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Good Friday

Hebrews 10
19And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. 20This is the new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us through the sacred curtain, by means of his death for us.
21And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s people, 22let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
23Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. 24Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. 25And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near.


It has been thirteen years since the Good Friday Accord was signed in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The troubles have largely ended, but tensions remain, with the famous murals and the so-called “peace lines” that continue to divide neighbourhoods.

Looking back over the thirteen years, it is ironic that what began as an all-too-familiar act of violence became a turning point in the history of this troubled country. It began early in 2005, when members of the IRA murdered a young man named Robert McCartney outside a pub in Belfast.

Such events are most often met with silence: in this case all 70 witnesses claim they were in the bathroom when the altercation began. Families of victims were usually too intimidated to press the police, and another death was ascribed to "the troubles" that have beset the province since 1969.

What made this case unique was the response of six remarkable women: Robert McCartney's fiancée Bridgeen and his five sisters Gemma, Paula, Donna, Catherine and Claire. Rather than silently accept their brother's death, these six women publicly and persistently denounced the IRA and demanded that the killers be arrested and tried in court.

They were fearless. According to Gemma, her sister Donna "wouldn't be afraid of the devil," much less the Irish Republican Army. The IRA was so shaken by the publicity generated by these six women that they offered to shoot the members responsible, which, of course, only served to cast the IRA in a worse light.

What is it that led these six seemingly ordinary women—one is a shop owner, another a mature student—to such extraordinary places, including a visit to the White House? What did they discover within themselves in the face of suffering and loss that allowed them to begin this process of transformation? And how is death redemptive, bringing new life from the pain of separation from a loved one?

***
3He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

We turn to Isaiah, who wrote these words, as we try to get our minds around the cross of Jesus. It makes sense that we would read backwards, into the Hebrew Scriptures, for clues on how to understand it's meaning for us and for our lives. The cross remains the central symbol of our common faith, the thing that defines us and makes our faith unique. We need to understand.

And today, on this most vexing of days in the Christian calendar, we gather at the foot of the cross once more. Troubled and anxious, confused and weary, we live at the intersection of brutal violence and ultimate meaning. We can ignore it, we can hide it, we can even disown it, but the cross remains here, in our midst, for all to see.

***
Examples of human suffering are far from unique. We give them distinct names—Darfor, Auschwitz, Columbine, Bhopal—but the substance is the same: needless suffering and undeserved death. In each case we file away the feelings in a folder labeled "too painful to face" and we try to live without the constant consciousness that such things exist.

But suffering is everywhere. We even have anticipatory suffering, news that the death we thought we could defeat is making a comeback and closer than ever. Two news items—one old, one new—that highlight the malady of our time.

The life expectancy of the average Russian is dropping: almost every year in the last 10, the forecasted life span of Russians has dropped. Deaths outpace births as poverty and government corruption only makes it worse. Some analysts are describing it as "the Russian cross."

A world away, the life expectancy of North American children is dropping. For the first time in two centuries the projected life span of our children is being shortened due to an increase in risk factors related to obesity and inactivity. Under the headline "Fat kids to take a bite out of average life span" there is growing concern that heart attacks, diabetes and cancers will increase as children continue to get bigger.

On the surface, at least, there is little to link these two stories aside from the grim statistical conclusion they draw. We might be able to point to some sort of human failure in either story, but it certainly wouldn't be any kind of related failure. The link is suffering, and suffering is the defining theme of our kind.

***
Suffering is redemptive because it links my pain to your pain to the pain of the world and the pain that lives in the very heart of God. Suffering is redemptive because it causes us to live outside ourselves—if only for a moment—and imagine that we can aid the others that walk in our way. Suffering is redemptive because God is not a distance force or a passive voice but rather the connective tissue that binds the suffering one to another. Listen to the author of Hebrews as he tries to describe this:

My friends, the blood of Jesus gives us courage to enter the most holy place by a new way that leads to life! And this way takes us through the curtain that is Christ himself.

Jesus is a curtain of flesh that leads to the holy place where God resides. The blood that flows through my veins and your veins is the same blood that fell to the ground that day and flows yet in the heart of every creature that has life. The human condition of suffering and loss is diminished by the very symbol that represents the suffering and loss in our Christian story.

We are linked, you and I, by a common experience of life on earth and a common moment in time when the shadows grew and the sky darkened and the earth trembled beneath the enormity of what happened that day. Death became a route to new life, not through a Resurrection that remains alarmingly distant, but through the solidarity that exists when suffering humanity and suffering servant meet.

***
One of the great gifts of this life that God has given me is a segue into the intimate details of people's lives. Yet it is not my gift alone. Each of you, through your active participation in a community of faith has been given the same entry into the individual stories of those around us. We know the emotional texture of marriages and friendships, we know the defining moments and we know the face of loss that looks in on many of the lives we cherish.

Hebrews has advice for us, to safeguard the community we share and always remember the cross that binds us:

And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s people, let us go right into the presence of God, with true hearts fully trusting him. For our evil consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near.

Six Irish woman, suffering people in distant lands, the three congregations gathered here: we have the same High Priest, the same friend willing to lay down his life, the same veil of flesh open to the very heart of God. We have a gift and a connection and a mission and a powerful symbol that binds them all. May God be praised. Amen.

(2005)

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 7:48 AM