Good Friday

The Passion of Our Lord according to the Gospel of John

What events and life circumstances have impacted you most in your life?

Often we hear people say:

I remember where I was here when …..

People often remember vividly where they were and who they were with when a major event occurs, both good and not so good.  

When…

John Lennon was killed. When the twin towers were collapsing. A relationship ending.  When Covid entered the world. When a pet died. When you heard the news of a loved ones death or a devastating health diagnosis.  These moments are unbearably hard. And unbearably heartbreaking. We know that the cycle of life involves dying, yet the inevitability does not make it any easier.  

These are the underside moments when everything changes.  When life before is different from life after. Often times life after is not something we can comprehend in any capacity. It is entirely new territory. Hard to imagine. Seemingly unbearable to live.

While most of our moments are not marked by heartbreak, today reminds us of the ones that are. It’s likely you have a few moments in time when the world or your world changed.  I don’t want to stir up painful memories but for you to know you are not alone. If there is still much pain from these, I pray that God may lessen the burden you carry.  

Today is the day in our Church calendar when we remember and hear about the day the world change in regard to salvation history.  God in the human form of Jesus, suffered the unbearable cross. The world changed in the moment when the people chose Jesus instead of Barrabbas.  When the crowd yelled, Crucify him. When Jesus gave up his spirit and said, It is finished.

In more recent years, Johns Gospel has come under criticism for being anti-semitic. While we hear the Jews referenced often in John’s Gospel as crucifying Jesus, this is not the case.  Jesus was and is crucified by the world.  We continue to crucify Jesus daily in the ways that harm and oppress the most vulnerable among us. We all crucify Jesus even as we love the Lord.

Moments like these are devastating and heartbreaking. 

It has been said that heartbreak is what happens when love is lost.  Heartbreak means you’ve loved deeply.  

Brene Brown writes about the places we go when our heart is open. Love is one of these places. Surprisingly or not, heartbreak is another.  To experience heartbreak means you must have been brave enough to have experienced love. With loss comes heartbreak, even though we know the cycle of life, loss is never easy.

This is the heartbreak of Good Friday. We love the Lord, and we are loved by the Lord. There is deep, abiding and steadfast love, yet the fear is that it has all been lost.  Jesus was hung to die on a cross and his loving way in the world is lost.  Where will this same love be found?

God does not leave us where God finds us. 

On the cross, life is transformed in the paradox we call Good Friday. 

A place of heartbreak and sorrow is transformed into the life giving cross. The salvation of the world.  It has been written, that by the cross joy has come into the world. 

The fear is that death swallows up the love but it does not. The living God continues to minister among us. Nudging us in to a life marked by forgiveness, belonging, justice and hope. Not even a cross can overshadow God’s love for creation. The love that Jesus brought into the world when alive is not lost.  Instead, the love of God breaks through death even on a cross, showing us that love exists even as the curtain is torn in two, even as the world goes dark.  Love exists even as the earth shakes.

Love and heartbreak permeate the narrative of Good Friday.  The promise and experience of love does not bury us.  It grounds us in God’s faithful and unending love for creation …Love always calls us to more than we can hope for or imagine.  Love wraps us in fine linens of mercy and compassion, love anoints us with forgiveness and joy, love breaks us out of our prisons of self doubt and rolls away the stone.   

Love transforms the heartbreak of the cross into something more.

And forever we are changed.

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." 

Amen