Good Friday Meditation

This is crazy! When I tried to post this blog on Saturday, I couldn’t get into my website – kept telling me there was a database error. Despite two messages sent, I have not heard from my service provider, but I decided to check and see if it was still playing up, and voila, here I am posting my Good Friday meditation. The good Lord be praised!

The garden was peaceful, a gentle wind playing through the leaves, birds busy about their business, not heeding the solemnity of the day.

Instead of the laborious 3-hour service on Good Friday, St George’s Parish Church in White River hosted a self-guided meditation. The stations of the cross, represented by paintings, were set up around the garden, with the last station being at the foot of a simple cross, adorned only with a crown of thorns, in the church.

We were asked to choose a stone before we began, the rough edges symbolic of our imperfect lives. I chose a flat stone, because it was a good one for skimming – I figured Jesus spent much of His ministry years close to water, and I could see Him skimming stones with children, or even competing with His disciples. At the final station, we are asked to place the stone at the foot of the cross, to represent our being set free from the weight of sin we carry.

This is the third time in the last four months that I have been engaged in contemplative prayer. The first two times were at iDwala Christian Retreat, which I will write about separeatly, and I am starting to get the hang of it. The act of simply sitting in the presence of the Lord, allowing Him to minister in whatever way He will, whilst it takes a degree of discipline simply to sit still and wait, brings a degree of peace and sense of belonging that I have not experienced to this degree before.

In the first retreat before Christmas, we were invited to imagine ourselves as one of the players in the advent story, and I have found myself doing this more frequently as I read my bible. I really did not want to do that on this day. I have always struggled with the Passion – I hate cruelty and violence and tend to look away from it. I have a vivid imagination! Reading how Jesus was violated that last day of His earthly life has always brought me to tears and so I avoid it as best I can.

But then I heard an interview with Jonathon Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus in the television series The Chosen, in which it seemed he spoke directly to me as he asked viewers not to turn away, to show up, because Christ’s death is about us, for us, and the least we can do is witness the cost of His sacrifice.

I took a deep breath and headed to the first station. The painting was of Jesus seen over Pilate’s shoulder. I was surprised at the emotions I felt: shame that this man had to go through this travesty of a trial; the humiliation that was directed at Him, and both of those cloyed around me, simply because I was witness to it.

Anger followed, surprising me as it slowly rose from somewhere inside of me, cold not hot, not irrational, at the unjustness of it all. How dare they? How dare they do this to an innocent man, one who had loved them, and healed them, walked with them as He taught them the ways of God, acting simply to protect their own positions, their own egos.

At Station 5 we meet Simon of Cyrene, who is compelled to carry Christ’s cross. Simon was depicted as a white haired, pale skinned man, unlikely for a Libyan. This led me to reflect on the bigamy of our world today, our petty prejudices against race, against tribes, against religions, against women. I had to look inside myself, repent, for I am as guilty as the next person, much as I don’t like to admit to such.

From there we move to where He was given His cross, falling for the first time, and then meeting His mother and the other women. I felt a cry of anguish that I managed to hold inside, as I imagined what Mary was going through – how do you cope with the pain of seeing your son, His face swollen and barely recognisable, His body, the skin flayed from it, bleeding and broken.

Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, all of them, what agony of spirit they too must have experienced, and I suddenly realised how hopelessly in love with Him they all were, in love enough to stay with Him, to watch through horrified eyes the torture inflicted on Him, not prepared to look away because His love is what gave them breath.

We followers of this man Jesus need to get to that place of being hopelessly and hopefully in love with Him.

I think I spent the longest time at Station 8, entitled ‘Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem’. I have believed for the past eight or nine years, that this is the time for the women of God to rise and take their rightful place in God’s Kingdom. I have never subscribed to the subjugation of women, nor to their exclusion from ecclesia because I don’t see the evidence to support this stand in the bible. To the contrary, I see many examples of women being called to lead and being recognised and respected as leaders.

Mary Magdalene is a prime example of this, and whilst scholars might have taken her writings out of the bible they cannot write her out of history, or the respect Jesus gave to her. In the early church she was known as the apostle to the apostles.

But I digress! The scripture given is from Luke 23: 27-31:

A large number of people followed Him, including women who mourned and wailed for Him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say,

Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!”

Then they will say to the mountain, “Fall on us! And to the hills, “Cover us,”

For, if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Men do these things. Not women. Women stand by, ready to pick up the pieces of powerful men’s predilection for devastation. Much of the horror being inflicted on mankind would not happen if more women were in leadership. Argue with me all you like – the evidence is out there today.

Who is leading the charge in the genocide stakes? Who runs the rings that abduct children and trade them for sex? Who designs the bombs and artillery that bring utter devastation?

By the time I got to Station 10, I was numb, no longer able to react. The note I wrote reads: but I must not turn away, I have to go through it all.

While the men, the disciples, were scattered, the women stood firm. In the midst of their pain, they trusted that He was somehow still in control. I turned to look at the crowd, as I read of their jeering and mocking, daring Jesus to get Himself off the cross.

Hope was crushed and when our hopes are crushed, we revile those who offer us a glimpse of what might be a better life, an easier life.

What was that hope? What is my hope? What is your hope?

 The answer for me is stark: my hope is that I finish well, that I achieve His plan for my life, so that in some measure that sacrifice of His life for my eternal salvation is not in vain. I want to love Him as Mary did, last to leave the tomb and first to arrive after Shabat, to have that same adamance of hope. I want to listen to what He said as she listened, hearing Him so I, too, can understand His ways, and support Him through thick and thin, hard as that may be.

The time has gone by, and I am at station 13 – ‘Jesus’ body is removed from the cross’.

John 19:38-39

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now, Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who had earlier visited Jesus at night.

I read further:

Then they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in strips of linen with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury.

According to ancient Jewish custom, this ritual is performed by close family members. They were members of the council, not his family, Nicodemus was called the teacher of teachers in the Sanhedrin, yet they stepped forward in a moment that mattered. In His death, Jesus was cared for by two men who had not the courage to stand up for Him at His trial – but maybe if they had, there would not have been a tomb for Him. Who knows the things of God?

I moved into the church. I was alone and could spend those final minutes peacefully evaluating what I’d learnt, what I would take with me, what was my role to be going forward. It has always been about writing, and the message was to have the courage to move forward and share the words He has put inside of me.

I see many stories that may come out of this time I spent following the final walk of Jesus as a man, especially those of the Women of the Gospel.

I moved to the Cross. A number of stones were arranged on the base, and there was a space that seemed as if it was waiting for my flat skimming stone. All is as it should be, a place for each of us, no matter how rough our edges, at the foot of the cross.

May you have a blessed Resurrection Sunday as we celebrate the final victory – death is defeated! Halleluia, halleluia!