Good Friday

I have been waiting forever to feel – feel something, anything. Those few crying jags at Holy Conversations were not really feeling; they were a bad habit gone awry. Talking and crying have become, at some times, synonymous for me.

Neither Lenten services moved me at all, and that’s not just because I had a leadership role. Palm Sunday, same thing. I felt like I was growing farther and farther from God, and, without a doubt, farther still from Jesus.

I even said it. Claimed my non-commitment to Jesus at the last Holy Conversations meeting.Even after all of this work, the disciplined worship. The hours at this church. Even after the fuller elder commitment, I remained uncommitted. Denying almost. Like Peter. Yes, I was Peter.

I want every savior to sit at my dinner table. I want the unleavened bread of Jesus, the wine. I want the rice flour seasoned with mugwort filled with azuki paste of Buddha. The sweet dates of Muhammad. I want to chomp on the native Ohio grass of the wild buck. I want to drink in the electric current of the energy work. I want to eat the brown dirt of the earth like a pagan. I want spirit to enter me as spirit chooses to enter. Through my mouth. My ears. My drying skin. My bare feet. Through the kiss on my lips.

And, as I have become more open, to these idols false and oh-so-real, I have wandered away from the man-god who made me enter the sanctuary. As I widened the definition of what sanctuary may be, I had lost the cross.

This numbing saddened me. No, frightened me, actually. It is a short stumble from grace to gone for me. One tiny adjustment to nothingness.

Today was a vacation day from school. I even laughed about earlier in the week. “I mean, who actually needs Good Friday off? What are we supposed to do? Go and celebrate the crucifixion of the Lord by taking in a matinee movie?” I didn’t even get it. What is so good about Good Friday? What about this day prevents us from learning algebra and the counties in Ohio? Especially when the OAA tests are right around the corner.

Somehow, I am not sure why or how, I ended up in church. No place to hide in that egg shaped circle. I wanted my habitual aisle seat by the window. But there was one chair next to Kevin and so I sat, knowing, if nothing else, I would like hearing his harmonies in my ear.

The first song got me. The shadowed green of the walls got me. The story of Pilate, how desperately he did not want to arrest and condemn Jesus. How he tried over and over again to lift the burden that could not be lifted. My heart widened to Pilate. That got me. And then the way the woman across from me kept whispering “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” during the prayers of the people. The prayers got me too. How powerful a force destruction is. How willingly our world falls to the lowest entropy.

Then the purple robe of Jesus. How he was slapped on the face. I had only ever pictured the easy flogging of the back before. Him kneeling and the soldiers injuring this blank slate of a back. I had never imagined his face – with those lake eyes – struck.

That got me. How I may be striking Jesus every time I say, “No, not Jesus. Not him. I cannot really believe in him.”

I am Peter. And I guess I am the soldiers too.

Then the sign Pilate made written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, so that everyone could read and know. King of the Jews. How Pilate, in repeated ways, acknowledged Jesus for who he was. I am not even as strong as that.

By then, slow molasses tears were sliding down my cheeks. The words were being read, the songs were being sung. Kevin was singing a delicious tenor inches away from my ear. And, across the way, a baby was babbling. It seemed right somehow, how living goes on in the midst of the death.

Another reading. Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus, came to take away the body. That grabbed me. Grabbed me. Felt just right.

For years I had seen myself as Zaccheus, up in his sycamore tree. The sinner called down. And on this day, I felt the Peter in me. The soldier too. All of these fringe people not quite ready to stand firm.

But there was something about Joseph of Arimathea, the secret follower of Christ that sat right in me. I did not know why. So I was thinking about that as the words were being read, and we moved into song. Was I really just this Joseph? Someone who knew Jesus, wanted Jesus, someone who would even tend to the dead Jesus, clean his bloody and limp body? There and not-quite?

As I was thinking this, wrestling with it, the baby across the way, started kicking up a storm. Making noise.

I caught her eye as she poked her head under Lynda Bernays’ chair reaching to grab a pink sock. She caught my eye. This fifteen-month old. I caught her eye. And, immediately she silenced. She just looked at me, this baby wonder. And I looked at her. She would lean back, out of view, then she would put her head under the chair again to look at me. I did not try to make her laugh in the peek-a-boo way. I just looked at her. Those black lake eyes. And she looked at me, not making a peep. Her mother did not know what was going on, what had settled her. No one in the room knew what was going on, just this child and me.

And somehow I knew it was all connected. And, God, I know that this is going to sound insane, but when I was wrestling with the idea about being a secret follower of Jesus, Jesus poked his head under that chair and said, with those silent eyes, I see you. You see me. There is no denying it. Jesus said, “See the calm you can cast? Feel the calm I can cast?” Jesus said, “Yes, this is me. I am right here.” And then Jesus said, “And, I need you to look at me just as much as you need to see me too.”

Some swoosh of peace came over me as I cried. And it all made sense. This is not an either/or situation. A knowing/denying paradigm. I can say yes to the love of God through the Tibetan monks. The poetry of the Qur’an. The matzah cracker handed to me at lunchtime. I can say yes to the grace of God on the gravel path at River’s Edge. And on the cranio-sacral table. I can fall into the safe arms of a loving God by saying yes to Jesus. And yes to the song. And yes to the noon grey sky. And yes to the baby. The eyes looking in mine.

There is no need to deny Jesus, no need to not commit.

There is no reason to sit on the cold stone of Gabbatha judging Jesus or judging who I am or am not to Him. He is. I am.

And it is all part of the widening and yielding yes. Yes, even Jesus is part of this amazing yes.