At our church, we always read the Isaiah 52:13-53:12 early. Haunting. Good Friday isn't the time to explicate this complex text and its background. We trust the words to do their thing. And Psalm 22: Jesus' heart-wrenching cry, himself forsaken, and joining his God-forsakenness forever to ours. I try to ponder the horror, the sorrow Mary felt as she watched her son cry out these words she had taught him as a little boy.
Then
we do the Gospel reading in stages, gradually extinguishing lights
and then candles until we are immersed in total darkness. On Good Friday, more
than any other day, we are humbled by our inability to say anything – just as
Jesus was all but silent as he hung for hours. On this day, more than any
other, we realize we do not need to make the Bible relevant, or to illustrate
it. We can and must simply trust the reading to do the work it has done
for 2000 years.
Just as the art is better than a chatty
sermon, our hymns articulate all this so provocatively. “When I survey the
wondrous cross.” I don’t glance at it. I study it, measure it, measure myself
by it. “Sorrow and love flow mingled down… Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?” All the paradoxes sung pensively. “O Sacred
Head, Now Wounded.” Yes, his hands, feet and side were gored and gruesome. But
the head: the brow, with that poisonously pointed crown, the eyes, looking at
the soldiers and his mother, the mouth, thirsting, and speaking words of mercy
for the soldiers and provision for his mother. You can fashion a whole
meditation / homily just looking at and reflecting on that head – knowing he is
our Head.
We part in silence at the service’s end. I’m not in a chatty mood myself, and I don’t want to let them off the hook by exchanging premature Easter greetings. There’s no moral, no takeaway. Just be in awe. Feel the pain, if you can – as Francis of Assisi prayed constantly before a crucifix: “Lord, 2 graces I ask of you before I die: first, that I might feel, in my body and soul, as far as possible, the pain you underwent in your most bitter passion; and then, that I might feel, in my body and soul, as far as possible, the love that so enflamed you to undergo such passion for us sinners.”
Talk about answered prayer. Francis prayed to feel the pain. And God gave him the stigmata, wounds in his hands, feet and side that bled intermittently the final 2 years of his life.
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