That he can still speak

Good Friday

Each time we stretch out our arms in love to one another,
every time we open our hearts,
we find the shadow of the cross,
but also a glimpse of the open tomb.
We are nailed indeed.
It is our keenest grief, and our deepest joy.

(from “Good Friday: In Which We Get Nailed”
The Painted Prayerbook, Jan Richardson, March 2008)

 Here we are at Good Friday, the middle of the service of the Triduum, and — I don’t know about you — but each year I approach it with greater awe.

That he can still speak [to the world].

That in the depths of his pain and his dying, he does not cease to say what he needs to say.

That as he lets go, he leaves them with words of comfort and release, of lamentation and love.

Forgive. You will be with me. Behold. Forsaken. Thirst. Finished. Into your hands.

Knowing that these are his last words, but not his final ones.

That after this, there will be a span of silence. And that soon the silence will come to an end.

For now, we watch, we weep, we bear witness, we wait.[1]

There are moments in our lives that have such impact that they take our breath away, if only for a short time, but in a way that allows us to re-call that memory, time and time again. The feelings and the faith that fill me on Good Friday make up just this kind of memory for me. There is a rawness and a beauty, an intensity and an embodiment of that word “passion” that pulses with God-ness. Since I was a child, I have been captured by the action of the day: the imagined sound of nails, the grief-stricken hearts of friends, the fear of association, and then the darkness and the curtain of the inner sanctuary — the gateway to the holy of holies — torn. I wonder, was it torn as we reached in, reached for God… or as God reached out, for us?

And on this day, I confess that I am struck by the power with which I feel both loved and lonely, all at the same time. Indeed, when we sing together “What wondrous love is this?” it becomes for me a declaration of my recognition of the sacrifice demanded by injustice, the love spent in the dream of a different world, and of the indifference that keeps the crucifixion of goodness happening over and over again. Frustration, disappointment, anger… all of these could easily define each Good Friday, each retelling of the execution, each nod to despair. But even in saying this, I realize that the ‘good’ of this Friday is in the potential for renewal.

I believe the cycle of renewal is unveiled in each Holy Week, even each day within Holy Week. The contrasting parades into the holy city — emperor and peasant — remind us whose we are in this world. The meal between friends, our leader and lord employing the servant towel, and now this: the moment we recognize the humanity — and thus the fragility and mortality — of the Rabbi, of Jesus. And these holy moments become a microcosm of real living, wholly and holy, throughout our lives. That cycle is the sacred flow of life and death, the movement of faith and doubt, the revolution through breaking down, bringing back together, refreshing and renewing.

And the revolution is so necessary. The journey to the centre of the cross — the demand that we travel through life, not skirt around it on tidy and safe edges — is where we immerse ourselves in our humanity and, as the poet said, we open our hearts and find the shadow of the cross. We cannot stop the story at any one point, especially in the breaking down. But we can pause here. We can remember. We can tell the tale. We can confess to our own discomfort, our own sadness, our own anxiety, our own humanness. But we never, we NEVER have to live that first day again. Because there was movement. And the tomb was filled, and Jesus was swaddled again — this time in the spiced linens of death — and we thought it was over. We never have to live it again, because then the stone was rolled away — again, leaving me wondering if it was us reaching in for holiness or holiness reaching out for us — and then the women came and then the tomb was empty and then a heart pounded with the recognition of Love and Mary could call out, “I have seen the Lord.” But it is a cycle. It is a revolution.

So today, again, for now, we watch, we weep, we bear witness, we wait.

That after this, there will be a span of silence. And that soon the silence will come to an end.

Knowing that these are his last words, but not his final ones.

Forgive. You will be with me. Behold. Forsaken. Thirst. Finished. Into your hands.

That as he lets go, he leaves us with words of comfort and release, of lamentation and love.

That in the depths of his pain and his dying, he does not cease to say what he needs to say.

That he can still speak to the world.

And the language is love.

[1] Jan Richardson. Good Friday: Speaking, Still. (http://paintedprayerbook.com/2018/03/27/good-friday-speaking-still/).

That Cross Still Scars Our Landscape

Palm and Passion Sunday 

There is a time for stillness, for waiting for Christ as he makes his dancing way toward us.
And there is a time to be in motion, to set out on a path, knowing that although God is everywhere,
and always with us, we sometimes need a journey in order to meet God
— and ourselves —
anew.

(Jan Richardson, from “Palm Sunday: Blessing of Palms,”
The Painted Prayerbook, April 2017)

We sometimes need a journey. That is what today is about. That is what Holy Week, the prayerful pilgrimage that lies ahead, is about. “Sometimes we need a journey to meet God — and ourselves — anew.” In today’s service alone, we travel the story of the Passion. The Passion (from the Latin: passionem “suffering, enduring”) is the short period in the life of Jesus covering his entry into Jerusalem and leading to his crucifixion at Calvary. Today we travel the story of hosannas and waving palms to the faith-filled declaration of a Roman centurion that indeed, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” Together we witness a procession and together, after communion, we will witness the veiling of the crosses in the church. We do this not so that they disappear, but because in veiling them and — as the week continues, actually removing candles and crosses and banners from the church — we remember that the story of our faith is captured not in beautiful icons but in simple living. We follow one who taught us a Way, a Way of living and loving, a Way of justice and truth-telling, a Way of compassion, a Way of being the body — the hands and feet and face and heart — of God, in the world.

The week leading up to Easter can be a difficult week. In some of the churches of my childhood, it was actually quite gruesome. There was heavy emphasis on the pain, the betrayal, the beatings, the whipping, the crown of thorns, the dying. Shame and guilt and simply not measuring up were the touchstones of this annual memorial. Some of you may remember years of joining in the crowd gathered at the cross, adding your voices to the shouts of “Crucify him!”. I don’t know about you, but I have always hoped that I would actually be the person who said, “Don’t. Stop.”

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer says quite piously that Jesus is a “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice,” and our liturgies tend to revisit Jesus’ crucifixion in ghastly detail, with an unseemly savouring of the torture, the tragedy. It seems to me, however, that Jesus’ horrific death millennia ago should have only one purpose in our memory. That purpose is to remind us that we, today, remain complicit in erecting that cross of horror, that cross of shame and brutality and injustice. We need not look to history to see the wounds and passion of Christ. They are all around us: in our streets, in our families, in the limitations that mask as convictions about truth and social status.

In conversation with Rev’d Trudy Lebans, we talked about how the gift of Christianity is that we understand, in our bones, that we can move beyond the cross and experience the resurrection. As Trudy reflects, “The cross is the potent, albeit dreadful, sign of the failure of humanity to let the holiness within prevail upon the earth.” Rather than wallow in this place of failure, I believe Holy Week is an opportunity to remember where we have traveled in the year that has past. Let us not come again to Calvary without having asked ourselves just what have we done for the children of the world in this past year? What have we done for this planet, God’s gift and our earthly home, and its many other creatures? How have we stood against war, poverty, lies? Whom have we stood beside and with, and why? The veneration of the cross is not about glorifying suffering but about accepting the accusation to the Body of Christ, accepting the charge from the cross, from Jesus, to love and to serve. Have we fed the lambs? Have we brought the children to safety? Have we spoken truth to power? Have we dared to say “No!” when that is the only just response?

On Maundy Thursday, in most churches, we are good at showing love for each other, at least superficially, but why are we washing feet that are fat and clean? When Jesus performed this action, it was an act of hospitality, a host, deferring to his guests, the convenor, acting as servant. Food for the journey, sustenance for those who would soon be tested and mostly found wanting. Do we understand that this baptismal act is not so much about cleansing as preparation to walk the way of the cross? To be called to testify to the uncomfortable, unpopular truth about solidarity with poor and the forsaken? The first eucharist celebrated the presence of Christ at table with those he loved, whomever they might have been. The last supper in Emmaus reminded the disciples to study, to learn, to act, to pray for God’s reign of peace and justice on earth.

On Good Friday, when we say our prayers, when we remember Jesus’ act of self-offering, we need to remember also that although he has been resurrected, we have not yet taken down his cross. That cross still scars our landscape. I shed tears as I saw the young people rallying against violence yesterday in marches across North America, indeed across the world. What they marched against was violence. My tears were not simply that this violence was against some of our most vulnerable, but because this violence is seen as an acceptable idea in our 21st century. I wept for their beauty and vulnerability and for the strength of their hope. As the church it sometimes seems as though we have fought against the resurrection, attempting to keep that hideous cross, instead of having faith that the resurrection is our destiny. We, as the church, have been ingenious at maintaining violence of all kinds, of encouraging people to indulge in self-recrimination and shame instead of declaring their freedom in Christ, the freedom of the resurrection, the freedom to be new.

Jesus is risen and has been alive and with us for centuries. When will we believe it and act on it? When will we decide human evil and selfishness has had its day? I long for the Holy Week in which the cross has become a faint outline — like the crosses veiled — dim memories, vague outlines of what humanity was before we discovered the incarnation running in and through us, when we are truly alive in the resurrection of hope and possibility.

I want you to come to church this week. But come not for the memory of Jesus’ death, but to remember the path to resurrection. Come and lay down the comforts, the assumptions, the lies that protect us from the reality of suffering. Come and weep together for the children who are not yet free. Come as testimony. Come and be present to the pain that exists in our world. Come and make of yourself an offering, an offering. Remember your baptismal promises — with weeping — but also with the knowledge that the Resurrected One is with you.

Come so that you know how to tell the story of Jesus — the story of possibility and hope and love — the story of how resurrection truly realized, might free us all from violence and despair and reliving over and over again, the death — upon a cross — of life and possibility.

Thanks be to God.