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Friends,
I write this on the evening of Good Friday following the close of what can only be described as a very sombre Good Friday Service where we reflected once more on the crucifixion of Christ, in a dimmed church, and completed our Holy Week Reflections on 'The things Jesus carried to the cross.'
As I sat down to write my journal and reflect on the service - I found my thoughts constantly returning to the cross of Christ, to the hymn God Weeps, which we had used tonight for our visual reflection and of something I had read just that morning in my 'Daily Readings for Lent and Easter' for Good Friday.
It was these words of George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, he said this:
". . . I simply argue that the Cross be raised again at the centre of the market place as well as on the steeple of the Church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek. . . At the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.
"Because that is where he died. And that is what he died about. . ."
In the words of that hymn God weeps, and will continue to weep until we change the way we love, God bleeds and will continue to bleed until we change the way we win, God cries and will continue to cry until we change the way we care and God waits and will continue to wait until we understand Christ and what he did for us.
God is waiting for us to take up our cross - to make Christ the centre of our lives.
But, God is also waiting for us to take that cross beyond the doors of our churches into the 'market places' of our communities, onto the 'rubbish heaps' of our communities, to the places where Jesus would have gone - those places when~ 'cynics talk smut, thieves curse and soldiers gamble'.
We need to be willing to take up our cross and proclaim the cross of Christ to the broken of our community - for it is only through that cross and the Good News of it that broken people can find healing and hope.
However, we must be willing to bear it to them as Christ bore it for us.
Blessings
Caryl
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