Good Friday

Maggie Breen

Today's Reading:
John 18:1-19:42

This life can be frightening sometimes.  Actually, that’s maybe an understatement.  This life can be frightening oftentimes - heck for some this life is frightening most of the time.

Events close in on us and they bind us.  Loss and betrayal happen in ways that make us sensitive to threat and reluctant to trust.

There were children at the Red Sea.  They ran alongside their fathers and mothers and together they cried to God to save the people.  They heard the hooves of the soldiers’ horses chasing them down, they saw the raging river, they ran through the mud and they looked back at real twisted dead bodies.

There are children in Somalia and Sudan and Ukraine and Venezuela. They have run for their lives, seen real dead bodies. They live displaced from their homes and they wait to know if those they love will come back from war and from political imprisonment.

Loss and fear are realities that shape what these children, and others like them, know.  Loss and fear are realities that influence how they will live.

Isaac was abused. However we look at this text – whatever the interpretation - we cannot get away from the truth that in this story his life was threatened by the one who had power over him and the same one who was placed in his live to protect and love him.  This story brings all sorts of convicting questions: questions of how we get to where we abuse others as we pursue a life with God.  But bottom line this child’s very life, his most fundamental sense of safety, was taken away by someone he trusted.

All around us are people who have been abused and betrayed in deep and enduring ways. Fear enters in and becomes part of a person’s story. It shapes what they know and it influences how they will live.

Noah was in a tight spot.  Our youth named well the very real doubts and fears that arise when we realize we have to somehow keep going when our whole landscape irretrievably changes.  When a loved one gets sick, or dies; or we lose our house and have two kids to look after; when we are faced with leaving home, when someone we love is struggling, when we lose everything we had in a disaster – natural or manmade. Why me? What is God doing?  Where did my Lord go? I can’t make it? I am not good enough? It’s all out of control and I am trapped, alone, frightened.
 
Life can be frightening. The things we have to face, the ways that we are bound, betrayed and hurt shape what we know and they influence how we will live.

But, “Don’t be afraid,” says the angel.

Mary and the women have lost everything, this one that they thought would save them is executed and buried and they are alone.

“Don’t be afraid,” says an angel whose entrance makes the very earth shake and who sits there on a stone in the garden, waiting for the women.  Her entrance and then the things she says tell us that this angel knows something important. This angel knows that words by themselves are just not enough.  There she waits, on that large stone, feet swinging I think, eager but calm, kind, childlike I guess - waiting to reassure and point the women to what she knows they will need in their fears.  Sitting on a stone, connected to the earth, this angel points the women to the real, live presence of the Lord -  the real, live presence of the Lord, in the places they knew him before. Christ is risen, he is in Galilee - the place that you lived and worked and played together – you’ll see him there.  He has gone ahead.  He is waiting for you. Take heart, be brave, trust me, you’ll see him and you’ll remember and you’ll know what to do to lead and help the people. 

There are angels in our midst. There are….  They are sitting on stones, connected to the things of the earth and pointing to where Christ is Risen.  We heard from a number of them this past 40 days in the daily emails that were sent to the congregation here at St Andrews. And we have seen them in our life together this Lent.

Here are some of the things they told us.

Christ is Risen. He is alive.

You will see him in a gratitude journal kept for decades, or maybe just days, as a crucial reminder of God’s good gifts among the pain of life.

You will see him in the spring blossoms that emerge after a long winter. The abundant life found trips to fierce dessert landscapes.

You will see him on a hike with a friend, or maybe a beloved, or even a stranger.

Christ is Risen. He is alive.

You will know him in the song you sing when you are sad. 

You will hear him in the song of others – the lullaby, that goofy family singing that happens in the car, or in the church’s lament and the church’s alleluia.

You know him in the chirp of a bird or the sharp intake -  ahhhh…of a child who knows she is safe and can’t wait for the ones who care for her to lead her into new places of adventure and love.

Christ is Risen.  He is alive.

You will see him in a church that opens its doors and lets a family stay when everything else is gone.

You see him a children’s home in Honduras as they rescue kids from garbage dumps, even though they are not sure how to make the food they have stretch between the kids they already have.

You see him in a community that helps a frightened women search for her cat after her house has burned to the ground.

Christ is Risen.  He is alive.

You will see him in the one who holds your hand as you shakily share your prayer.

You will see him in the child that walks home from the school bus, shoulders slumped, backpack dragging, and causes you to become part of his story as you ask if something is wrong there.

You will see him in the one who kneels to wash your feet and remind you that in your deepest vulnerability your God will not hurt you, but will only comfort you.

Christ is Risen.  He is alive

You will see him at the communion table. 

You will see him in meals shared, stories revisited, hospitality offered.

You will hear him in the big stories of our faith in this place.

Christ is Risen.  He is alive.

You will hear him in prayers for people in far away places and in places down the road. You will feel him in the connection you sense with these others. And the things you will do on their behalf – people you don’t even know.

You will see him in the beautiful things that your hands and your imagination craft and in the courage it takes to offer your art for the world to see.

You will know him as your body moves beyond its preoccupations in exercise…. and as it moves towards others in play.

Christ is risen.  He is alive. 

He reaches for us in the ordinary stuff of our lives and he reminds us that it is in these ordinary places, places of close relationship, places of trust and love and creativity and care that we will find the life we need – a life lived beyond ourselves. A life lived for others.

But this kind of life means we will sometimes, maybe oftentimes be scared, especially if we have been hurt before which most all of us have.  That is not a bad thing. Our vulnerability, our understanding of what its like, the quiet courage that it takes to enter in again to the life of another, are the conditions needed for empathy and connection and ultimately hope. Sitting beside another, broken yet trusting, rooted to the realities of the world, knowing death, sharing pain and pointing to God in the messiness of ordinary life is the work of angels. It’s the work of Angel’s. And it’s what the world needs.

Don’t be afraid, say the angels!  I know you are scared and hurt and confused.  Of course you are. Here I’ll sit with you a while…

Beloved have courage, say the angels…the one you need hasn’t left you. The ancients knew this place, they endured some really frightening things but as they held on, sat vigil together in the darkness, they saw God again. They saw God in creation, in the light as it broke at dawn, in the blackbird, in the thicket, in the rainbow, in the tambourine and the dancing, at the waters, in dried old bones, and right in the valley of death with a mothering God who tended to them, set a table for them and blessed them.

Let’s sit together, say the angels, let’s sit together, you and I…..you are not alone. We will find God as we look right here in the stuff of our lives. Take heart, Christ is risen, he is alive here in this place, with these people, and others, in the ways, you knew him before. Take heart Christ is waiting to meet you and remind you again of the life that you need and that others need as you share yourself, your fears, your pain, your loves, your hope, your very life with others. Take Heart, Christ is Risen, you’ll see him and you’ll find again what you need.

Thanks be to God, Amen.