FROM THE PASTOR
From Death to Life
I greet you during this most Holy Week of the church year. We have made our Lenten pilgrimage together. Our Lenten pilgrimage has been a journey from death (Ash Wednesday) to life. A journey toward our eternal home in the love of Christ. Now I share devotions for the final four Stations of the Cross.
The Eleventh Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross
Isaiah 53:7–9 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.
Words: We fill the air with them. We use them on tests, essays, to ask for a date, to speak to a colleague, to call home, to reach out to a friend. We walk down the street spouting a string of words from and to our cell phones. Always speaking, shouting, writing, sending, withholding, whispering, communicating… words.
We send out words to send out ourselves. Words to disclose our deepest being. This is what I am about, say our words (or, this is what I want you to think I am about). With words we describe our pain, our joy, our hunger, our fear, our love. With words we try to get at the truth. With words we hide the truth. Words to embrace. Words to keep at arms length. Words. Imperfect mirrors of the soul.
The Word.
Naked, silent eloquence. A man stretched out on a cross. Willing to die for the other. For all the others. The truth about God’s heartbreaking love. Embracing the world. Word made dying flesh.
Dear sisters and brothers, how much does God love you?
Behold the crucified Word. And look for the light.
God of wisdom, help us to distinguish between the chatter of everyday words, and the words that reveal the Word. For in Christ the Word is our life. Amen.
The Twelfth Station: Jesus dies on the cross
Luke 23:44–46 Having said this, he breathed his last.
Jump!
That is what I would call out to each of my children when they were trusting infants. I would set them on a counter, a mailbox, a high ledge and command them.
Jump!
Their eyes widened for joy as they abandoned their safe perch and let themselves fly into the waiting arms of their father. They trusted the strength, the love of the waiting arms of the parent. In those arms was safety.
Jump!
“Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” I hear those dying words of Jesus as the words of a child letting go of the ledge and plunging into the strong arms of the Father. It is not a cry of terror. It is not a cry of death, even though the Son of God is dying. It is a shout of trust and faith.
Jump!
It is a moment we will all face. Too much of our living and our education is an avoidance of that primal truth, that we are not immortal gods, but children of a fallen humanity.
Jump!
Jesus is teaching us in the final cry from the cross that it is not a moment of extinction, but the cry of a child coming home. In the jump from mortality to eternity, look for the light.
O God, faith can be scary. Give us courage to trust in you, to leap over the abyss into your loving arms, trusting in the life given by your Son. Amen.
The Thirteenth Station: The body of Jesus is placed in the arms of his mother.
Ruth 1:18–22 Do not call me Naomi [that is, pleasant], call me Mara [bitter]; for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
Pietà.
A mother’s arms cradling her dead child. I stood speechless in the room, struck dumb by the horror of her pain for her little one. A pastor without a word to hurl into the abyss. Only a pair of arms to encircle the passion of mother and child. So many pietàs in the span of human history.
He said, after his son’s funeral, “What do you say to someone who is suffering? Some people are gifted with words of wisdom. For such, one is profoundly grateful. But not all are gifted in that way. Some blurted out strange, inept things. That’s okay too. Your words don’t have to be wise. The heart that speaks is heard more than the words spoken. And if you can’t think of anything to say … just embrace. Express your love. How appallingly grim would this grief be in the absence of love. Just don’t leave me alone.” (Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, p. 34. Eerdmans, 1987)
Pietà.
When you are present to the one who grieves, you are a reminder that the Son sleeping in his mother’s arms will awaken. And all humanity’s daughters and sons will follow, rising to see how brightly shines the Morning Star. Wait for the light.
Loving God, in times of grief, gently lead us to comfort and to be comforted, trusting that all things are held in your loving embrace which brings life out of death. Amen.
The Fourteenth Station: Jesus is laid in the tomb
Romans 6:3–8 We have been buried with him by baptism into death.
There is division at the tomb revered as the place of Jesus’ burial in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Various Christian groups have chapels around the spot. The distrust and antipathy among the Christian denominations is so profound that the key to the basilica is entrusted to a Muslim family.
We wait in line to enter the tomb: many flavors of Christians led by a Jewish guide, greeted by Muslims women from Gaza. Then all of us, believers as well as gentle agnostics, do together the one thing we must each eventually do. We enter the tomb.
So, in a way something like baptism, we rehearse our death and image our common mortal humanity. Divided and fractured and wary toward one another in life, we are one as we enter the tomb. But the tomb is empty. And in the love of the risen Christ, this fractured world yearning for peace will one day emerge from the tomb reunited with God and one another. The memory and promise of that empty tomb is what I saw at Ground Zero in 2001.
We who have made the Way of the Cross must be living signs of that cruciform vision of Jesus that all creation is one in Christ. And we must be living reminders that the destination of the Via Dolorosa, the passion of this human living, this great baptismal adventure is not death, but life eternal.
Death brings life. Alleluia.
That is the light for which we look.
O God, in a world that tries to deny death, help us to know that your Son took away its sting, so that we can see it as a step toward everlasting life with you. Amen.
Pastor Stephen Bouman
