Icon of the Crucifixion, 16th Century, by Theophanes the Cretan (Stavronikita Monastery, Mount Athos) public domain
Frodo and Sam. God help me, I can’t get this Lord of the Rings moment out of my Good Friday heart, so apologies if you’ve never before been with Middle Earth’s best friends after they’ve completed their world-saving task and collapse, exhausted and spent, on the side of (really really bad evil) Mount Doom as the world explodes around them in cataclysm. I cry every time I read or watch Frodo tell Sam, “For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.’ “ Dear Church, let us be together today, here, at the end of all things. Our Quest is also achieved. No other moment, no other story, no other feeling is more significant than this one for my life and our life together. Jesus’ salvific death destroys the natural world’s endless cycles, history’s habitual narratives so tired and so worn. No other moment reveals greater love anywhere than this moment. Words fail me, and well they should. Like my heroic Hobbits, today needs no commentary, just solidarity in slumping exhaustedly together to watch the world we know collapse around us while Jesus loves it into new life. A wise theologian said, “What He did not assume, He could not redeem,” and so Jesus must die as viscerally a physical death as we all will to love us this much. And so He does. For 31 years I have been glad to be together with you on this day, here at the end of all old things. No matter where you are today, in God’s family we are side by side.