Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
"Good" Friday - Years A, B, C
Let us provoke one another toward forgiveness.
If we can learn obedience through suffering, can we learn glory through forgiveness? And what will we learn by forgiving suffering and suffering forgiveness?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html
Where there is forgiveness there is no need for a priest to offer sacrifice for sin.
Where boldness is needed to enter and receive forgiveness a priest is a helpful companion.
Whichever part of this cycle we are on at the present, the end result of the choices of we make is that of increasing love and good deeds. It is to this that we are willing to invest our lives so fully that we, too, would chose death over extension of life.
The principalities and powers, politics and economics, would constrain us to their ends. It is our sense of being new people that will lead us toward one another and beyond our constraints to better ways.
Remember that today is about forgiveness and reconciliation, not sacrifice, though that happens along the way.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 or Hebrews 10:16-25
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
John 18:1-19:42
Persistence in the face of overwhelming sorrow (try reading the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson) can lead to provocation to love and good deeds, anyway.
Overwhelming sorrow can also deaden us to the point of non-responsiveness. It can call forth intermediary rituals to disperse such sorrow that eventually become a barrier to experiencing the sorrow at all. At this point we cling to our ritual rather than face again that which overwhelms us, every time. Far better to be obedient than to wrestle, as did Jacob of old, with unknown forces.
Suffering does come, as does everything in its time. But here the suffering may be more in the eye of the beholder than the actor. We do come to an empathetic and cathartic experience of suffering, but one that tends to keep us captive to it rather than release us into a new freedom to accept oursuffering and not run from it.
We do not seem to find a way through suffering (a better conversation between Buddha and Jesus would help many a Christian and their congregation). It becomes a totem for us and we carry it around our necks and tattooed on our bodies. A cross becomes an ending spot for us rather than a beginning, everything is seen through its lens.
Note: None of this applies to the kinds of suffering we cause and ignore to the least among us. That kind of suffering has nothing to do with redemption.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Whether following the United Methodist or Roman Catholic pericope, we have to deal with a reinstitution of a high priesthood as the only vehicle through which we can access G*D’s mercy. For some reason or other mercy cannot be mercy on its own, but only if earned by someone or another.
Mercy is understood to break all the rules for the presence of G*D. Mercy provokes us to additional acts of mercy. Against mercy there are no limitations other than our proclivity to ration and control a G*D careening out of control and being merciful beyond our capacity.
If Jesus can sympathize with weakness, there is no one who will be left out. Jesus learned this from a pagan, Melchizedek, a Syrophenician woman, unnamed, and each and every prophet. Whether we learn mercy from outside or inside a religious tradition, let us affirm our hope, participate in love and good deeds, encourage one another, and identify with those left out.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/hebrews-1016-25-or-hebrews-414-16-57-9.html
What is our confession, our affirmation? It is not that we have a High Priest who will make such for us.
Jesus did not presume upon his privilege to escape travail (a three-stake implement of torture). It is too easy to interpret non-presumption as obedience. This sort of decision is not just an act of obedience. It takes a mature person able to enter into the decision to not escape and to make it their own.
Note that in our day we also see that participatory maturity can be seen, instead, as fanaticism—the difference is between how wonderful we are in our maturity and how dastardly they are in their terrorism. While not wanting to equate these two, our major use of this sort of language is to privilege ourselves with the moral high ground of good obedience, not bad obedience.
Obedience learned through suffering is provisional or foxhole obedience. When the trauma is over, so is the obedience. It turns to unquestioning rote or the relief of disobedience. This type of obedience really can’t be healthily passed on. It establishes a do-as-I-say-because-I-say-it relationship.
Perhaps it is enough to simply say, the one we follow as partner is one who can sympathize with weakness even as they can lead us to love beyond our limits. These two actions complement one another and set the ground for transformation.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/hebrews-414-16-57-9-friday.html