Word to the Wise
Friday, March 21, 2008 - Good Friday of the Lord's Passion
[Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1 - 19:42]Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; but the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.
Good Friday is a day like Ash Wednesday, Even though it is a very sacred day, it is not a holy day of obligation! Yet more people will attend services today than would on some official day of compulsory attendance. Why? I think it is because something deeply within the human person is touched on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The ashes and the cross are powerful symbols of so much of our lives. We are reminded of our finite nature by ashes which we receive on our foreheads and of our suffering by the cross which we come forward to kiss. The ashes and the cross, however, symbolize something else even more powerful than our finitude or pain. They symbolize a God who loves us, created us and suffered for us. On Good Friday, it is not only our own suffering (which we can identify with that of Jesus) but Jesus' redemptive suffering - a suffering endured for all. From the very beginning of the days of the community after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah's prophecy served as an interpretation for the terrible and shocking loss of Jesus at the hands of the religious authorities and the Romans. How could such a loss be endured? There had to be a purpose. It could not be just one more unjust execution by the Romans! It took awhile, as the disciples on the road to Emmaus discovered, to understand Jesus' death but when they did they felt compelled to share the news with the other disciples. The Letter to the Hebrews, in the second scripture for this day, offers us the understanding of someone who has suffered in every way a human could suffer. It is this which makes the suffering redemptive, and not just the forgiveness of sins. We do not have an abstract, un-human, God. We have a God who loves us in the midst of our suffering. If he can walk with us in ours, could we not make the effort to walk with him in his. A famous painting by Fra Angelico, the Renaissance Dominican artist, shows St. Dominic kneeling at the foot of the cross with Jesus' bleeding body on it and embracing the foot of that cross. If you cannot make it to services today, at least read the scriptures from Isaiah and John, find a cross and kiss it and remember Him who suffered and died for us. AMEN
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