Good Friday, 2006

Which was worse on that last day? The pain, or the silence? The derision of the crowds, the helplessness before a crushing power, or the abandonment by friends?

Today christians remember Jesus' death.

He was killed for looking too political--proclaiming a kingdom, reclaiming the symbols of the anointed kings of Israel.
He was killed because he was not protected by the religious establishment--he rejected their vigorous narrow rules in favor of a wide and generous welcome to all.
He was killed for being a practitioner of dangerous love.
He was caught up in the gears of the sin of the world, the sin we still carry with us now--that still carries us--and he was killed.

God came in human form--in flesh--as beauty, wisdom, and radical, merciful love. And the response of the powers that be was to kill. To kill, to end this unexpected life, to prevent unrest, unsettling, unseating. The world's response was to hold onto power with clenched fists, and in the end to be holding--clenched--only death.

Today, then, the word is death. For all, and even, for God.