Good Friday 2016

Good Friday 2016 I recently read a theological book that stated that God truly abandoned Jesus on the cross on Good Friday. But because of that abandonment, God never truly abandons us. While this is a valid theological perspective, I respectfully disagree. Now, there are plenty others who abandon Jesus. Judas is the first, leaving the Last Supper to betray Jesus to the authorities who want him dead. Peter abandons him by deny him thrice. Pretty much all his disciples besides John and the women abandon him as he is being crucified. Certainly each and every one of us has abandoned Jesus at one time or another and for most of us, it is not even a life-or-death kind of situation. It is usually through apathy, laziness, self-conceit. But abandonment is not the only story that is being told this day. There is also the story of abiding. Abiding is the exact opposite of abandoning. It is accepting or bearing, dwelling with, remaining and continuing. The gospel of John, out of all the gospels, lifts up this notion of abiding. We see it in the well-known verses of John 15:4-7: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Jesus shows us, today and always, that abiding is the very nature of God. And we are most fully God’s children, when we abide too. Perhaps this is part of why we gather here today. Because today, we choose not to abandon; we choose to abide—watching and remaining, bearing with and dwelling in pain, abiding even when it is “breathless and it’s empty”. In closing, I’ll share with you a Good Friday blessing by artist and United Methodist elder Jan Richardson. It is titled What Abides For Good Friday You will know this blessing by how it does not stay still, by the way it refuses to rest in one place. You will recognize it by how it takes first one form, then another: now running down the face of the mother who watches the breaking of the child she had borne, now in the stance of the woman who followed him here and will not leave him bereft. Now it twists in anguish on the mouth of the friend whom he loved; now it bares itself in the wound, the cry, the finishing and final breath. This blessing is not in any one of these alone. It is what binds them together. It is what dwells in the space between them, though it be torn and gaping. It is what abides in the tear the rending makes.