Theme: The Love and Courage of Good Friday
Welcome to us all on this day when we commemorate the passion and death of Jesus. Just as progressive Christianity has turned the original sin concept into a theology of blessing, so too we look at the death of Jesus not as atonement or, appeasement of an angry God displeased by human sin but rather as an act of love and courage. We might call it a theology of accompaniment in which the Divine meets us where we are, sees us in all that we are and in all we can become. On this day, Jesus enjoins us to understand: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13).
Opening Prayer:
We are bereft at the death of Jesus. Gospel scribes tell us that darkness falls over all the earth today and storms threaten. The vibrant colors of a divine Kin-dom painted by Jesus take on the monochrome sepia of an old photograph.
Yet, the air is sparked and charged with stillness following a storm. A fresh, clarifying horizon will come with the new day.
May we hold in our souls the knowledge of Jesus dying under the oppression of an Empire with the complicity of street crowds and bureaucrats who wash their hands of it. Though betrayed by friends, Jesus dies for the love in God’s Kin-dom; for the divine healing, and dignity he extended to all he met; for sacred truths that challenged senseless, ancient rules; for equality of every person and for challenging the rude and random status quo of rich and violent forces. His death is as his life is —a testament to all that is sacred in Creation. May we live and die with gratitude. Amen.
Opening Song: “Oh, The Deep Love of Jesus” by Simon Khorolskiy
https://youtu.be/KLTu1xv2-Us?si=-UFT92HeZctyHWyu
First Reading: “Good Friday: Being With Jesus at the Cross” by Diana Butler Bass
On many a Good Friday, I have sat in a darkened church, focused on the first preposition of the Passion’s equation: Jesus suffered for us, for sinners,
for the world, for me. But only rarely have I heard spiritual reflection on the second preposition: Jesus suffered with us, with sinners, with the world, with me.
“For” always separates the actor and recipient, distancing a sacrificial Jesus from those for whom he died. At the Cross, Jesus is the subject; we are objects. By way of contrast, with is a preposition of relationship, implying accompaniment, or moving in the same direction.
With is the preposition of empathy, of sympathy, of being on the same side, of close association. “No, you needn’t go for me; I’ll go with you.” With is about joining in, being together.
The Cross isn’t a contract between God and sinners; the Cross is God’s definitive expression of kinship and love—that everything, everywhere, through all time, is connected in and through pain and suffering. We are with Jesus on the Cross, not at a distance from it, standing by, watching safely from afar; those are our hands and feet nailed, our blood dripping, our voices crying out “We thirst.”
And Jesus on the Cross, naked and mocked, is with us all on every broken-heartened, betrayal-laden, blood-soaked day of human history. That is God’s Passion; that is Jesus’ Cross. And, in the tortured Christ, we find the hope to endure, a love for others and creation, the power to enact God’s dream of love and justice for the whole world.
We are with God. God is with us. This is why the Cross should cause us to tremble, tremble. We tremble at the fearsome with of God. Amen.
Meditation: On Being With God, trembling in grace and love
Let’s share two minutes of silence to meditate on being accompanied by the Divine embraced in grace and love in placid times and stormy times.
Second Reading: “The Eyes of Jesus” by John O’Donohue
I imagine the eyes of Jesus
Were harvest brown,
The light of their gazing
Suffused with the seasons:
The shadow of winter,
The mind of spring.
The blues of summer,
And amber of harvest.
A gaze that is perfect sister
To the kindness that dwells
In his beautiful hands.
The eyes of Jesus gaze on us,
Stirring in the heart’s clay
The confidence of seasons
That never lose their way to harvest.
This gaze knows the signature
Of our heartbeat, the first glimmer
From the dawn that dreamed our minds,
The crevices where thoughts grow
Long before the longing in the bone
Sends them toward the mind’s eye.
A gaze that is all still future
Looking out for us to glimpse
The jeweled light in winter stone.
Forever falling softly on our faces,
His gaze plies the soul with light,
Laying down a luminous layer
Beneath our brief and brittle days
Until the appointed dawn comes
To unravel the last black knot
And we are back home in the house
That we have never left.
Closing Prayer:
Dearest Holy One, create in me a loving and compassionate heart;
a skipping heart, bypassing the pragmatism of our rude and angry world,
a smart heart, willing to learn from someone quite different from myself,
an empathic heart, shuddering at scenes of US bombing in foreign lands,
a visionary heart knowing that “the bottom line” doesn’t always have dollar signs,
a respectful heart avoiding judgment of the unhoused, the addict, the incarcerated,
a generous heart not trained on scarcity or resentment of immigrants,
a kind heart not demonizing someone with whom it disagrees,
a humble heart of modest presence that does not seek the spotlight,
In short, my dear Source of love and courage, give me a piece of the big heart of Christ. Amen
Final Blessing:
May we, as pilgrim followers of Jesus, follow the example of love we see in his life and death. May we expand the Kin-dom to all our earthly environs and all people. Amen.
Closing Song: “The Wings that Fly Us Home” by John Denver
https://youtu.be/v7SoJq4Cs3s?si=bGRgbK1EXLPMTsC0
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