Lenten Meditations 2007 - #6: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

The Death of God, the Death of Dreams

Venue: The Bakers' Place

The Gospels tell us that the only followers of Jesus to actually stand before the cross were the disciple John and the women who had followed and supported him all along. They stood at a distance. What they witnessed was more than a man being tortured to death. As Jesus pushed up again and again on the nails that had been driven through his feet gasping for enough air, these witnesses were seeing the death of their dreams. As they stood before the cross and watched Jesus die they were painfully aware that if had all been for nothing. Good Friday does not only mean the death of Jesus, it is also the death of all hope, the death of ‘God with us,’ the death of God. It was a living, dying lament. The miracle of the cross is that there was no miracle.¹