Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

Oh, Jesus.  What can I say?  What can I do?  Here in this chaos, this nightmare of casual public killing?  I stand at your feet, but I know that I cannot share your pain.  Even my weeping must come to you from far away, as you encounter the mysterious final boundary that we all must face.  I watch you slipping away from me, and even knowing the dying will end the pain doesn’t comfort me.  I don’t want you to go.  But I know you have to do this.

But then I look around.

Jesus was not alone that day.  On either side, another man hung in pain.  Below him, female disciples gathered with his mother and one brave man.  He was not alone, even as his agony separated him from them.

On either side of him, a man hung in pain.  These men had no one that we hear of.  Who stood with them?  Who loved them enough to be there?  Who was the presence of God for them?  Did the disciples speak to them, comfort them?

As we relentlessly divide the world into “innocent victims” and “those deserving of punishment,” we forget the men on either side of Jesus.  We forget the years of neglect and abuse and desperation that go into making criminals.  Jesus had a moral compass and the comfort of doing God’s will.  What did these men have?  What do those who are executed in prisons have?  What do those who execute others have?  No comfort, no real peace.

“The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. . . because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Lament Jesus today.  But pray for those who have no one to lament them.  Pray for the men on either side of him, and for all those who live and die and kill alone.  Let this one death, this saving loving death of Jesus, be the death that leads us into the light of compassion.