April 18, 2025 Reflection

Reflection:

Luke gives us a particular vision of Good Friday – a Jesus who forgives even as he is dying, who meets the criminal beside him with mercy, and who, in his final breath, trusts in God.

It’s a story for our time: when mercy is in short supply, when enemies are dehumanized, when leaders like Pilate wash their hands and pass the blame.

Scripture Reading Luke 23:1–25

Reflection

The crowd shouted then – and the crowds still shout now. Back then it was “Crucify him!” Today it’s “Lock them up,” “Send them back,” “Silence her,” “Fake news.”
It’s the cry of fear dressed up as justice. The cry of power desperate to maintain control.

In our world today, voices of truth are drowned out by algorithms, conspiracy, and echo chambers.
Politicians rally support not with wisdom or compassion, but by fueling fear and division.
We’ve seen how this corrodes trust – how it tears through communities, churches, schools, and families.
People are led to resist change, not through thoughtful conviction, but through fear-laced messaging and the lies they’ve come to believe.

And now, in this very Holy Week – when we remember a man unjustly accused and publicly condemned – we find ourselves walking past advanced polling stations set up in churches and schools.
We are casting votes in sacred spaces, deciding the future in buildings meant for prayer, reflection, and learning.
What will we carry into those spaces?
Will we bring fear – or hope?
Self-preservation – or solidarity?
Control – or compassion?

Jesus – Jesus stood silent before the crowd. Not because he was powerless.
But because he refused to meet hate with hate.
He resisted violence with love. He accepted the cost of truth.

Acceptance doesn’t mean passivity – it means surrendering to a deeper purpose.
Resistance doesn’t always mean fighting back – it can mean standing firm in compassion.

Today, will we accept the way of Jesus?
Will we resist the crowd’s cry when it goes against love?
Will we pause in this moment – this Holy Week, and ask what kingdom we’re truly choosing?

Will we stand still, as Jesus did,
not in silence born of fear,
but in the strength of a love that refuses to play the game of empire?

Let us sit in that silence now. Not to escape the world, but to see it more clearly through the eyes of the one who still bears its wounds.

Scripture Reading Luke 23:26–43

Reflection

It wasn’t the priests, the soldiers, or the politicians who recognized Jesus.
It was a dying man – a criminal – someone pushed to the margins.
Someone who knew the cost of resistance and longed for mercy.
“Remember me,” he said.
And Jesus, even in agony, even under the mocking sign that read “King of the Jews,”
offered him paradise.

The kingdom of God breaks in at the place of suffering.
Not in grand halls of power, but at the foot of a cross.
Not in the safety of certainty, but in the trembling hope of the forsaken.

Today, in a world saturated with noise, division, and distraction –
who do we fail to see?
Whose voices are we trained to ignore?
Who do we still crucify through silence, complicity, or fear?

We see systems that still punish the poor for being poor,
nations that build walls instead of bridges,
and leaders who sacrifice truth for control.
We witness the continued dehumanization of Indigenous peoples,
the criminalization of protest, the exploitation of the earth.
We watch as vulnerability is weaponized and power remains unchecked.
And yet – into this world, the cross still speaks.

Jesus didn’t resist the cross – but he resisted everything it stood for:
the cruelty of empire, the cowardice of leaders, the violence of injustice.
He accepted love’s path – and resisted everything that denied love’s truth.

This moment on the cross reminds us:
Mercy belongs to the rejected.
Paradise belongs to the hopeful.
And God’s kingdom cannot be stopped – not by death, not by empire, not by fear.

So we linger here, not to glorify the pain,
but to witness the power of love that refuses to look away.
To be changed by a God who suffers with us, and for us –
so that no one is ever forgotten, and no sorrow is ever wasted.

Reflection: Invitation to the Cross

The cross is a contradiction. A place of death, yes. But also, strangely, a place of invitation.

Come, not to understand it all, but simply to be near, to lay down the burdens of your heart, to remember the One who chose love all the way to the end.

If you wish, I invite you to come to the foot of the cross, that your heart might be opened and widened by what you experience here. If you would like you can take a stone from the basket and put it at the base of the cross as a symbol of laying down your burdens. 

Scripture Reading Luke 23:44–49

Prayer

God of deep love and open arms,
You were broken on the cross,
and still you challenge the ways we hurt each other.
In a world where cruelty is normalized,
where profit is prioritized over people,
where truth is manipulated and compassion is called weakness
your cross still speaks.

In a time when some resist truth and others long to be accepted,
when too many are pushed to the margins,
when systems wound instead of heal,
hold us.
Forgive us.
And never let us go.

You, both wounded and strong,
stand with the grieving and the cast aside.
You know the silence of betrayal,
the sting of injustice,
the weight of fear.

And yet
you show us how to walk from death into life,
from despair into courage,
from fear into hope,
from self-protection into solidarity.

As we gather in this Holy Week,
with election signs on our streets and polling stations in our sanctuaries,
remind us of the choices that shape the world we live in.
May we follow not the noise of the crowd,
but the quiet strength of your love.

Through Jesus, the Crucified,
who still walks with the wounded,
and still calls us into life. Amen.

Scripture Reading – Luke 23:50–56