Good Friday

 

Is 52:13-53:12; Ps 22; Heb 10:16-25; 4:14-16, 5:7-9; Jn 18:1-19:42

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

    and by night, but find no rest…

But I am a worm, and not human;

    scorned by others, and despised by the people.

All who see me mock at me;

    they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;

‘Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—

    let him rescue the one in whom he delights!’

Psalm 22:1-2, 6-8

 

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and striking him on the face.  

John 19:1-3

 

I’ll forever wipe the slate clean of their sins. Once sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.

Hebrews 17:18 (MSG) 

 

Don’t look away. I think this is what today is asking of us.  

 

If you are anything like me, you are familiar with the human propensity to look away.  Hard news on the lips of a loved one and our eyes slide over their shoulder because looking them right in the eye makes whatever the loss is, real, the panic unavoidable and our denial plausible. Hard circumstances in the life of a stranger and we dismiss with “if they had made better choices” or we scoff “Hail, King of the Jews!” Hard that is a wounding of our own making and we cloak ourselves in shame – if I hate me, perhaps God can love me?  

 

I sometimes wonder if we feel we have two choices in the face of suffering: dismiss the sufferer or dismiss ourselves.  

 

I have been well versed in a faith that practiced the latter. For years, self-loathing was a warped posture I thought was a requirement of holiness. If I felt shame upon shame, God was good?  

Shame is a wily adversary. For at the first sip, the guilt we taste alerts us we are misaligned with the goodness of God; but if we continue to gulp from this cup, the heaviness in our gut becomes a pain that bends us and our faces see only the dirt from which we are made.  

 

Henry Nouwen says (prays) it like this: “I realize that my preoccupation with my sinful deeds is a way of avoiding a confrontation with my real sinfulness. An avoidance of a confrontation with my real sinfulness means also an avoidance of a confrontation with your mercy. As long as I have not experienced your mercy I know that I am still running away from my real sin.”

 

To confront our guilt requires mercy.

Today we find Mercy on the cross.

 

Feel the panic of Psalm 22 on the lips of a dying man; the vacillation between – “I am forsaken” and I will commit my way to the LORD.” Feel the distain of the mocker and the shattering of Peter’s soul in his denial.  Lift your face from the dirt and know the bonds of shame are broken because “sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them.”

 

Mercy has come.

Don’t look away.

Pam Ukrainetz

Were You There  Johnny Cash