Earthquake

Good Friday, April 18, 2025

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Earthquake

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.

Thomas said to Jesus, “We don’t know where you’re going. So how can we know the way?”

Jesus responds with his famous open-door answer, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Jesus is set as the human blueprint, the oh-so-hopeful pattern of divine transformation.  

Trust the down, and God will take care of the up. This leaves humans in solidarity with the life cycle, and also with one another, with no need to create success stories for ourselves or to create failure stories for others. Humanity in Jesus is free to be human and soulful instead of any false climbing into “Spirit.” This was supposed to change everything, and I trust it still will. – Richard Rohr

You are all we need. Everything God has always meant for us stands here and looks us in the eye. Where are you going, Lord? To heaven?

Of course. But perhaps more specifically, as my spiritual director suggested, Jesus is going to be with his Father, with whom he has spoken so often, every day for 33 years, and now in returning, he will be WITH him.

And I can imagine that Jesus couldn’t wait. Death be damned. There is no sting. And he knows, he KNOWS, that we are going with him. The path doesn’t go up, doesn’t move away from earth, but all inside us will be transformed and made heavenly. This is no merely physical thing, and our bodies are not in charge. We have failed to be human, and Jesus has succeeded. Follow me, he says.

Can you believe me, Jesus asks? Even more, can you follow me into my death? Because although you don’t know it, you are living in your own death, and if I were you, I’d get out of there.

Passover

O Lamb,

there is no blood

that is not yours,

 

no guilt passed on,

and passed on again,

that is not ours.

 

Centurions, we stand bloodied

over the steaming carcass

and stammer.

 

Your uncomplaining blood

washes us

of doing this again.

 

The angel of death,

who would use us to wound,

passes over.

 

Through the Red Sea of your tears

we go with your blessing,

on washed, forgiven feet.

 

Holy One, Lord of Tenderness,

slaughtered and ever beseeching,

spare us from our deathfulness.

 

Forgiving One,

unreturning our violence,

set us free. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes

So today I watch the sky for signs of God’s refusal to countenance our violence any longer. I see the clouds swirl and hear the sirens warning of earthquake, earthquake! And when I see them I know how close we are to heaven.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him.

    He was despised and rejected by mankind,

    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

    he was despised, and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering, familiar with pain.

It was our infirmities that he bore,

            our sufferings that he endured,

while we considered him stricken,

            smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

            crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,

            by his stripes we were healed.

We have all gone astray like sheep,

            each of us turning to our own way,

and the LORD laid upon him

            the iniquity of us all.

(Genesis 17, Psalm 105, Psalm 95, John 8)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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