Good Friday April 2, 2010
Immanuel, God with us, has come among us and has lived with us and has shared a message of hope and love with us and has healed us and taught us.
In the garden, with everyone falling asleep and abandoning him when he was pleading with them to stay awake and pray with him, Jesus agonized over his choice. “Father, let this cup pass from me. Not my will, but thine, be done.” And so, the Eternal Word endures a mock trial, has a crown of thorns thrust upon his head, and goes through humiliation after humiliation, culminating in his crucifixion, a punishment which privileged persons would never have to endure, a death reserved for the lowest of the low.
Jesus surrenders in total trust, with a great deal of struggle to be sure, just as we struggle when we know we have to let go and let God. God pours out God’s life in order to open the way to a new way of living for all of us. The letting go, the surrender, the death, is the only way to something radically new and transformative.
That God would even come to be with us tells us of infinite love. But that God would go through the journey of Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday truly carries the level of that love beyond our capacity to even imagine.
God loves us with infinite care. God has done this for us. God has done this for you and for me. God has done this for this family at Grace and for the whole human family.
May we open our hearts and spirits to this love, which is so broad and so deep, this love which heals and makes us whole, this love which heals and makes the entire creation whole.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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Grace Episcopal Church (Sheldon, VT) 