I’m not ready for this.
To be honest, I’m never ready for this.
I know the story, yes. I know how it unfolds, how it ends.
I’m still never ready.
Not ready for the impact of telling this story together,
for what it is like to enter this story,
take this front row seat to catastrophe, tragedy, death.
I’m never ready – even when I think I’m prepared – I’m not ready to find myself at the foot of the cross.
But neither is anyone in the story ready.
No one is prepared for this.
Not Peter, and not Pilate.
Not Annas and Caiaphas and their cabal of priests and leaders – who have been actively laying plans to trap Jesus and kill him.
They are busy, busy throughout the story, working their plan, busy accomplishing exactly what they set out to get – but they are also not quite ready for how Jesus and Pilate react to their planning.
Nor the other disciples, nor the faithful Marys and John who make it to the foot of the cross and stand there – watching, waiting, being there when being there is all that’s left to do.
We don’t know – John never tells us – whether they were frantic, or accepting, or bewildered, or angry, or even full of hope. We don’t know if they knew, or thought they knew, what was happening.
And even if they did, well, no matter how ready, how prepared you are for exactly this – you still can’t be fully ready to watch someone you love die.
Nobody in this story is ready for this.
Except Jesus.
Right away, right where we started reading the story tonight, John the narrator points out to us that Jesus knows exactly what is going to happen.
And we watch as, scene by scene, moment by moment, Jesus keeps on making it happen.
Encouraging his own arrest, pointing out to Pilate that he’s not resisting, that he’s of a higher authority than Pilate. Raising his head from the cross to summon the fulfillment of scripture, proclaiming completion and – as John precisely notes – giving his own life, not having it taken from him.
As John tells this story, Jesus is ready, Jesus in control, every step of the way.
Which is comforting – a bit – and terrifying at the same time, when I pause and think about it.
Who would, how could anyone, human or divine or both, choose this?
But that’s exactly what we watch Jesus, watch God do.
And that, perhaps, explains why I’m not ready – never ready.
Because we can’t – we truly can’t – ever be fully ready for what God is about to do, for what God is doing.
Whatever God is doing, there is always so much more of it than we can imagine, so much more of it than we can prepare for, more even than we will even see or experience for ourselves.
There’s so much more of this story,
more of salvation,
more of the cross itself,
more of the philosophical and political debates among the priests and Pilate, or later scholars,
more of the heart-wrenching personal griefs and losses and hopes of Mary and Mary and John and Peter and unnamed others at the foot of the cross and the margins of the story,
more of Jesus himself,
than my brain and heart can hold.
So once again, always, I’m raw and unprepared for how it happens,
surprised to find myself here,
in the wash of bewilderment, uncertain of the ground under my feet, or how I’m going to hold this story for you, for us, here, remembering,
or for myself.
And maybe
maybe that’s how and where I’m supposed to be.
Maybe this place, these feelings, the uncertainties –
for some of us the raw wounds of tragedy and grief, for some of us the slight awkwardness of being unmoved by a story supposed to wrench our hearts, for some of us the whole spectrum of different possible responses to a moment when God – God – is dead…. on purpose?...
— maybe the unexpectedness is the holiest possible place to be.
Maybe uncertain is the holiest possible way to be, when we arrive at the foot of the cross, swept here by the certainty of Jesus.
At the foot of this cross, the focal point of Good Friday;
or at some other cross, some other unbearable tragedy or catastrophe we could never be ready for
– or some other sacrifice we never asked for –
maybe uncertain, unready, unsettled is the holiest way to be.
Unmoored from the certainties we usually hold, tumbled loose of our own ability to predict and prepare, we are free to be swept up in the story God is telling, the tide that God is turning.
Adrift, unbound, and free, in the hands and heart of God.
Which is, perhaps, the holiest place, the only way, to be.
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