Dear reader, thank you for being here, and blessings to you on Good Friday. It was very moving to watch my church’s livestream of the Maundy Thursday service last night, as our dear priest received communion for all of us, and the altar was stripped bare. Then the doors to the altarpiece were slammed shut with a reverberating finality, the way tombs are. Good Friday tells us that the ways we’ve been, the one we loved, we cannot see again.   

Also lost from us right now is physical closeness to many who are dear to us. I love the artist Sadao Watanabe’s Last Supper, included here, not only for its representation of the meal, the rich colors, the huge fish on the platter, but mostly for the way the beloved disciple leans his head on the shoulder of his Lord. It’s especially heart-rending, because we know: soon he will be taken away.  

On Maundy Thursday there’s a customary loud noise, or “strepitus,” at the end of the service, when the lights go out and the sanctuary descends to darkness and silence. Some churches make this sound by banging doors or iron gates, or by dramatically slamming a Bible shut. What sadness, to imagine the Word closed off to us forever. I’ve gotten used to leaning on Scripture, especially these days in Morning Prayer when we turn to the Psalter. The Psalms are filled with the range of human emotions. They bind us together as God’s people, even with those from whom we are physically or temporally estranged. I’ve never fully appreciated that the great Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd”) follows directly after the Psalm Jesus cries out in agony on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

The reason Paul wrote to the Romans, indeed his motivation to do everything he did, was the transformative moment of his binding to the risen Jesus that he experienced on the Road to Damascus. So let’s turn to him again briefly as we continue in Romans, Chapter 11 (NIV). 

Paul puts it plainly in verse 1: “I ask then, did God reject his people?” And then verse 21: “…for if God did not spare the natural branches he will not spare you either.” It’s Paul’s way of addressing both Jews and Gentiles, but what does it mean for our lives now? I keep hearing a harsh, judgment-delivering God, which during these times I feel very keenly is deserved. We have erred and strayed from his ways like lost sheep. But as Paul knows—and we as fellow Christians know it too—this is only a temporary death sentence, which will be commuted once we repent and hold fast to the risen Lord. 

 “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” (v. 32).  Mercy, in that hardened hearts can be softened again, enough to receive the grace Paul insists on. It’s very hard to hear the hymn “Amazing Grace” without weeping, maybe you feel the same way. I sat with a friend in the pew a few years ago and we just cried together when that hymn began. It binds me to her, and to all of God’s family, in a way beyond saying a polite hello in the grocery store, you know? But even those polite hellos might be transformed into something deeper one day when we are able to venture out again. After everything is stripped away there is so much more room for the transcendent to come breaking in.