The eCrozier

Good Friday

Many times I’ve stood vigil with others outside prisons before executions. We aren’t there excusing the guilty or claiming the one being executed is a virtuous human being. We’re there to witness to the sacredness of life and to God’s providence over all life. There are others gathered who come to celebrate the death of one they despise. Their logic justifies an evil for an evil. But even if their logic didn’t justify it, I’m afraid there’s a tragic lust for such evil hiding in all of us. On this Good Friday, we remember another crowd at another time and place; a crowd motivated by the same evil. In that place, at that time, the cry was “crucify him!” But when he died, the whole earth shook. In that death, an amazing thing occurred. Death itself died and new life erupted. And God said, “Amen.” Jesus offered up new life in the midst of the evil of the cross.

When faced with the evil that emanates from a murderer, or from a neighbor, or even from the nearest dictator, we can choose to respond with those who desire to return evil for evil. Or we can choose to respond with Jesus who, acknowledging the evil around him, responded with such a demonstration of God’s merciful love that not even the grave could contain him. This is what Good Friday is for me. God’s love for us is more powerful than our own collective ability to destroy what God has created. The savage execution of Jesus on the cross holds up for us the fact that evil is very much a part of our human existence. But it also holds a more important truth, namely, that God is not stymied by evil nor stumped by sin: God defeats it by the cross of Jesus.

The reality of evil and the more vital truth of God’s love are both present in the cross. And we who face both realities of the cross must learn to respond to the savagery of evil with the mercy of God’s love. We who receive the mercy of Jesus by his cross and precious blood have no other choice but to practice such merciful love with others. This isn’t some minor point of the Christian faith. This is at the heart of the Gospel. Jesus tells us that if we wish to receive mercy, then we must practice mercy. If we wish to receive God’s forgiveness, then we must forgive one another.

In our worse moments, we’re tempted to give way to the violent impulses that reside in us. But we must remember that when we reach down in desperation to the evil within us, then we have chosen to dwell with the very evil we wish to overcome. God, in Jesus on the cross, calls us to reach, not down in desperation, but up in hope to God who loves us so much that he chose to dwell with us and die for us. Jesus loves us that much. God allowed people like you and me to spit upon him and mock him. He chose to allow his life to be savagely ended, so death itself could die, and eternal life could come forth.

Each week in the Eucharist as we come forward we’re counting on God’s forgiveness and that God will feed us with his Body and Blood. Last fall, as I was administering the Eucharist one Sunday, a mother and child came to the altar rail. I asked the mother if her toddler received the Sacrament. She said, “Oh yes, if you don’t give it to him, he’ll scream.” That child knew on a deep level the truth of God. Without God graciously forgiving us and feeding us, we have no life within us.

+Scott