Friday, April 11, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Mirror
I hear the whisperings of many:
“Terror on every side!
Denounce! let us denounce him!”
All those who were my friends
are on the watch for any misstep of mine.
Next Friday is a day to recognize our own villainy. We belong to this world, and we are the killers of Christ. As was true for Jeremiah, whose friends betrayed him, so it was true for Jesus, then and now. Our sin paints itself on us, and Jesus is the mirror in which we can truly see ourselves. Barbara Brown Taylor writes:
Annas, Caiaphas and Pilate may have been the ones who gave Jesus the death sentence, but a large part of him had already died before they ever got to him – the part Judas killed off, then Peter, then all those who fled. Those are the roles with our names on them – not the enemies but the friends.
Of course it’s right that we should weep on the Friday before Easter, but not only for Jesus. I weep because of my daily betrayals of he who does NOT belong to this world.
At a retreat, the leader asked, “Who has represented Christ in your life?”
One woman stood up and said, “I had to think hard about that one. I kept thinking, Who is it who told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?”
Generally men and women are willing to kill to protect their families, although mostly we aren’t pressed to prove it. Self-protection, protecting my kids and wife, surely is not my job in the presence of Jesus, but still it seems that way when he holds himself up as a mirror where I see myself in God’s own light.
In the presence of his integrity, our own pretense is exposed. In the presence of his constancy, our cowardice is brought to light. In the presence of his fierce love for God and for us, our own hardness of heart is revealed.
Barbara notices that when Jesus leaves the room, all our sin becomes relative. None of our own mirrors show what Jesus shows. We just don’t seem all that bad.
But in the presence of Jesus, people either fall down to worship him or do everything they can to extinguish his light. On Good Friday, when he dies do not turn away. Make yourself look in the mirror.
Can you imagine being there, along with the Pharisees? Picking up rocks and hiding them behind your back? Seeing others do the same? Pretending that all is well within us?
What are we thinking!?
They picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus said, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?”
On Good Friday the Stations of the Cross invite us not just to kneel, but weep, not only for Jesus, but ourselves. Rev. Taylor points out an unwritten rule for our behavior on that grief-stricken day, for all of us who belong to this world:
Today no one gets away without being shamed by his beauty. Today no one flees without being laid bare by his light.
(Jeremiah 20, Psalm 18, John 6, John 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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