Just Dream - Good Friday

My head is spinning, and I choose to sit in the dark.

I see Bobby Kennedy there, lying there, Ethel weeping, holding his head in both hands, helplessly trying to shield him from the already spent bullet, at home in his already-spent body. I see Martin Luther King, and the stillness of his face, the piercing-gentle eyes now closed, the always moving lips now still. I see JFK slumping, slumping, and an “Oh, NO!” finds its way to my mind’s throat, and the tears come, hot tears. They were our hope, and they have been killed. I wept for us. I wept for Ethel, and for Coretta, and for Jackie. I wept for their children. But I wept most for myself, that the dream I dared dream seemed to be now just dream.

Imagine reading a story, in which a benevolent and powerful extraterrestrial sent a representative to give Earth all of the secrets of sustainability and happiness, enabling us to live without polluting, without war, without required labor, without sickness…and we killed him. Imagine that then he sent his daughter, and we killed her. Would we read the book? Could we stand to? Would we weep?

Kathy shakes her head sadly when Good Friday comes along. “If we would just get it, he wouldn’t need to die, would he? Why don’t we get it? What a waste.” Somehow, while I’m inclined to sit in a dark church at noon, she finds herself preparing for the kids to come over in a couple of days.

When Christ died, the story goes, the curtain in the Temple of Jerusalem tore from top to bottom. The curtain’s inner layer kept everybody away from the Ark of the Covenant, the gold box in which the commandments were kept, the Holy of Holies, the presence of God. Only the High Priest could enter past that inner curtain, only once a year, the Day of Atonement. On that day, a goat would be killed and sacrificed, because blood was required for forgiveness. Now anyone could enter God’s presence, anytime. Now forgiveness does not require blood.

Even as he dies, Jesus continues to be compassionate. He consoles the criminal who believes in him, promises him paradise. He connects his beloved disciple to his mother, and his mother to the disciple, that they might share the embrace that his death will take from them.

Even as he is suffering in loneliness, mocked in powerlessness, he continues to trust his father until the end. His cry “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” is the opening minor chord of David’s Psalm 22, a lament that ends in resolution, the crescendo of praise for a God who never abandons us, despite all appearances. And it is Psalm 31 that he intones as he dies: “Into your hands I commend my Spirit.

I think of the beautiful young wife of a murdered Olympic athlete, consoling their young daughter. “Will I ever see Daddy again?” the child implores. Somehow the mother is able to smile at her. “Close your eyes; do you see him?” “Yes!” “He will always be there; you can see him whenever you want. He will never be gone.”

In John’s Gospel, Pilate seemed to know. Isaiah tells of the scapegoat. Paul tells of the new High Priest. Listen to these stories. Close your eyes and listen. (Click to hear today’s readings)  Where is God in this for you today?

In the darkness outside, a robin is singing his heart out.

Thanks to SH4WN for the remarkable graphic


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.