not so good friday
I hate that we still call it good.
I only recently read Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker's “For God So Loved the World?” (in Violence Against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook. Ed. Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune. New York: Continuum, 1995, 36–59) which discloses the violence we sing, say and believe in our churches.
I read rapidly, on the train back and forth, with horror and gratefulness, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker's Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Boston: Beacon, 2001.
This bad friday six years ago, I spoke words like this:
You can continue reading my reflection here.
I only recently read Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker's “For God So Loved the World?” (in Violence Against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook. Ed. Carol J. Adams and Marie M. Fortune. New York: Continuum, 1995, 36–59) which discloses the violence we sing, say and believe in our churches.
I read rapidly, on the train back and forth, with horror and gratefulness, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker's Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Boston: Beacon, 2001.
This bad friday six years ago, I spoke words like this:
Jesus,
who at my need
his life did spend
If we desire to be like Christ, must we also suffer like him? Must we go cheerfully to suffering? Over time, much of the Christian community has interpreted the love displayed on the cross as the only way love can be revealed. We make suffering the means of loving. Believing that we are becoming more like Christ, we bear much in patient silence.
But Jesus’ suffering does not save us.
No one is saved through suffering. Christ offers us not suffering but life in all its fullness. And it is this, our commitment to life, that will cost us.
You can continue reading my reflection here.
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