Good Friday
Some images for you, on this day when we sit with the suffering of the world, and follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross.
The ancient Church heavily used the image of the Tree of Life -- from the Garden of Eden in Genesis, and from John's Revelation, both -- and grafted its imagery onto that of the Cross. The Cross becomes a Tree of Life, whose leaves (in John's imagery) are, "...for the healing of the nations."
To start with this image -- or to return to its ancient source -- is essential, if we are to have Good Friday and its images of death and suffering be anything other than a 'looking-at' Jesus (a fetishization of human and divine suffering, if you will) rather than an experiencing what happens on the Cross be a source of healing for the world. A Tree of Life.
There is a compelling call to us to follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross even to the point of putting ourselves there on that Tree of Life and viewing the world from its vantage point. We see there what the world of compassion looks like when God so completely identifies with the suffering of creation: we are shown the way to new life, to resurrection, in this 'suffering-with,' this compassion for all things.
John's Gospel, read today for centuries (with a very problematic history of being used to incite anti-Jewish riots, too), has a variety of treasures in thinking about what is happening on the Cross. It is in John's Gospel that Jesus tells his disciples who seek this 'kingdom of God' that, "...unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain. But, if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24) That, for John and the early Church, was the point of the Cross. A seed that replenished, healed, and grew beyond imagining.
What fruit does this Tree bear? This seed that falls into the earth (for three days, which is how the early Church interpreted this)? New life, yes. More to the point, though: it is balm - healing - for the ills of the world. Indeed, the whole earth, itself, shall be a source of healing: shall become a watered garden, in John's image from his later 'Revelation.'
There is a whole tradition in John's Gospel that finds expression when Mary goes to the Garden where Jesus has been buried (not a usual place of burial, so we know we're in John's theology, not 'history'). 'Early in the morning on the first day of the week...' Mary Magdalene turns to this figure she does not recognize, '...supposing him to be the gardener.'
And, he is a gardener. Elsewhere in John's Gospel is the image of us all being branches on a vine (Jesus) tended by God...
What happens to the Body of Christ on the Cross? It becomes a vine; it becomes a garden. Forces of empire and militarism hang Love Incarnate on a Tree, and through the power of God it becomes a Tree whose leaves are for healing.
Holding images like that in mind lets me re-approach with a different mind ancient anthems of the Church like this:
Adoramus te Christe, Benedicimus tibi, Quia per crucem tuam Redemisti mundum.
(We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, for through your cross you have redeemed the world. -- Here it is in a beautiful chant from the Taize community in France.)
This cross, this place of death becomes a place of Life, Healing, and Hope -- an ultimate rebuke to the powers of empire, despair, and militarism that view power through a very particular lens.
But, today is not a day to move too soon to images of healing, as if we all should rush past the suffering in our world, our lives, and the lives of our neighbors, near and far.
Something I have always appreciated about Good Friday is that it is one day when the Christian tradition does not try to rush us to the Good News of resurrection. Through the centuries, while the narrative has been misused to find scapegoats for the ills of the world, certainly, Christians have also used this day to meditate on suffering and sorrow, writ large, turning something like the Stations of the Cross into an empathy-building meditative exercise calling to mind the suffering of the world and our enmeshment in the perpetuation of the suffering of others and of the Earth, itself.
How can our awareness of this suffering bring us into greater solidarity with those who suffer in the world? Into greater understanding of the sources of our own suffering? How can this awareness - this sitting-with - be itself a source of renewal and hope?
On Good Friday, let us not waste these visions of the suffering of the world. Let these glimpses transform the gardens of our own hearts to be able to see the world as the healed, watered garden it is meant to be. Let there be no 'new normal' to return to, post-pandemic, but rather a new vision of what a world lived in solidarity with those who suffer might look like, might become ever more real on the far side of this valley of tears.
Grace and peace be with you. May God who has begun a good thing in you bring it to completion.