Friday, April 10th, 2020

  So disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.  That’s Isaiah’s description of Jesus on the cross today.  That’s really some conclusion about God’s contact with human beings.  Born outside the city, killed outside the city. Born onto rough wood, dying nailed to rough wood.  Born ignored by most, dead abandoned by most. How could God’s incarnate interaction with us be so poor?  Surely we’re not that bad? But that’s how he was treated - at birth, at death. Is it any different today?

So if you’re struggling because you feel locked out of normal community life, if you sometimes feel abandoned, if you’ve had trouble with people - God knows all about that.  Jesus experienced all that personally in Holy Week. And God has been experiencing it for basically the whole history of humanity.

God’s body - cradled by Mary - is a dead body, growing colder.  The only thing that remains is to bury it. What do you feel, Mary?  John - what are you thinking?

Except one thing.  The only crucial thing that makes a difference anywhere.  It is in the words of today’s psalm. The psalms were known to Jesus by heart.  They were his prayers. And as almighty God, they are his thoughts. These final words of the heart of Jesus to the Father were: In you, O Lord, I take refuge.  Let me never be put to shame. In your justice, set me free, Into your hands I commend my spirit.  It is you who will redeem me, Lord.

In his very manner of death, Jesus teaches us one last thing.  When everything is going wrong, when all is black and impossible, your sadness horrific and life greatly burdensome ahead of you, do one essential thing: abandon yourself into the hands of the Creator.  Don’t control it: just carelessly fall completely into his hands. For regardless of how you feel or what others do, God loves you. No situation or person can every doing anything to alter that.

And buried seeds grow: they explode out of the ground in dramatic colour, life and size compared to the petty little seed that no one thinks anymore about.  All the more do we when, feeling dead, we drop ourselves into the infinitely rich and creative soil which is the life of the Trinity. Because, having finally died to ourself, God is left free to really do what he wants with us.  And with one warm breath wakes us into a new way of being - radically changed. This is real change. This is real conversion. And this, my friends, is finally who we are. Having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation.

Let us pray.

Remember your mercies, O Lord,

and with your eternal protection sanctify your servants,

for whom Christ your Son,

by the shedding of his Blood,

established the Paschal Mystery.

Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever.

Amen.