Good
Friday Evening
Living
creatures breathe. This breathing is a gesture of expansion and contraction. It
started with the sea—waves move in and out; tides flow, racing up the shore,
and ebb, pulling away. A plants grows,
expands, blossoms, then its entire life contracts into the seed. Animals
breathe in and out.
In
our own lives we too experience these two basic gestures over time—from moment
to moment in our own breathing; in the tides of our blood stream; in the
growing and declining of the different phases of our lives; and ultimately in
the waxing and waning of life itself.
Our
real selves are gathered from the far reaches of the cosmos. We have breathed
our actual, real selves into our bodies; we have compressed ourselves into the
body until we feel ourselves as occupying a center point. Along with this
compression of ourselves we suffer pain. With every in-breath we draw into our
bodies just a bit; with every exhale we expand a bit. Every night in sleep our
soul-spirits stream out to the stars; at daybreak they rush back into the body.
One day we will finally breathe our
soul-spirits out again fully, so that they can expand to fill God’s heaven.
Christ
started out as the greatest, most expanded being possible. He, the Logos, the
Great Word that spoke all creation into existence, gradually contracted himself
to become human-sized. This extreme form of compression, this final in-breathing
of His spirit was completed on the last day of Jesus’ life. And such an extreme
compression, down into the marrow of the bones, was itself painful in the
extreme. Good Friday afternoon becomes that still point, that moment of quiet
between in- breath and out-breath. His heart’s blood pours into the earth. With
His last words, “Father, into your hands I commend My Spirit”— He exhales,
expires, carrying His consciousness toward the Father.
How
we human beings think about this gesture of expansion and contraction
The
remnant of the pain and suffering we see hanging on the cross after His death, the
body so lovingly taken down by his friends and wrapped in linen and spices,
this remnant hides another invisible process taking place on an unseen level. For,
in expiring, Christ begins the exhalation of his Spirit’s life back out into
the cosmos. His heart’s love begins to expand further, sending His life and
love outward toward all humanity, to the whole earth. He begins his journey of toward
resurrection and ascension,. It was a new beginning, not only for him, but also
for us; for He dies without ending. He ascends while maintaining his rootedness
in the earth. We are all carried in His great heart; our souls are kept alive
in His unceasing life. The earth, in its slow dance through the seasons, breathing
between summer and winter, became His body.
We
have nothing to fear from death, for since Christ, death is permeated with life.
The
poet comments:
And what is to cease
breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and
expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from
the river of silence
shall you indeed sing.
And when you have
reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin
to climb.
And when the earth
shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly
dance.[1]
