5 April 2020
Are there ever any words that can match the experience of death?
Are there ever enough tears to wash away what we cannot understand?
Are there not already enough times in life when we have to face what is tragic—this pandemic, uncalled for, bitter?
Why this story?
Why do we hear it year after year–how Jesus comes to his death.
Wouldn’t it be enough to say, “he died.”
Couldn’t it be cleaner?
More objective?
Do we have to get all the gory details?
Step by step we are drawn into this death.
We find ourselves in an upper room,
Standing in the cool breeze of the garden,
watching the nervous twitches of prosecuting attorneys and impassive faces of judges.
We can smell the sweat of armed guards and
watch blood thicken and crust over.
And finally we are there watching the body go limp.
Watching death.
It’s long, it’s hard, it’s very very real.
Jesus dies, just like our grandparents and parents,
just like people we have loved,
just like we will die.
To hear this story,
To make this death watch
is to come to terms with our own deaths.
And it is to put living into perspective.
What do our lives mean?
What will we die for?
What do we live for?
These are the questions of this week we call holy.