Abide

Yesterday was Good Friday.

If you have friends and family like mine you probably saw a lot of "It's Friday, but Sunday is coming" posts online. And I get it. For years even as I tried to sink into the meaning of Friday I always consoled myself that Sunday was coming.

Good Friday two years ago I first heard of thinking otherwise. It was right after the veneration of the cross–pretty scary itself to a girl who grew up Southern Baptist. The priest said that Good Friday and Holy Saturday were more than stopping posts on the way to Easter Sunday.

No, she told us it was for abiding in the sorrow, the brokenness, the heart-ache.

That felt like someone tearing a life preserver from my hands– how could I survive the weekend without clinging to the approach of Sunday? Wasn't that what Easter was all about–not having to wait with death? That weekend I wrestled more with my understanding of God than I had in a long time. And it was good.

 Two years latter I'm still wrestling with God and crying out like Jacob, "Bless me!" What does that wrestling look like? I don't know as much as I did two years ago, but I'm learning how to abide with God. I'm learning how to sit in the rubble of my plans and see God there.

Good Friday and Holy Saturday are about waiting in darkness and doubt. About having our idolized ideas of God smashed before our eyes.

This year I encourage you to stop rushing to the comfort of Easter Sunday and abide in the mystery of the cross.

I don't know what that looks like for you. Abide by the Quaker singer songwriter  Carrie Newcomer captures what the time in the shadow of the cross is like for me this year. You can hear it and read the words in the video below.

Maundy Thursday

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:34-35

Mandatum novum – New Commandment – this is where we get the "Maundy" of today from. And how easy this new commandment sounds at first, "love one another." Especially after "love your enemies," loving one another – those with us –sounds easy. But leave it to Jesus to say something else to shift our understanding: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." And just how is it that Jesus loved the apostles?

A few verses earlier in John 13 we see Jesus wash their feet. Foot washing may seem strange today, but it was a standard service that any good host would have offered to a guest – to be performed by a servant of course. But here is Jesus in the middle of celebrating Passover taking off his robe and doing dirty servant's work.

Jesus says he's going to wash the apostles's feet and Peter says "no way." Why this response? Because Jesus – the Messiah – was doing the work of a servant? Yes, but the bigger issue was that the work Jesus was doing required seeing how dirty Peter was.

Following Jesus around dirt roads on foot, Peter was probably pretty filthy. It's no wonder he didn't want his Messiah to see, touch, hold his feet. It seemed both beneath his idea of the Messiah and a shameful revelation of his dirt. But this dirtiness was no fault in Peter, it was the result of obedience – literally following Jesus on the road. And in his love Jesus sees the full filth before him and washes it away.

So what does it mean to love one another in a foot-washing way? Might it mean sharing the places where the daily dust and dirt of brokenness and hurt cling to us?