Are You Asleep? Part 2

“Are you asleep?”

These words that Jesus spoke to Peter and the disciples last night take on even more meaning today as we stand together at the foot of the cross.

It is not easy to confront Jesus’ pain and suffering. We might be tempted to “hide our faces” as the prophet Isaiah phrases it, or to close our eyes; to sleep rather than to be awake to the scene before us. How much easier it would be to pretend Good Friday never happened and focus only on the exaltation of Easter.

But, you cannot have Easter without Good Friday. You cannot have resurrection without first going through death. And if we choose to close our eyes to the events of today, we will miss God’s most profound display of love for us.

This is a day of conflicting emotions, not to mention paradox. It is here on Golgotha that hatred and love collide, bringing God’s amazing love for us into sharp focus. It is here on Golgotha that what looks like a tragic defeat is actually a cosmic victory. It is here on Golgotha that God shows complete solidarity with us.

God is found in all things, especially in those things that are hard to look at, such as the painful and the tragic, such as crucifixion. On Golgotha God is in our midst, on the cross, and it is on the cross that Jesus stretches out his arms to gather all people to himself.

What do we see when we look at the cross? We see an instrument of death, certainly; but we can also look at the cross and see an instrument of transformation. Here we see the message of salvation: the vertical beam a symbol of our reconciliation with God, and the horizontal beam symbolizing our reconciliation with one another. And we see Jesus holding all of this together.

Difficult as it may be, we have to be awake to truly experience the blessing of Good Friday. If we don’t open our eyes we might miss the depth of God’s love and salvation.

As scripture says, now is the time for us to wake from sleep. Now is the time to gaze upon the cross, to enter fully into the passion experience.

Are we awake or are we asleep?