Particularly now.
At least I wasn't presiding.
Slipped in a little late, was one of the first ones out the door.
I have never really come to terms with Good Friday. To be clearer - it's the Gospel reading from John that sets me on a slow boil. John, for whatever reasons (perhaps a desire to distance the new Christian churches from people who knew Jesus and preferred to stay synagogue-adjacent), puts all the blame on "the Jews."
It's "the Jews" who thirst for the blood of their kinsman. It's "the Jews" who insist Pilate condemn him when he doesn't want to do so. It's "the Jews" who complain when Pilate puts a sign up by the cross that terms Jesus their King. They are totally hateful, nasty, carping, and careless of their own responsibility.
Pilate, on the other hand? Like Vladmir Putin, his hands are always clean (just don't check out the sinks).
For years, I have waited for one of the priests I served to tackle this topic, to confront the blatant anti-semitism of the text. Waited - and most of the time, been disappointed. Anti-semitism is baked into this most holy of bad days.
Today, if possible, was even bleaker - because we knew, we all knew, that in a contested piece of land near Jerusalem, little children and their parents and grandparents are starving to death.
Somehow, Americans have become complicit in a war in which there seems to be no end to the suffering (on both sides) of innocents.
My friend, the celebrant, did mention the children of Gaza - they were recognized as part of the grim fabric of the day. It was the dose of reality we needed.
I believe that Jesus also died for the bone-etched faces of the children with the dulled eyes, the Gazan kids that haunt my (and perhaps your) dreams.
To blame all Jews for this group punishment would be another kind of anti-semitism. Not to blame Hamas (which keeps turning down compromises that might bring at least a temporary cease fire) is willlfully naive. At the same time, it's hard not to feel, as we watch parents grieve over dying children, like we also need to wash our hands - but are helpless to eradicate the stain of seeing - and not doing everything we can to help them.
If they cannot be saved, what does it say about our capacity to embrace the love of a God who came for them, as well as for us?
