Good Friday

The Cross. Crucifixion. Even as a child the idea horrified me. I guess at some level it taught me beware of the earthly authorities.  Also maybe don’t be too good.  And even if you are good there are bad men in church and state that will punish you.  In spite of all that Jesus had faith in the Heavenly Father. He suffered the pain and shame but never lost faith. God within God will come again.  When all else is gone there is God.  

I see the crucifixion as a preparation for death.  Staked on a cross like a bug on a card  Helpless. Suffering. In pain.  Thirsty.  I’ve comforted the dying. I trained with Elizabeth Kubla Ross.  Often all I could do was be present as we waited.  Death comes.  Time is not relentless. I’ve seen the spirit leave the body. I’ve felt the presence depart.

Today God died.  The immanent god died.  Mortality.  This realm. This dimension. But Jesus said, “Do not be afraid.”  

At Golgotha, place of the skulls, Calvary, Jesus hung on the cross 6 hours.  In the last 3 hours darkness covered the land.  He is said to have quoted Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hath Thou forsaken me.”

Who knows for sure.  It’s faith and belief.  The story is a parable. Life is a lesson.  This too shall pass.

Good Friday is a day of death.  The resurrection is the story.  That’s the part the aetheists can’t wrap their wee brains around.  Death is death.  

But Pascal said it was a wager.

Physicists say aeitheist are unscientific and closed minded.  Faith and belief and hope.

The story spoiler is the resurrection of Jesus.  That’s to come.  The great psychiatric book was Denial of Death.  Am I prepared for death?  Can I prepare for death?  The time of life is short but the time of death seems to expand.  This consumer society doesn’t focus much on death.  Yet there are death taxes and the whole funeral industry is big bucks.  Tombs and mausoleums.

Jesus taught that we come unto God as ‘little children’.  Little children don’t dwell on death. They have curiosity but they move along.  We are to live in the present where God resides.  Carpe Diem.  Yet today we all reflect on death and government and church and institutions who kill god and err big time.  We reflect on King Herod and Pontias Pilote and Caiaphas.  I especially like Simon of Cyrene.

The characters of the story are all about Jesus.  

I love the song, “were you there when they crucified my Lord.”  

I love the paintings of the crucixion.  I love looking at the face of Jesus and imagining what he was thinking.  Loving and forgiving and finally asking ‘why hast thou forsaken me’ of God.  As Peter denied knowing him.  

It’s a metaphor for my life and my life is a metaphor for Friday.  The Hologram smashed to splinters still shows the scene in every fragrament.  

All he said was Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself. He said more but that’s what he said was the key, that which summed it up  He called himself the Son of Man and was called the Son of God.  As I am a child of God as you are a child of God.  Creator and creation.  Sacred. Miraculous.