Friday of Holy Week

Read Mark's account of the death of Jesus in Mark 15: 1-47.

“He who hung the earth upon the waters; today he is hung upon the cross.” 

The Book of Common Prayer

 

Michael woke me up last and said he had a bad dream.  As I laid back down with him in his bed I told him that everything was okay, it was just a dream.  “Yea,” he said, “but still….” 

 

That little phrase has rung in my ears all morning.  “But still…”  It makes perfect sense.  No matter what I say, the bad dream still happened. It still scared him.  It still made him search for safety and comfort.  It still disrupted his night.  

 

Jesus died on this day so many years ago.  None of us were there and all we can do is read the gruesome details in scripture or watch a movie interpretation.  Perhaps the further we place ourselves from the realities of that day, the less it will have to have an impact on us…our lives…our choices…our world.  But still…

 

Still it mattered.  It matters like every single unwarranted death matters today.  It matters every time we see a wrongful act being done, or worse yet, participate in it.  It matters if we are going to claim to be Christians and followers of Jesus.  (Or, as Mark’s Gospel would put it, ‘followers of the way’….)  Jesus died to wake us up.  He died to show us how our sins and the injustices of the world matter.  But still…..

 

In his own way, my four-year old reminded me that I can’t take away the hard stuff with just a few words.  Still the bad thing happened.  And it would do us well to sit with it for a while; to wonder what it means for us.  It would do us well to recognize our role in the pain that Jesus’ death represents still today.  As followers of the way, there are things we can do to remember his death and to allow it to help us claim life everlasting for all the places and people in the world who need to hear it.  Who needs you to sit with them today? Who needs you to enter with them into their pain and turmoil?  Who needs you to stand up with them?

 

It probably seemed like a horrible, awful, no good, bad dream.  But still…it was real.  It happened.  May God sit with us today as we remember and pray and promise to never forget.  

 

Let us pray: 

 

In the darkness of this day

We pray, Lord Jesus.

In the pain of your death,

We pray, Lord Jesus.

In the loss of trust,

We pray, Lord Jesus.

In the abandoned friendships,

We pray, Lord Jesus.

In the wrongdoings of humanity,

We pray, Lord Jesus.

In the fear of being caught,

We pray, Lord Jesus.

 

The pain of this day causes us to fall to our knees

But still you offer grace.  

You touch us with forgiveness.

And we are healed.

 

We pray, Lord Jesus

For those who live a Good Friday

Every day of their lives.

You died so that the world would be saved.

Save us from ourselves.

Amen.