Tag: Good Friday

30 Days in Gennesaret: Day 10 Six Feet Day 11 Forever

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SIX FEET

Maybe this year, we will not crucify Him

Six feet

Step back

Reassess

No mob, nor riot

Shouting “Crucify”

 

Step back!

Maybe this year, we will not crucify him

Distancing ourselves

From our fears

Character unknown

In such proximity.

 

Perhaps we will

Interrogate ourselves

Willfulness or honest conviction?

Which draws me

To the bedside

Of another’s pain?

 

Attend: Dare I exploit

Frail posture of another

For power

Or gain?

Maybe this year

We will not crucify him.

jfig   3/20

 

Dear Reading Friends, I thought I would not write a poem today. Instead, I found myself writing two – one for tomorrow – and being invited to reflect on these words from Jesus. I share them with the humility of needing them as much as anyone.  jfig

” This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”    Luke 22:10

“Why are you sleeping,” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”    Luke 22:46

“Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”    Luke 22:48

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.”     Luke 22:61

They asked then, “Are you the Son of God?”

He replied, “You say that I am.”     Luke 22:70

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 your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”‘ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”     Luke 23:28-31

“Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.     Luke 23:34

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”     Luke 23:43

“Luke 22:1 (NIV) – Now the Festival of Unleavened.” Blue Letter Bible. Web. 10 Apr, 2020. <https://www.blueletterbible.org/niv/luk/22/1/p1/s_995001&gt;.

 

Lord Jesus, I am astounded that your gaze finds so many faces in the crowd, my face –   even as you are dying. You tell me the truth, don’t you? No one else invites me to be so honest with myself, and yet receive compassion. At this wide open altar of your making, I lay down – exchange – my fear and arrogance, for your words of invitation and truth. May they become the pillars on which I stake my living.  In your precious name,  Amen

Forever

One never imagines

Suffering an invitation

Yet here it is

His pain carrying mine

across his back.

 

His agony in the garden

beckons—

Living,

to choose dying

“Stay with me.”

 

And as our best efforts crumble

He stays with us

Forever.

jfig     4/2020

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“Luke 22:1 (NIV) – Now the Festival of Unleavened.” Blue Letter Bible. Web. 10 Apr, 2020. <https://www.blueletterbible.org/niv/luk/22/1/p1/s_995001&gt;.

Remember

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The Road

 

This Good Friday morning, I follow Jesus, surely at a cautious distance, as He walks. I wonder now, these long years into it, is there anything cautious about following Jesus at all? Jesus walks, stepping toward, walking into ridicule and scorn, sorrow beyond all measure. He does so, having long since the moments of creation, relinquished the idea of just fixing it all. He relinquishes again, the thought of just fixing the problem of sin, (and thereby annihilating our freedom to choose) and instead, invites us to become more : more than our sin, more than our weakness or  strength, more than our skill or lack thereof; the object of someone’s admiration or scorn. He invites us to become family; his family.

And so…long since choosing him myself, I follow. His stride is not faint. Though likely weak, his body’s vitality sapped by beating, his step remains confident. Mine, is anything but. Still, I am stunned that Jesus keeps inviting me(us) into the most sacred of His moments: into pain, into the grey space of question (Father…Father?). Into times and spaces usually reserved for one’s closest friends and family; opening the door to a communion of ‘knowing,’ rather than simply imagining. What kind of intimate invitation is this? What sacred sorrow might Jesus be inviting me to step into today, knowing fully that he has walked this path before?

I have never, ever, considered suffering an invitation before. Perhaps it functions as a constructive discipline, or necessary evil, but invitation? To feel the weakening heartbeat – then nothing – of laying it all down? Invitation – to breathe the last vapors of self-preservation and feel the faint stirring rise and fall, of other breath. His breath, for he is alive? Invitation – to be entrusted with the sacredness of dying to oneself, in order to give latitude to another’s air, a home to one who had no place to lay his head.

Surely, we did not deserve all this careful folding and unfolding of the veil. Indeed, it is torn in carefully measured threads. What startling resemblance to swaddling… to grave cloths. Remember.

jfig     4-5/18