A Reflection for Good Friday
So much in our modern world is obsessed with personal desires and power, and a spirit of greed and ambition saturates all aspects of our lives. Good Friday challenges us to become aware of the deep power of Jesus Christ: that in self-emptying and compassion, we are healed together and brought into wholeness.
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Transcript
Perhaps a good place to begin this morning is to ask ourselves why we are here. Setting our intention nurtures consciousness, which resists that pernicious pattern of just going through the motions. Of merely doing something because we’ve always done it that way. Like I mentioned on Palm Sunday, mindlessness, unconsciousness, ignorance, is a force that has a certain gravity that pulls us away from deeper awareness.
So, why are you here? Why are you here today?
Just give a moment to become aware of this and perhaps set an intention for your presence once more. Be conscious in this space, at this time. Be here now.
Good Friday, or God’s Friday, is a particularly focused observance. It is a stark service, where the reality of human betrayal and death is laid bare in the space itself and in the prayers we share. No ornamentation, just presence. Seeing and being seen.
While our souls need to observe Good Friday before we enter into the liminal, transitional space of the Resurrection, the urge to avoid the uncomfortable often pulls us away. It is easy to have something else to do rather than be here on Good Friday. When we intentionally enter into the Good Friday space, we encounter a divine truth that challenges so much of how we live, about how we orient our lives.
The thing about confessing Jesus as Lord is that we should actually pay attention to how Jesus lived his life rather than just holding onto some domesticated image of Jesus that is actually divorced from his deep teachings and self-sacrifice.
The impulse of empire always seeks to grasp onto a fabricated, edited version of Jesus to hold out as merely a contrived, unifying figure, a means of manipulated propaganda. The living reality of Christ has power, and those supporting that imperial consciousness always seek to co-opt that power to use for their own ambition. Just look back to Emperor Constantine in Rome in the fourth century as he put a cross on the imperial flag and boldly claimed, in hoc signo vinces, “under this sign, I conquer.” As if Jesus would have anything to do with such vainglory. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Such a pattern has allowed nations to seek domination and colonization in the very name of the Christ whose entire purpose of being is to shatter the bonds and shackles that oppress. Jesus comes to nurture healing and peace.
We seem obsessed with domination at the moment, celebrating the spectacle of explosions and carnage as though that is something to be proud of. It is not.
Such behavior is rooted in our own shallow ego grasping and has nothing to do with authentic Christian practice, or with any spiritual practice for that matter, as both Pope Leo and His Holiness the Dalai Lama have reminded us in the past few days.
Domination is a hollow pursuit of the empire, and we should remember that Jesus refuted domination at the cost of his very life. “So you are a king,” Pilate asks him. “You say so,” Jesus responds. The empire wants to win, and anything that challenges that ambition to win is suspect.
If we are going to be obsessed with “winning,” we would do well to focus on winning at being a decent human being with an awareness that the Spirit dwells in all of creation.
I lived so much of my early life thinking that the point of my practice of faith was to be assured of my own personal salvation. Now I know that is not the point of my practice of faith at all. Rather, the point of authentic Christian practice is to be aware how my personal salvation is inseparable from the salvation, the well-being of others and of all creation. Whatever salvation I am blessed to experience is inseparable from your well-being.
Our Jewish siblings call this Tikkun olam, the healing of the world. This healing of the world is the point of what Jesus did–and continues to do. It is the life of the Spirit. This healing of the world is what we are each called to share in.
Earlier in John’s account, Jesus says, “and I, when I am lifted up, will draw the whole world to myself.” Jesus draws the whole world through his self-emptying love, never through violence. Never through celebrating a shallow show of force. Violence and arrogant ambition are an abomination to God’s dream for us all. God is not impressed with the scale of military might. God is impressed with a heart that embodies compassion.
So, let this be our intention this year, and at each moment of our lives: to share in God’s dream for this world, to reject the forces of empire, to reject violence and arrogant ambition, to reject greed, and to turn once more to face the cross of Christ and see, in Jesus’s self-emptying love for us all, for all creation. Such a grounding in an awareness of God’s transforming love for all creation is the only pattern of life that will heal us.