Good Friday comes with a dual invitation.
First, join us if you can for Centering Prayer at 8 am Pacific Time. If you don’t have the access url, email me and I will see that you get it: charlestaylorkerchner@gmail.com
Second, join Claremont Presbyterian in marking Good Friday with a short ceremony and a labyrinth walk at 3 pm. We will read part of the passion narrative, chant a bit, and walk the church labyrinth at 1111 N. Mountain Ave. in Claremont.
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I have to admit that Good Friday has always been difficult for me. That state-sponsored murder, a needless execution, becomes foundational is hard theology. But we find knowledge and love in violence and suffering, and so I follow Pamela Begeman as she offers the “Word of the Week” from Contemplative Outreach and quotes Fr. Thomas Keating from his book, The Transformation of Suffering.
"In Christian terms, this new moment of history is an invitation to enter into the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. … [V]iolence is not meaningless or worthless. It may be the necessary preparation for a change of consciousness leading to a new level of maturity in the human family as a whole – attitudes that will lead to a much greater concern for every member of the race, past, present, and to come.
"This intuition has appeared in the writings of the mystics of our Christian faith as well as in other religions. Christ enters into oneness with us not only as a species but one by one, so that each of us is a unique manifestation of the great love of the Father for humankind. It is a love that goes as far as to send into the human situation – with all of its struggles and failures – the Son of his bosom in order to prove his determination to transform the human family into the divine life, and to grant to all its members the maximum communication of the divine love, truth, and happiness."
And here is a prayer from Rev. Bret Myers urging us not to be in a rush to get to Sunday but to stay with the grief of Friday and process it:
O God, let us take in the moment of this day of crucifixion, not remembering it in the context of what came after it, but how it left Jesus’ disciples and followers in tragic sadness and heart-wrenched disillusionment.
Prompt us not to make this day too easy on ourselves, but to fully experience the dejection and despair that happens any time when we lose faith in justice in our world…when evil seems to win over goodness…when hope is betrayed by the harshness of cruelty…when faith is left dangling by a thread that we now see as frayed.
We need to feel the entirety of this day, for if we don’t, we rob ourselves of the depth of human emotion – of that emotion that in feeling the depths, has greater appreciation for the heights…that acknowledges that if we are somehow able to get through this day, that we may find a strength we did not know was possible tomorrow…that dares to trust in what is unimaginable, not so much because we believe it to be true, but because we don’t know how to keep going on if we don’t simply choose to trust in what we cannot yet see, or hear, or taste.
As you are walking the labyrinth, here is a verse to use as a word prayer:
But you, O Lord, be not far from me; O my help, hasten to aid me. (Psalm 22:19).