The Stone Pavement
Are there yet tears?
Imagine then a pavement scored for gaming: counters fit in slots, die is cast; cloak is torn, garments shared out. Shouldering the cross-piece of his death, a condemned man is led, taunted, through the narrow streets of a busy marketplace. The curious stare. The indifferent turn away, or don’t bother. The guards shove the man forward. Stumbling, he drags his sandals up the stones of the street. Twists and turns. There is the city wall, and outside it his fate. And ours.
They lay him flat on a stone, the better to attach him to his engine of destruction. Up and in and down he goes, just another one of thousands, this one in full view of spectators. How long will this one live? More gaming.
Either side of him, thieves, murderers, rapists - they hang together, good and evil. They will all die, one by one, gasping, suspended, a spectacle. And then, the bodies are checked. Thorough work. The soldiers lance his body. They’re sure, and can report.
Down later onto a slab of rock, weeping mother and friends place his violated body, so sweet and precious to them however it appears to the bystander. They prepare it - him - for the tomb, carved in the rock, donated, nearby, perhaps in a garden.
That’s it for now.
Are there tears yet? Can they still flow? Can we join such sorrow to our own?
We cannot escape it. Shove it down, deny it, however angrily, however numb; it will out.
And that is why we are here today at the foot of that self-same cross, wanting to touch it, the places of the nails, the binding, the torn and bleeding body. Or feel the sorrow.
We don’t need to see it; we know it, in our own bones. We too have grieved, will grieve.
For our world, for ourselves, for strangers and friends. For mothers and fathers, children, hope.
And that too is why we are here. Because however hopeless and awful this scene of destruction, of humiliation, of death-dealing merchants and military men, the one they sought to kill yet lives.
Hope there is still, and faith, though all will be taken away. Only love will be left. Only love endures.
Loss, Grief, and Trauma
Grief and loss begin in shock and disbelief; numbness. As reality seeps through that first pain-saving moment, various feelings emerge: emptiness, loneliness, isolation; abandonment - the feeling of being cut off:
“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) Ps 22.1; fear, anxiety, desolation: worry for the future both of ourselves and of our community; anger; sadness and despair; and the physical toll of grief: exhaustion, inertia.
The friends of Jesus and those whom he loved felt these immediately and strongly at his arrest, condemnation, and death. Personal heartbreak - the loss of a son, a brother, a teacher, a friend, and the cosmic catastrophe of the crucifixion of the Christ, were coming together that Dark Day.
Massive communal and personal grief is why we cannot just fast forward past Good Friday. But how the Church has handled that grief is why we can be here today - and why the truth of Jesus endures.
The Death of Jesus
“The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward.” (Gerd Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press. 1995. 17.)
“.82 red. Jesus’ body decayed” - consensus of the Jesus Seminar, Holy Saturday 1995.
What happened - what happened after that - what came before: we cannot let go of these questions. And as when a friend tells us that the end of something familiar, something we have counted on, is at hand, we ask ourselves, not only what will happen to you, but what will happen to me. What shall I do now?
And these questions will come back to haunt us in three days - but not yet, not yet.
Right now we ask ourselves, what does it mean that Jesus has been killed? For another proposition the Jesus Seminar strongly affirmed was this: “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death, and was buried.”
You have heard that one before. It is in the Apostles’ Creed. And however skeptical you are - better however scientific and critical and rational and objective you hope and purport to be - this is historical fact. There was a man named Jesus. The Roman governor of Judea had him executed. He was crucified and he was buried.
We would like to squirm out of this - to say he was a myth, like Alexander or Napoleon or Shakespeare - or George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. He only exists in our minds because we need him to exist. There is no reality. There is no future. There is no hope.
But we would be liars to say so. And that is our hope even in the midst of despair.
He died. So - he lived.
Annoying isn’t it? Would it not be easier if he were myth, even true myth, like something that rings true in a story, but we know for a fact is carrying only a truth through feeling, not reality?
But alas, we cannot honestly say that. And even skeptics can tell us, oh, yes, he lived. He said the prayer over the meal, Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha’olam, hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz. Blessed are you, LORD, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.. He said: Amen.
And he called God, the eternal and ineffable source of Being, the one beyond names, he called God “Abba” - father, the intimate and loving name a Son calls his Daddy.
And then - as the hermeneutic of suspicion goes to work - we realize he is being treated as a historical personage - like Alexander, Shakespeare, Lincoln - and we can sort out what he really said and what he really did as we might (should we be such wet blankets) sort out the authentic and the apocryphal sayings of Lincoln, Gandhi, Churchill, Einstein, and Groucho Marx.
Jesus said the most outrageous and original things - as well as things any good Jew would - and those are so challenging and so original that we must face them or simply walk away.
These sayings have come down to us in altered form, admittedly. As the first followers faced the full impact of his teachings by body and word, they somewhat absorbed that force into their bodies, their souls, and what they transmitted to us comes through that medium.
Peter, head down, was crucified, the hymn tells us. And, John on Patmos died. They stumbled forth into the early morning, the news of the women sounding strange in their ears, to a new world, one day. One day. Soon. But not yet. Today we must face the fact. Jesus was crucified.
His tomb was right over there. You can touch it. Or touch your forehead (as I have done) to the stone above the stone that protects the place where they think he was buried.
But he is not there. The tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is empty. An empty box.
The church has another name. We can learn it. But not yet, not today. Jesus was crucified.
And why? What hope does that death give us?
“I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth” - and that fidelity cost his life.
Somehow his willingness to accept death, even the death of a criminal on the cross, became part of that witness. Nothing could stop him, not even death, from proclaiming the truth.
And part of that truth is this: Love is strong as death. Death does not have the upper hand.
The kingdoms of death will not survive. Nor will their servants. That will all be swept away.
And what will be left standing is this: the hope beyond hope, the love beyond need, the faith beyond faithfulness, the truth that endures. Even in death.
JRL+
Good Friday 2022.
Michael Fick, “Living the Word”, April 15, Good Friday (John 18:1-19:42). The Christian Century.
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/april-15-good-friday-john-181-1942
Amy-Jill Levine, “Holy Week and the hatred of the Jews: How to avoid anti-Judaism this Easter” ABC Religion and Ethics.
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/holy-week-and-the-hatred-of-the-jews/11029900
Jennifer Reddall,” Bishop’s Epistle: No Christian Seders”.
https://azdiocese.org/2022/04/bishops-e-pistle-no-christian-seders/
Kenneth R. Mitchel, Herbert Anderson, All Our Losses, All Our Griefs: Resources for Pastoral Care. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press 1983.
Lessons appointed for Good Friday.
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/HolyWk/GoodFri_RCL.html
