Good Friday

It is good, sisters and brothers. It is very good.

It’s a dance. A ritual that plays out throughout history to this day. Those with power dance with those who are powerless. Those with power do their best to incite violence among the people over whom they exert their power day by day by day. To incite violence, the powerful believe, will divide the rest and will justify their own violence. Violence begats violence.

On the corner of the Baltimore Museum of Art is a neon-light sculpture that sums up this dance we call The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as it blinks through the night: Violins – Violence -Silence – Silence – Violence – Violins. Back and forth it goes, a kind of colorful yet relentless reminder of the dance we Christians call Good Friday. It is hard to see what exactly makes it so Good as we rehearse once again this dance of Violence. What are we meant to see in this Dance? Why do we rehearse this once a year?

After all, forty days ago we repented every sin on Ash Wednesday, reminding ourselves that we are but dust, and to dust we shall return. Return. Re-turn. How often must we turn, turn till we come down right? Who are we in this dance? A dance involving the power structures of the Empire and those the power structures are meant to govern – by govern, of course, we mean hold the people in check. Keep them distracted. Pharaoh distracted them by making them work harder and harder. Make more bricks, he said. Now make the bricks without straw, he said. Then recognizing that there were more of them, he says, kill the babies lest they become so great in number that they can overthrow us and our power and our accumulated wealth. Violence begats violence. Violins, Violence, Silence.

It was anything but silence that day in Jerusalem, the Day of Preparation. People had come from all over the ancient world to see the Judeans rehearse their festival of Freedom from Domination Systems that produce almighty wealth for a few, The Passover. Once upon a time a group of slaves had successfully escaped the endless dance of violence to a new life, a new land, a new kind of Freedom by relying solely on the Good Providence of their God. A God who provides them with Daily Bread – that is, a God who discourages piling up great barns filled with the Produce of the Land, but rather learning to live on what is provided and necessary for the day.

Life in the Roman Empire was no fun for those who worked all day and often into the night only to see the produce of their weary hands and bodies sent off to fuel the Empire and its engines of population control, the most evil of which is State Sponsored Public Execution – of which Crucifixion was the most brutal form of torture leading to certain death, death on a Roman Cross.

Pilate was the most brutal of the brutal. He toys with his victims like a cat with a mouse. He speaks of truth. “What is truth?” This time, however, the victim is no victim. This time the victim seems possessed of a greater power as he refuses to dance. “Don’t you know I have power?” thunders Caesar’s appointed Governor and Instrument of Brutality to “keep the Peace.” “You have no power – your only power comes from above, ie Caesar.” Surely that angers Pilate to have the truth of the matter laid bare.

Some in the crowd have been impressed with the victim’s teaching, but even more so the young man’s ability to not simply talk the talk, but walk the walk. This Galilean welcomes sinners and eats with them, they say. He welcomes all to his table – which even he acknowledges is not his at all, but it is his Father’s table. There are no rules governing who can sit at his Father’s table since his Father welcomes all people from everywhere, no questions asked. He goes so far as to invite all who have been outcast to return, to re-turn, to the presence of the one who is Love Incarnate – a love that many waters cannot quench, a love that offers a place at the table for widows, orphans, resident aliens, “Give me your tired, your poor,” he says day in and day out, “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” I’ll welcome them. I’ll love them. I’ll care for them. I’ll make them whole once again. Not with violence of torture and execution, but with the violence of love.

Jesus is not alone. The narration makes it look that way, but don’t believe the standard account. Jesus is not alone. There are those who walk with him in our own day, those who pick up the torch of freedom for all. They have names like Harriet Tubman, Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Martin, Rosa Parks, Mother Theresa, Oscar Romero. They and others all share in his care for the powerless, showing them that power comes from within, not from the Empire and those who do the Empire’s bidding.

Archbishop Oscar Romero. He spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations, and torture in El Salvador. He spoke out against violence, especially state sponsored violence. He preached the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Among his sermons Romero said the following:

We have never preached violence.

except the violence of love.

which left Christ nailed to a cross,

   the violence we must each do to ourselves

   to overcome our selfishness

   and such cruel inequalities among us.

The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword,

   the violence of hatred.

It is the violence of love,

   Of brotherhood,

The violence that seeks to beat weapons

   Into sickles for work.  Nov 27, 1977

For those who love God, all things work for their good.

  there is no misfortune,

  there are no catastrophes

  there are no sorrows, no matter how extraordinary,

  that cannot become crowns of glory and of hope

When suffered with love for God.   December 1, 1977

And just moments before he was assassinated while celebrating Holy Communion at the altar in an El Salvador hospital chapel:

God’s reign is already present on our Earth in mystery.

When the Lord comes, it will be brought to perfection.

That is the hope that inspires Christians.

   We know that every effort to better society,

   especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained,

   is an effort that God blesses,

            That God wants,

            That God demands of us.”   March 24, 1980

That day in Jerusalem most people were busy shopping, procuring the necessary food items to celebrate Passover, the Festival of the Lord, the Festival of Freedom from the violence of Empires. They had no time to waste on another of Rome’s Show Trials. Most had never heard of the young man from Galilee. But there were those who saw and heard. Those like Archbishop Oscar Romero who risked walking the walk of the young man from Galilee – who risked preaching the Violence of Love.

And because of Jesus, and Romero, and Tubman, and Martin, and all those who have seen and heard what happened on that day in Jerusalem, the City of Peace, the City of God’s Shalom, we have been welcomed by the young man from Galilee as God’s own Beloved. We see now that as we gaze upon the image of the crucified Christ our hearts soften toward all suffering, to see how we ourselves have been bitten by hatred and violence, and to know that God’s heart has always softened toward us. We gain compassion toward ourselves and all others who suffer.

There are those who spend whole lifetimes on the cross, and Jesus chooses to be with them, to join them, to offer them comfort as he shares in their afflictions. We know who they are. We are called to love them as he loves them.

We look upon Rome’s instrument of torture and death and see new life for all people everywhere, here and now.

God’s reign is already present on our Earth in mystery.

When the Lord comes, it will be brought to perfection.

That is the hope that inspires Christians.

   We know that every effort to better society,

   especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained,

   is an effort that God blesses,

            That God wants,

            That God demands of us.”  

That is why this day is Good. So good. So very very good. For we know that we are not alone any longer – that there is an end to violence and suffering, and that the end begins here, and now, in our seeing and hearing this story of Divine Love and Compassion for all people here and everywhere, world without end. God’s reign is already present on our Earth in mystery. It is good, sisters and brothers, it is very good. Amen.