By the Rev. Jon Rieley-Goddard

Dear friends,

    Gandhi, a little man in an even smaller garment, homespun by his own hand, liberated his beloved India, partly by occasional resort to public fasting. As he wasted away – and he did not have much of a margin for wasting – the word got out and the journalists gathered, and Gandhi suffered for what he believed in. His continued life meant that in fasting., he always got his way, because he was in it for death or for life, and everyone knew that he would not let up until he got his way.

    What do you call a 350-pound mugger in a dark alley?

    Sir.

    What do you call a 98-pound holy man ready to die for his beliefs and hopes?

    Simply, Gandhi.

***

    In the years after Gandhi’s death, others took up the strategy of public fasting to gain political and social ends. In one case, unlike Gandhi, the fasters took turns, going without food for as little as an hour per person, banding together to fast without suffering.

    What do you call a one-hour faster?

    Expletive deleted, perhaps.

***

    The church of Jesus Christ, the one that we call Christian, does not escape this pitfall of trying to suffer without suffering. One sees evidence of this at Easter, when the joyful palms of Palm Sunday yield in time to the bonnets, new shoes, and pretty dresses of Easter Sunday itself. Somewhere in all the finery, and the rabbits, and the colored eggs in the tall, green grass, we leave out Good Friday.

    I once did a Good Friday service, at a church that I was serving in the Southern Tier, and no one came, in the three hours that I sat in the silence of the church. Good Friday is not a popular day in the church year, except for those who get a half-day off, presumably to attend a vigil.

    It is so like us, so American, to go from joy to joy and forget the pain and suffering that faceless others, around the world, go through to complete our joy. Just like it is in their nature to suffer, so too it is in our nature to consume and enjoy.

***

    In the midst of this crushing consumer binge without end, amen, those of us who attend Pierce Avenue Presbyterian Church have been discovering the hard reality of Good Friday, the death on the cross. And with the blessing, those of us who have gathered weekly for three Mission Study sessions with our consultant have had more than enough strong feelings to last for a long time. With everything on the table, we started with the question of whether to continue at all, in face of sharply declining reserves and yearly giving that covers the needs of the building but has little left for anything else, including salaries or programs.

    On Good Friday, evil men nailed our Lord and Savior to a rude pair of sticks and jeered at him until he died in unspeakable agony.

    Yes, we say, and three days later he rose from the dead. Don’t leave that out, we say, frightened by even a sound bite’s worth of death and suffering.
But I say, sit with Good Friday, for a space of time in every day.

    As the wise say, to learn how to live, learn how to die.

***

    No matter what happens here at Pierce Avenue church, there will be death and grief in it. There are no options for us that do not promise with grim satisfaction that we will know losses. God is preparing for us a vision for our future, and although God is good, and never fails us, God also looks at our plight from far away at the same time that God is far inside us and our situation, heartbeat by heartbeat.

    God challenges those whom God loves. Just look at the cross, and although it is empty, and in Protestant churches, clean and severe, the blood of Jesus is what gave the cross its power. God’s son, sent to bleed and die, for indifferent, petty creatures.

    Martin Luther said that it was like sending snow to fall in its purity on a dung heap.

***

    No matter what happens here at Pierce Ave., there will be grief and loss, and you will not forget this time, ever, for the balance of your days. If you were one of those who knew in your heart that closing and going away was at the top of the list of options, because you could not turn away from that option, you will never forget the way that that felt.

    And even if we pull back from that brink, and continue our picnic at the edge of that volcano, it will not be the same. The church will be different; some options such as sharing space in return for rent, will mean that strangers will touch what we, in our blindness and ease, have considered to be Our Stuff. The hopes and wishes of our mothers and fathers will become one option among others. Changes will not go away, and you will be uneasy, even as you breathe a sigh of relief. The death of something is the birth of something else, and what will be borne in God’s time will be largely of your liking, but there will be grief in there, too, because you will lose some things while retaining and protecting others. There will be a permanent sense of unease alongside the ease of God’s blessing. This is as it should be, and is.

***

    Good Friday is cold wind and cold, light rain, mud, and introspection.
Good Friday is sitting with death, your oldest friend, the one whom you try to avoid on the street as often as you see him.

    Good Friday means sitting in silence and dread, hearing the story of the death of Jesus, in nauseating detail.

    Good Friday means facing your own death, and remembering your losses.

    Good Friday means feeling bad and wondering why you didn’t just go to the mall with your time off from work instead of getting in the way of all those feelings.

    Good Friday means that when Easter comes, with its sunshine and bunnies, you will know what the world does not know, that death lives in the depths of joy.

Blessings and peace,

Pastor Jon