Reflections for Good Friday

Here are two short reflections, which made up part of our Good Friday Service this morning...

This Hurts

“It’s a complicated thing this whole ‘fully God and fully human’ business isn’t it!

Jesus that man. Jesus, that God.

People never really know what to say to me. How to treat me. How to react.

It causes a lot of confusion, you know. People assume that because you’re divine that you can’t get hurt.

Surely nothing can hurt the ‘Prince of Peace’. The Way, the Truth, the Life?

Let me tell you now….that isn’t true. Not for a single second.

‘Cause there was that time when I was running around outside my grandmother’s house with my cousins. It was hot. It’s always hot. And we hadn’t a care in the world.

Running and skipping and laughing….and then falling. Ouch! Onto the hot, dusty streets of Nazareth. Ouch! That definitely hurt.

Or that time when I was poorly. My stomach aching and my head sweating. Even the Son of Man gets a stomach ache every now and then. Mum boiled me some water to drink and sat with me until it went away. She sang me songs and told me stories. And the ache subsided ever so slowly. I fell asleep in her arms like I used to do, and as I was about to do.

But ouch, that hurt.

Or that time when I cast out the demon from the man they had locked away.

He was terrifying, but he looked at me and His face changed.

He looked different. Sounded different. He was grateful. He was really grateful.

But the villagers were less so. They threw stones and me and swore at me, told me to get lost and never come back again.

Ouch, that hurt. The stones hurt! And the rejection. It all hurt you know.

But this hurts.

Right now, this hurts.

All of it hurts.

My body, my mind, my soul….it all aches with pain.

Where have they all gone? Why did they all run away? Why did he have to betray me like that?

Why are they treating me like this?

Lord, I know it had to happen….Lord, I asked for it not to happen. But it must happen.

Ouch. This hurts.

God, be near me as it hurts.

You are there Father, aren’t you?

Lord be with me, because this hurts.

I don’t know where you are!

You might have already felt it coming, but we’ve now entered the complicated bit of Good Friday. I say complicated, it’s all pretty complicated isn’t it? But at least up until now it’s all been documented, hasn’t it? The questions, the whipping. The nails, the cross. The sorrow and the crying. It’s hard to listen to but, at least we know what happened.

Up until now, that is. Because from now on we find ourselves saying….I don’t know where you are?

God, I don’t know where you are. Jesus, I don’t know where you are?

We get the gist of what’s just happened, but the mechanics of the whole operation still evade us.

Did God turn His face away from Christ as He hung upon the cross, or did He gather Him up like a babe in arms, as the sins of the world simply became too much to carry?

Did Jesus, having breathed His last, lay motionless in the tomb, or did He descend to the depths of Hell in order to ‘gather the crumbs from under the table’?

We don’t know. We don’t know where you are Lord?

Opinions on this are many and varied. And sometimes as a priest you come to us for answers. At theological college they teach you to come up with answers, whatever they may be.

But you know me all too well, and you know that sometimes I don’t have any answers. And we just will sit and wonder for a while.

We don’t know where you are, Lord.

Every now and then, though, you hear a new story that makes you think about things in a whole new way. This happened to me when I read ‘A Comedian’s Prayer Book’ by the comic Frank Skinner. Skinner, being a devout Roman Catholic and all round funny bloke writes his prayer book in a typically amusing manner.

And then he wrote this, as he ponders the question of where his mum, not a devout Roman Catholic, might be spending her days in eternity.

He writes this….

I am promised eternal bliss if I am a good person, but such bliss, knowing that my mother or anyone else for that matter, smoulders and screams , can only be achieved by an unimaginable amount of callous indifference. Is that what the saved become? Are they raised above human traits like compassion and empathy? My admittedly unreliable instincts tell me that anyone who can turn a deaf ear to the desperate pleadings of the condemned shouldn’t have a place in your new world. If there is a hell….I feel I may be more at home among the blistering sinners than the cold-hearted competition winners.

I always liked that Jesus hung out with sinners. It made me feel potentially understood. I imagine Jesus is now a shady underground figure; tear-drop lines on soot covered cheeks appearing from behind a glowing rock to ease the thirst of the half-condemned, with wine turned into water.

There’d be heavenly officials looking around at yet another ‘Thank God we made it to Heaven’ parade, looking at their watches and wondering where He was to give out the medals. We don’t know where you are, Jesus?

But Jesus isn’t there. He’s down among the unforgivable. Too late for missionary work now, too late for healing, it’s all just soothing now. A few gulps, a mopped brow. Still with the sinners after all these years.

Meanwhile in my cowardice I reach for the heavenly Frisbee and wonder where my Mum is. I try not to think about where my mother is. I daren’t ask any questions. I daren’t be a trouble maker. Troublemakers get crucified.

We don’t know where you are, Lord. The Lord is wherever there is pain and suffering and sadness. Mopping a brow and tending a wound, and carrying the pain for you and me, once again. Amen