Before the Cross

 

The Spiritual we will sing at noon today mournfully asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”  And I answer, Yes.  Not literally or historically speaking, but I am here right now the morning after another shooting at a school where my children attend, causing my heart to break and frustration at our collective normalizing of gun violence.  I am here right now as we constantly critique each other on social media with keyboard courage and venom dripping from words that belittle others.  I am here right now as racism, sexism, homophobia continue to be used by those in power to separate and segregate our shared humanity ~ pitting one against another.  I am here right now as we bomb our way to peace.  I am here right now, in the shadow of the cross, because we still scoff at love as some snowflake (so-called ‘woke’) way of living life.  Yet our shy soul cries out for the very thing we mock ~ to be loved, to be heard, to be held in community.  I am here right now, in the shadow of the cross, that treats creation as a means to a quick profit, just keep drilling because we won’t be here when our grandchildren must deal with the consequences.  I am here right now, in the shadow of the cross where hatred and money are powerful gospels we all listen to and live from.  I am here right now still praying, “Hosanna”, still asking God to save me from myself, from others, from a world that I cannot control or comprehend.  Good Friday didn’t just happen, it is happening now.  I pray you will join me at the foot of the cross today at noon today to be honest about the heartbreak and soul ache.  To bring your human-size life with its pain ~ physically, emotionally and spiritually to be met by God who doesn’t swoop in like Mighty Mouse to save the day or Wonder Woman to lasso the truth, but God who sighs and dies and breaths God’s last breath on a cross to show us, teach us through an action of self-giving love.  I believe only a suffering God can save us because it is in that suffering where God meets us ~ not to magically make everything instantly better…but with love that holds us in the pain.  God’s holy love that never lets us go.  I pray I will see you at noon today.  Amen.