Good Friday sermon

GOOD FRIDAY A

It was one of those times; a time of day when the birds should have been singing, when the trees should have been full of birds flitting from here to there, calling back and forth, playing.  But it wasn’t.  Standing on the porch that day overlooking the treed escarpment and the park below –there should have been birds.  But all was silent.  That eerie silence that is unsettling; the sort of silence that gives one goose bumps; a silence that says all is not right in the world.

And then it happened, the sky turned a sick shade of green –then from a pregnant pause; a stillness so great one dare not breathe; it came in an immediate wind and the rain began to pour.  And at the rain, the immediate world off the porch on which I was standing exhaled the breath it had been holding, a breathe of relief –only rain.  But we had groaned knowing the tornado had struck down somewhere nearby.

Friday on the hill, outside Jerusalem –where Jesus and two others with him, one on either side, hang on wooden crosses –the sky has turned a sick shade of green -and one can not but be overwhelmed with the deafening silence.

-silence-

In our everyday lives silence is avoided.  We have IPOD’s, Blue-tooths, cell-phones; radios in cars, musak in malls; television or you-tube as background noise. We walk with earphones in, missing the songs of the birds, the tune of the breeze, the rustle of the trees, voices of other human beings. In fact there is so much noise we hear neither God’s love song of hope for a wounded world, or God’s silence.

-neither do we hear, Jesus words: “It is Finished”...or the pregnant pause, a stillness before the last breath.

Where as we stand facing the cross, daring not to breathe we encounter Jesus entering into the fullness of being human –God dares to die –and there is silence

And in the deafening vacuum of silence, Jesus has inhaled in that last breathe -our humanity -pain, vulnerability, suffering, our woundeness...and in the vacuum holds it, holds us...

And sighs out a breathe that is only pure spirit.  

And at the breathe, it is as if the sky has opened and the rain begins to pour –tears run down our faces, as we exhale – a breathe of thanksgiving, a breathe of relief – only Jesus.  But we have groaned knowing the tornado was meant for us.

After the tornado, after the wind had returned to a breeze, after the sky started returning to a pale blue, the birds slowly ventured out from their hiding places. They quietly hopped from bush to bush, pulled a few worms; a few tweets were heard, slow lament songs echoed on the horizon.

The birds were going to wait and see –

They were going to hold their jubilant song for another day – they, like us, would wait in hope for the su/on to rise.