April 3, 2010

Good Friday

This is Easter weekend. Tomorrow I will post all the pictures and highlights of my favorite people, my children and grandchildren, as we enjoy Easter egg hunts, delicious foods and candy, laughter and joy with spending time together. It is a true blessing to have these people in my life. But for today, I am posting a much more sober reflection from one of my favorite books I read daily, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim by Edward Hays.


The Passion and Death of Jesus Christ According to St. Thomas

Today I come to you – yes, you – and say, “Look out your windshield or into the window of your television, and let us go up; to Neon Jerusalem and die with him.  Come along with me to the city park of Gethsemane, where Jesus suffers the sweaty-palm agony of the sick and those dying of the deadly diseases, AIDS and cancer.  Tomorrow is their Good Friday; tonight their lonesome vigil.  Come, let us go and die with him. 

“Come and look – stare if you like – Jesus is stripped of his clothing, exposed to shame in those stripped of their jobs, naked by the loss of their homes and possessions, disrobed of their dignity.

“Come, stand and watch, helpless by habit, as is Jesus is mocked and ridiculed by the centurions of society, in being the butt of crude minority jokes and tongue-cutting, clever discrimination humor.  Join the crowd and let your silence or laughter lash away at him.

“Don’t turn away from the pain; see the crown of thorns upon his head in the form of each one who is mentally ill, their foreheads pierced by deep depression.  There he is as a bag lady muttering to herself, or, there, see him sitting and staring out the window of a ward. 

“See the crowd press closer, and you can view him being scourged by physical or mental abuse.  Watch, don’t turn away your prudish eyes: see him sexually abused in a confused and forever crippled little child.  Genuflect if you like, or bow in reverence.

“Turn your head, we’re passing a prison; behind those walls and bars sits Jesus as an innocent man or woman – even in those guilty of some crime.  Jesus – in the person of one unjustly tried and condemned, lacking a clever lawyer, or a victim crippled by poverty or a broken home – is caged in a crowded cell.

“Come with me up Main Street of Neon Jerusalem; watch Jesus go by in all disabled persons carrying their crosses in the daily passion parade and in those back-bent with the heavy burdens of life.  Where is a Simon from Cyrene, Texas or Minnesota, who will life a hand to raise a wheelchair, open a door or lift with compassion the crosses they bear. Ah, how quickly he has passed.

“Come with me, let us go up the trashy hill of 10,000 Calvarys, look how in the body of the needy they have nailed him secure for life to the icy cold cross of poverty.   Stand with me at the foot of millions of crosses shouldered in the midday darkness of hopelessness.  Listen to that piercing cry riding on the wind of a year of Good Fridays, “My God, why, why have you abandoned me?”

“Come, let us go up to Neon Jerusalem and die with him – suffer with him, be shamed with him, be imprisoned with him, feel the lash of laughter, be mocked for a lack of money, sweat blood with him in a slow painful death and hold out our hands to be nailed for life.” 

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