Good Friday

After friends and nurses cared for him for months, and kept vigil for days, AIDS took it’s final toll on Dave. I had been taking communion to him for a long time. One time I happened to come when a group of close friends had gathered in his home. We had a party – a last supper, as it turned out. Gathering around the couch in the living room where Dave spent his time, we feasted on the scriptures and on the bread and wine and on each other’s company. The prayers were intensely personal. Dave was dying. The small mission church that these folks had devoted many hours to, was struggling with its future. I was wondering where my priesthood was leading, where God was calling me.

There were many blessings that night. I anointed Dave and those gathered around all laid hands on him, deeply blessing and loving him as a truly gathered Christian community can do. The group laid hands on me, blessing me with prayers and longings for the full blossoming of my ministry. We held hands and prayed for the little mission in the heart of the gay and poor community along the Russian River.

A few days later, Dave died. His two sons asked if I would stay with the body until the mortuary arrived. I said yes – but had no idea that it would take so long for the van to get there. I sat for hours in the room with Dave’s body growing cold. Accompanying his complete leave taking of this world, of his thin ravaged body, his running sores, his inability to swallow, his existential loneliness.

Before he died though, the midst of this very real suffering, Dave had found a way to live as fully as he possibly could. He had found the way of the Cross. Because of Jesus and Jesus’ death and ultimate resurrection, hope continued to burn in Dave to the very end. It was this hope that allowed him to laugh at the ever increasing indignities of the process of dying. It was this hope that gave him the courage and fortitude to reconcile with his sons. It was this hope that gave his eyes their light, when all else was breaking down.

Anyone who has been through the valley of the shadow of death, knows that hope is the one thing that is essential. Faith can come and go. Even love. But without hope, we become the walking dead. Hope is hardy – like grass pushing up through cement, it’s green blades finding even the tiniest of cracks to reach through to the light . Hope is hardy – like children playing tag in the rudest and meanest of impoverished conditions. Hope is hardy. It is not easily extinguished. It finds a way to take wing and fly even when the wings are broken and the night is bitterly cold.

But I think on this day, in the heart of Jesus’ mother and in the hearts of John and the few women who were strong enough to stay until the bitter end, I think hope died.

Jesus was taken dead and cold from the cross and laid in a tomb, with no answer forthcoming from the God of Love that he proclaimed and clung to – no answer – no comforting word – no dove descending – no whisper in the ear. Through the hours that he hung on the cross, a most intensely gruesome torturous way to die – Jesus continued to love, continued to pour himself out in love, for his friends, for his mother, for those who had nailed him there and who were busy dividing up his robe and sandals and prayer shawl. He continued to call upon and cling to his Father, his Abba, the very light of his life, the love of his love. But now - there was no answer, no relief, no assurance that anything he had done or was doing had any meaning, had any purpose, or would come to any good, no word that there even was a God who heard him and knew him, much less loved him. The hope and love and light of his mother’s life was now broken and dead and cold in her arms.

What do we do when hope dies? When our dreams are shattered? When love flickers and fades and the ground we stand on is turned completely upside down and there is no solid ground left? When we are suddenly and completely turned out of the cozy world we thought we lived in – maybe by death of a husband or wife or child, or death of a marriage, or death of purpose, or death of a future we had counted on. What do we do when all of our hopes and dreams are laid out cold and heavy in our arms?

Mary turned to Joseph of Arimethea, a friend of her son’s. She and the other women leaned on each other, held each other upright as they made their feet move in the direction of someone’s home where they would sit without food or fire huddled together and too struck down to even weep. What did these few friends of Jesus do when hope died and God no longer spoke to them? They sat together. They held each other.

I don’t know whether they prayed. I don’t know whether they called upon God who, for all they could see, had abandoned their beloved Jesus and abandoned them. Perhaps, possibly, they were able, through sheer force of will and profound love, to follow Jesus even into this abandoned place. Perhaps, possibly, like Jesus, they did continue to call upon this silent absent God. Continued to call, even when there was no answer. Perhaps, possibly, the life that was Jesus’ life, did still beat somewhere in their grieving hearts, unknown and unrecognized. Perhaps, possibly, the little tiny seed bud of hope was not thoroughly extinguished, but lay dormant and deep, still and silent, waiting.

We know, of course, that Easter comes. That there is a tomorrow and another tomorrow, and that God has the final word – that Love lives. That there is no darkness, no despair, no abandonment, no place of terror and absence, that God is not – that God – by pouring out of everything he had, to the utmost of his earthly capacity, there is no darkness that Christ does not light with his presence. Because he held nothing back, he is able to accompany you into any hopelessness, any despair.

What do you do when hope dies? When the Light of the World, when the light of your world, is extinguished? Do what Dave did. Do what Jesus' friends did. Flee to the Cross of Christ. Because at the Cross, at the foot of the Cross, you will find paradise itself. You will find community and communion. You will find the very Presence of the One who loves you to the end and beyond.