Dying without a doubt

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Dying without a doubt

Friday, March 25, 2016

Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

Isaiah 53

There is no beauty that we should desire him.  He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  We hid our faces from him.  Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, but we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. 

But he was wounded for OUR transgressions, he was bruised for OUR iniquity.  The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray.  We have turned, every one, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was cut off from the land of the living. And we too – cut off. There is only death in the afternoon, on this “good” Friday afternoon. And we are cut off.

The churches are empty and his body and blood are gone. No bread, no wine, no statues or pictures of our Savior, because we are cut off.

Jesus is saving us, but we know this now, not then. Then … we watched the sky turn black and Jesus cry out seven words from the cross, and finally his head fell onto his chest and he was gone. His mother saw all of this and she wept and wept. “Oh, my God my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Vinegar and gall won’t slow this down. Jesus is cut off from the land of the living. Can’t we please just dry the sweat dripping down his face? The blood on his hands and feet thickens and turns black. His body – the body of our Savior is breaking into pieces. Our lives are breaking with it. The pain twists his face, and still … he says before anything, “Father forgive them. They do not know what they do.”

Richard Rohr’s thoughts about the Bible flicker on the screen. “In case after case, the victim becomes the real victor, leading Rene Girard to speak of “the privileged position of the victim” as the absolutely unique and revolutionary perspective of the Bible.

“Without it, we are hardly prepared to understand the ‘folly of the cross.’ Without this bias from the bottom, religion ends up defending propriety instead of human pain, the status quo instead of the suffering masses, triumphalism instead of truth, clerical privilege instead of charity and compassion.  And this, from the Christianity that was once ‘turning the whole world upside down’ (Acts 17:6).”

So on this Friday afternoon, whether in church or not, walk the stations of the cross and know what it means for Jesus to be a victim and hear him call us into following him. We cannot protect our strengths or create places of our own safety. We are victims too, and we die along with Jesus. But we need not be afraid.

For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me, and the table you prepare in the very presence of my enemies is piled high with bread and honey and wine. I ate today, and I will eat tomorrow. Lord, it is your bread I sleep with, and your living water which washes the sweat off my face. Turn our hearts toward home. No fear.

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