Can I hide myself in thee?
They took Jesus, carrying the cross himself, out to Golgotha, the Place of the Skull. There they crucified him.
– From John 19
Children carried oil to the altar while the choir chanted “Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.” Where true charity is dwelling, God is present there. The priest prayed over the oil for chrisms and the oil for healing. “Blessed be God forever.” We too called out, “Blessed be God forever.”
Two rows in front of me an eight-year-old boy sat with his sister. He was restless. Many of his friends were carrying oil up the aisle. The bright skin of his hairless head and face reflected the lights above us. Chemotherapy has changed his looks, for now.
Of course, this boy needs that oil. Of course we have prayed for him and the priest has anointed him, and every night his parents plead with God. O Father, let our son live! The medicine seems to be working. The prayers too. The boy looks at his sister and smiles. They are laughing together, at something no one else can see.
As for Jesus, darkness is not arrested by the coming dawn. The sun scrapes the desert, climbs above the mountains, and nightmare continues. All night Jesus has been handed around the magistrates, religious and political, like a fancy fish ready to be eaten. The soldiers are mostly rough with him, ridiculing, slapping him around. And the supposed disciples of this Jesus seem to have faded clean away.
They are sore afraid. But who am I to judge? I am afraid of far smaller things, nearly every day. And Jesus had stopped their resistance. His peace in the slapping face of pain pacified them. His silence silenced them.
In monasteries, this Holy Week is given over to worship, as Jesus is “giving over” his body. No halo on the body of Jesus, this body of God, the incarnation, this holy “sarx” given over to torture and whipping and thorns and death, to the wrapping of funeral cloths, to a hundred pounds of myrhh and aloes intended for a rich man’s burial, but now given over for Jesus.
Everything today is being poured out. Cobblestones are slippery with blood and sweat. Bones from abandoned bodies of earlier crucifixions litter the Place of the Skull. And the cross of Jesus is decorated with a crudely painted sign in Hebrew, Greek and Latin: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.”
Prophet, priest AND king. His priestly garments are torn and ruined, but no matter. Naked, Jesus gives himself over to die in all our steads. There is no one else. Fleming Rutledge says, “We can neither cease being guilty nor make the effort of cleansing ourselves. It can only be done by one who stands upon the Archimedean point outside this present-world order where we are imprisoned in our own natures. Christ can move the cosmos because he comes from and belongs to another, supreme sphere of power” (Crucifixion, p. 306).
I was thinking last night that my mom has seen 95 Good Fridays. Her Lutheran parents took her and sister Mary Lou to church in the 1920’s and 30’s. She went to church in Champaign as a student in the 1940’s. She and my dad went to church together in Lincoln in the 1950’s. And then we were born, and they began taking my sister Mary Kay and I, and our brother John, to Good Friday services at Zion Lutheran Church.
Thursday nights and Friday mornings, we took it all for granted, but the liturgies were more beautiful than we could appreciate, and the candles burned bright to mark each year of life. And the candles burned, as well, to light another awkward, grief-struck veneration of Jesus’ death.
Jesus has died for us on Friday nearly two thousand times, and here we are today, with him again. Fill the bowl with tears.
You, Lord, are our shepherd and always will be. Your rod and staff are gentle on our shoulders. The table you prepare for us is rich and full, and make no mistake, it is meant for all of us. Together we can sit and eat and laugh, and pray together for good weather, because you will never leave us or abandon us, and we are yours.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2018/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1698
