perhaps slightly beyond the middle of midlife.  But still, it's disconcerting when so many people in such a short period of time come back from a check up with a cancer diagnosis.

I'm sure that God hasn't felt abandoned by me during these past 6 weeks.  I've prayed more than I've ever prayed before.

Have I felt abandoned?  No.  But I have felt baffled.  Who creates such a system, where cells can go haywire in such a way?

I've written before about a universe rooted in free will and how it means we will face mistakes, since we're not marionettes.  I've read the theories about evolution and how some dead ends, like cancer cells, lead to other types of evolution too.  But still, I'm unconvinced that God has done the best job possible with creation.

I recognize the hubris in saying this kind of statement.  The world is full of much that I don't understand or fully appreciate.

The Good Friday narrative that leads to our Easter joy makes no sense to me either.  The Bible is full of these kinds of narratives where good is fashioned out of ashes.  I do have faith in the Easter message, that death does not have the final answer.

So, I will celebrate Easter tomorrow, even as I still feel marked by the ashes of Ash Wednesday.  I will move through the coming weeks trusting that God has a bigger vision than I can understand.