in a Holy Week like no other
in the middle of a year like no other.
Nevertheless, in this time of social distancing
and virtual church we offered
our annual meditations
at the cross from All Saints Church.
This was mine.
Good Friday 2020
This is the day when life is raw,
quivering, terrifying:
The day of numbed emotions,
the day of blunt nails
and splintered wood,
of bruised flesh
and red blood.
The day we loathe,
when hopes are crushed.
The day we long for,
when pretences fall away—
Because the worst that we can do
cannot kill the love of God.
We know this Good Friday story.
We know that Jesus dies:
that the life -- the promise -- the light that shone so brightly
will be extinguished.
All that will remain of the radical rabbi from Nazareth
will be a broken body and the broken dreams
of his scattered followers.
The Kingdom he proclaimed has not come.
The powerful remain powerful:
the oppressed remain oppressed –
where there had been hope there is only despair –
and -- for Peter -- there is denial.
Me? I’m not one of them.
Don’t know him. Never met him.
No idea what you’re talking about.
Must have me confused with somebody else.
At that moment the cock crowed.
And at that moment – as I imagine it –
a flood of memories of sharing the work and witness of Jesus
must have poured into Peter’s paralyzed mind and broken heart.
The teachings, the healings and the miracles.
The miles walked, the meals shared, the message proclaimed.
The moments of transfiguration and the times of trial.
“You are the rock upon whom I will build my church” and
“Get behind me Satan.”
Peter denied it all in this seminal moment in the Good Friday story.
And here we are in church again – this year “virtual church” but still church –
to hear that story again.
Garrison Keillor tells of his uncle who, at annual family gatherings during Holy Week, always read the story of the passion and death of Jesus. And each year he would burst into tears.
The family would sit awkwardly until he was able to continue the reading. “My uncle took the death of his Lord so personally,” said Keillor – pausing to add: "The rest of the church had gotten over that years ago."
Indeed -- over the centuries the church has gone to great lengths to present two options for “getting over” taking Good Friday personally.
One option is to ritualize and sanitize the story
so that it remains at a safe, historical distance:
The Institutionalization of the Crucifixion.
The other extreme is to so emphasize the agony of the cross
that the glory of the resurrection
becomes practically incidental:
to make how Jesus died more important
than the life Jesus came to show us how to live.
And neither option enables us –
empowers us – inspires us –
to do what we have been called to do
as members of this thing we call the Body of Christ:
to take both the death AND life of Jesus “personally” –
to hear these stories of Lent and Holy Week
and to take them personally enough to be changed by them.
Poet, author and priest Malcolm Boyd took them personally.
He took them personally enough to be changed by them.
And then he used the experience of that change
to help change the church.
His “Are You Running With Me Jesus” –
published in 1965 fed the hunger of a generation of people
who had given up on the church or anyone connected with it
having anything relevant to say.
From one of his prayers:
Help us, Lord, who claim to be your special people. Don’t let us feel privileged and selfish because you have called us to you. Teach us our responsibilities to you, our community, and to all the people out there. Save us from the sin of loving religion instead of you.
Save us from the sin of loving religion instead of you.
Loving religion instead of Jesus
has been one of the ways the church has denied Jesus
over and over and over again
as surely as Peter denied Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest
as the cock crowed the third time.
To love religion instead of Jesus –
to worship Jesus instead of following him –
is to choose institutionalization over mobilization –
to opt for the safety of becoming an institution
rather than risk the invitation to be part of God’s movement –
to … in the words of my Hebrew Scripture professor Jim Sanders:
“worship the gift rather than the giver”
making idols of the outward and visible signs
that represent an inward and spiritual grace
that transcends any outward and visible sign …
even the ones we hold most dearly
the ones we revere as the most sacred.
And boy howdy have we all gotten a crash course
on giving those up for Lent this year.
Remember when just giving up the wine for communion
and not hugging during the Peace
seemed like a huge, crazy steps away
from everything we were used to
when it comes to church?
That seems in some ways like a lifetime ago
and yet it was just a little over a month ago …
and since then we’ve gone from
virtual services streamed from 132 Euclid Avenue with a handful of participants
to virtual services streamed from our living rooms, dining rooms and studies
and Zoom is our new best friend.
We have shared spiritual communion and virtual prayers
and continued to be fed by the ministry of the word
in scripture shared, sermons preached, and prayers prayed.
In this time of COVID-19
we have not chosen to love religion instead of Jesus
we have chosen to reimagine religion because of Jesus.
In this time of COVID-19 we have been loving our neighbor
by staying away from them
by washing our hands.
The religion we claim
is the religion Jesus threw down:
“love your neighbor as yourself.”
All your neighbors.
Not just the ones who live in your zip code or are part of your car pool.
Not just the ones who think like you or vote like you or worship like you.
Love them enough to stay home to protect them.
ALL your neighbors. Every. Single. One.
The witness we call turning the human race into the human family – has nothing whatsoever to do with swallowing morally indefensible theories of an atoning sacrifice to appease an angry God and everything to do with living morally accountable lives of service and self-offering in alignment with God’s values of love, justice and compassion.
To live those values is to walk what Marcus Borg called “the way of Jesus” a way that is not a set of beliefs about Jesus … [but] the way of death and resurrection – the path of transition and transformation from an old way of being to a new way of being.”
It has to do with being the Body of Christ in the world – it has to do with these familiar words we sing when we bring the offerings of our lives and labor to the All Saints table on Sunday mornings:
A world in need now summons us
To labor, love and give;
To make our life an offering
To all that all may live.
The church of Christ is calling us
To make the dream come true;
A world redeemed by Christ-like love
All life in Christ made new.
All life made new is the Easter promise we claim
even as we gather once again at the foot of the Good Friday cross
in this year of our Lord 2020.
Yes, it is a time of challenge.
We gather as people of faith
stripped of many of the outward and visible signs
that have for generations defined that faith.
And we gather in the shadow of religion
which continues to be used and misused
as a weapon of mass discrimination in our nation
and as a weapon of mass destruction around the world.
Being used and misused to inflict trauma rather than to heal trauma.
Being used and misused for oppression rather than for liberation.
And if we let that use and misuse go unchallenged
we deny Jesus just as surely as Peter did.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There is a meme circulating on social media with this unattributed quote:
And then the whole world
walked inside and shut their doors
and said we will stop it all
everything
to protect our weaker ones
our sick ones
our older ones
and nothing
nothing in the history of humankind
ever felt more like love than this.
That, my brothers and sisters and gender fluid siblings
is what it is to walk “the way of Jesus”
a way that is not a set of beliefs about Jesus …
[but] the way of death and resurrection –
the path of transition and transformation
from an old way of being to a new way of being.
To walk in love as Christ loved us, an offering and sacrament of love, justice and compassion.
To walk in love as Christ loved us as we move forward into God’s future – knowing that even the worst the world can do cannot kill the love of God.
Amen.
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