Good Friday always leaves me to wonder what it was like to have been one of the Apostles. The amazing high of Palm Sunday has crashed and burned in the last 24 hours. Jesus was arrested, tried, scourged, sentenced to death, forced to carry his cross to Golgotha where he is crucified and dies. Could this be happening to the one we thought was the Messiah? If death has taken Jesus what hope is there for us? Can you imagine what it would have been like to be one of the disciples realizing Love has been crucified? Love is taken away? Perhaps the English poet Robert Browning captures the moment: “Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”   That day long ago comes to an end and the apostles are left to wonder if this earth will slowly, inevitably become our tomb?

What about us? We gather to remember that day of long ago. We proclaim the Passion of the Lord and are asked to in some way relive the emotions and turmoil of the day. And, on this day of all days we are exposed to our greatest fear: death. It lies like a giant maw of a monster waiting to pull us into the darkness. We are reminded death will touch us all.

But it is not some nameless monster that lies in wait in the tomb. We are reminded that the one we have followed throughout the year, hearing the stories of his power and his mercy, He lies behind the stone. The Word of God made flesh. The Lamb of God. The very Love of God given to us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 

We are people who don’t have to live the next 40 hours or so tested, tormented, and taunted. We know how the story ends. We know the love we have for family and friends does not pass away at death’s door. A tomb can not vanquish love. Love eternally lives. We know that Love is indeed stronger than death. 

Allow me to borrow the words of another English poet, John Dunne. The poet speaks the story’s real ending; its truest ending

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. ….

Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

We know what the disciples only later came to learn. That the glory of God, the fullness of love is fully revealed in the Cross. That the tomb cannot restrain and hold back Love

As a people of faith, we are here at the foot of the Cross. We know the story does not end here.

We are the keeper of the story – the story that the cross cannot destroy. The story that the tomb can not bind Love. We are the ones to tell the story of Hope – of the promise of love’s power over death We are called to speak these words into the tombs of our day when other stones close off people from the light and life of the world. We are called to be the disciples who go out from this day, through the glory of the 3rd day when Jesus will be raised from the tomb, to be people who roll the stone away from their entombment and shine the love of Christ into their world.

But for now we wait in the darkness of a day when Love seems to have died. But Death is not the final word.

Not for Jesus. Not for us.