Good Friday – 2007

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

Probably my favorite place in all of God’s good creation is our cabin. It has been a family sanctuary for thirty years.

Time is the main commodity enjoyed there.

Time away. Time to unwind. Time to be together with family and books and silence with no other demands.

One of the favorite pastimes there is walking. It just feels good to get out and breathe in pine and birch and lake air.

Early in the walk we have to pass two dogs. They are ugly. One is a pit bull, and the other is a boxer. No offense, but they aren’t dogs that inspire great appreciation in me, particularly because they get aggressive with my dog, a sweet black lab only too happy to be out on a walk with her people.

So consistently, knowing that the yard of the mean dogs is coming, I tense up, and sure enough, they come barking and snarling out to the road to harass us but good.

A month ago my daughter Rachel and I ran away to the cabin for a 24 hour mother-daughter time. We brought the dog and enjoyed time in front of the fire. And we set out, per usual, for a good long walk.

I warned her about the dogs. I felt my body tensing. And sure enough, they came out with teeth bared. I muttered to myself and walked on quickly, assuming that my daughter would do the same.

She did not. I looked to my side and she wasn’t there.

I looked back. And there she was back with those mean dogs. And she was down at their level talking to them, petting their heads, and they weren’t snarling and making as if to bite. They were wagging their tails.

And I thought. All these times. All these times I have been so fired by fear and loathing for these dogs that I didn’t see a different way of dealing with them. So I didn’t deal with them. I resisted them and ran from them and they remained to me what they had always been in my mind – ugly mean dogs.

Rachel showed me a different way by seeing and acting in a different way.

Good Friday is a day when all the mean dogs in the world are let loose upon creation and we find ourselves unable to run from them. The menace and ugly and fear of the world are no longer fenced. They are snapping at the heals of our hearts and we tense and hurry away, hoping that if we go fast enough, ignore them enough, they will go away, these things that bite.

Poverty, fear, hatred, war, violence. They run the streets of our world and seemingly we will never be free of them. We feel the weight in our hearts so intensely.

What I learned from my child is this:

We have to turn and look at those things we do not want to see.

We have to turn and examine the network of torn relationships they represent.

We have to become aware that there would be no war, no poverty, no want, no Christ hanging on a cross, if we remembered that every creation on this earth is crafted by the same Creator who breathed life into us each.

Last night we heard through scripture the telling of how it was Jesus knelt at the feet of his friends and washed them. Last night we heard about how it is we are each called to do the same. Last night we heard about how we are nurtured by the bread of God’s good grace in Christ Jesus.

And today we hear of how it is we took that grace and hung it on a cross to wither and die because we were too afraid to live the love of our teacher, savior, and brother Jesus.

The biting and menace of this world are real.

The question is, how will we meet it. Will we tense up, hurry on by, and nurse our own hatreds and fears?

Or will be live the teachings of Jesus and the lesson of Rachel?

Let us turn, meet the challenge, and live the way of love.

Amen