Good Friday 2020: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
There’s a prayer I once shared with you years ago. It is by the lyricist Keri Wehlander, and it has been coming into my mind and heart lately, so I want to share it with you again:
She wrote, “This is the wilderness time, when every path is obscure and thorns have grown around the words of hope.
Be the wings of our strength, O God, in this time of wilderness waiting.
This is the time of stone, not bread, when even the sunrise feels uncertain and everything tastes of bitterness.
Be the wings of our strength, O God, in this time of wilderness waiting.
This is the time of ashes and dust, when darkness clothes our dreams and no star shines a guiding light.
Be the wings of our strength, O God, in this time of wilderness waiting.
This is a time of treading life, waiting for the swells to subside and for the chaos to clear.
Be the wings of our strength, O God, in this time of wilderness waiting.”
And for all of us now it is indeed a time of “Wilderness Waiting”- of darkness, of shadow. It is a time when we so often fight to hold on, to resist the tears, the sorrow, the pain of brokenness. It is when we resonate with the words of the psalmist tonight, the very ones Jesus says from the cross in the gospel account read on Palm Sunday at the beginning of this most Holy Week, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Most of you know someone who is sick, or has died, in this pandemic. We are standing in the shadow of the cross, in a time of “stone, not bread, when even the sunrise feels uncertain and everything tastes of bitterness.”
Where is the good news in this?
Where is our hope?
[pause]
Our hope is found in the beginning and in the end.
The gospel begins in this way…
“Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered.”
And it ends like this…
“Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”
Gardens were a familiar meeting spot for Jesus and his followers, and it isn’t hard to understand why. Gardens are a sign of life – the presence of water, the sustenance of food, the beauty of God’s creation. And for us now, they offer a sign of what is to come – the hope that awaits us on the other side of the wilderness. For we also know that it is there in the garden, that Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles, is the first to witness the joy that is to be ours on Sunday. The garden is the symbol hope that is ours in the midst of this wilderness – the hope of all Christians on Good Friday.
So for now, let us take courage and live this wilderness time. Let us stay in the darkness of the night of the cross. Tonight let us stand as the women did at the foot of the cross and be with Jesus in his final moments, let us stand vigil by him after his death. For these are the very things denied us today in the face of death in a time of separation, where we are unable to be with those we love, are kept apart from them in their final hour. Let us allow the tears to flow, our hearts to break, our souls to despair. For that is where we are, that is our reality, that is the wilderness we are in, the darkness of this Good Friday.
For tonight we are reminded that it is okay to cry out in our pain – Jesus did.
Tonight, we are reminded that in our despair, Jesus calls us into relationship, as he did with his mother and the beloved disciple.
Tonight, we are reminded that this night changed everything – and we should not run from it.
Because tonight, we are living Good Friday as we never have before, standing at the foot of the cross of this pandemic, and suffering to see those we love dying from it. Yet as a people of the Jesus movement, we know that this moment, this night, this time in our lives does NOT have the last word, for we know the story is not yet over.
Jesus died on the cross, but…
Hope did not die forever on that cross.
Life did not die forever on that cross.
Love did not die forever on that cross.
And so Good Friday gives us a gift that those who move from glory to glory, from Palm Sunday to Easter, or for that matter, from Christmas to Easter, will miss, and it is the gift we need now – that no matter how dry the wilderness may seem to us, how thirsty we may be for our pain to end, our despair to let go of us, we know that “the wings of our strength, Our God, is with us in this time of wilderness waiting.” We are not abandoned at the cross.
“The sunrise feels uncertain” now, but the dawn will come.
“Darkness clothes our dreams,” but hope will meet us when we rise.
We are in the “time of wilderness waiting” – in his death on the cross, and in our lives in these dark days of isolation and fear, but we also make our first steps toward the garden of life that awaits him, awaits us.
So, for now, we will wait with him here in this long, dark night of sorrow.
Be the wings of our strength this night, oh God, in this time of wilderness waiting.
Amen.
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The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
April 10, 2020
Good Friday – In A Time of Separation
Psalm 22
Gospel – John 18:1-19:42
