CP 246 A glorious bloody mess

CP 246 A glorious bloody mess…

Hi people, I have to write about this while it is still so clear in my mind and heart. Two insights from Good Friday, from separate sources, with no connection to any of my preparations. On Good Friday our resident music/internet resource person, Merrion Hoffmann, found a short video clip which was played as the conclusion of the Service. You have to watch it! It’s about Simon of Cyrene, the man who was hauled out of the crowd to help Jesus carry his cross on the way to Calvary. (You can find it by going to www.skitguys.com. Look for Videos, then Easter, then Simon of Cyrene.)

In the clip Simon reflects with tearful wonder, about the messiest day of his life. Some quotes:

• ‘If this guy’s blood gets on me…it stains me… and I can’t do the Passover… and that’s the whole reason for being in Jerusalem…’
• ‘I looked at my hands… stained with his blood… I thought would make me unclean… but I realized… it’s the blood that makes me clean!'

How's that for insight. I've never given a moment's thought to the 'bloody' impact of what happened to the man from Cyrene... 'It's the blood that makes me clean!'

Then, on Easter Saturday I had a conversation with a friend in Canberra who had been reading Walter Wangerin’s ‘Reliving the Passion’. Wangerin's two page devotion for Good Friday records his reconstruction of how Joseph of Arithmathea gets Jesus off that cross… a ladder… ropes around his shoulders… wrenching out the nails with ‘sudden force’… removing the spike through the heels… hugging the torso of Jesus…’

You know, I’d never given a moment’s thought to Joseph’s sacred work that Friday evening either. He could not have done what he did without inflicting further damage on the corpse. His work that day also rendered him unclean, first by blood, and also by contact with the body, and therefore unable to celebrate the Passover.

Two men, unrelated except by their cameos in the events of that day are unclean in the worst way according to Mosaic law. No Passover for either of them this year. But it doesn’t matter, does it? The true Passover Lamb has shed his blood for the sins of the world. It’s a new day, a new era. The old has passed away, the new has come. Never need do Passover again… As John writes in his first letter, ‘The blood of Jesus cleanses us of all sin.’

Don’t know about you, but my spirit thrives on insights like that. More than thrives, it heals, it celebrates. It rejoices in its growing knowledge of the Holy One. How great is our God. Hallelujah!