Blog - Good Friday

God said to Moses, “Remove your sandals, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Luke 19:37-38 “As [Jesus] was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’”
Luke 23:21-23 “…[the crowds] kept shouting, ‘Crucify, crucify him!’…[and] they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified…”
Luke 22:33 “And Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!”
Luke 22:57 “Peter denied it, saying ‘Woman, I do not know him.”
Luke 22:58 Peter cried, “Man, I am not one of them!”
Luke 22:60 “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!”
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I didn’t get a Good Friday blog done yesterday.

Today, Good Friday, I have Peter on my mind.

Loneliness.

Take in this poem by Maria Melendez Kelson.

This past week, I celebrated my birthday.

Tuesday, post Holy Week.

I have Reinhold Niebuhr on the mind these days.

This blog will be laced with obscenities.

Below is the text of August 12th’s sermon for Springdale Lutheran.  The texts are below the sermon, and were captured at http://bible.oremus.org.

This blog is a posted version of the sermon I preached this morning at Springdale Lutheran, and in light of the events in Colorado, and in light of the day-to-day lives of so many  suffering sisters and brothers in the world.

Good Friday is a High Holy Day in the Christian tradition, and I would argue is half of a singular event: Cross/Resurrection.

We just returned from two weeks Florida, the children and I.

My daughter Else and I have settled in these last several nights to read Bridge to Terabithia.

After the accident, somebody told me that that best metaphor that they could think for me was that of Holy Saturday.

“Jews and Christians can walk together until Good Friday…”  So says Pinchas Lapide, a remarkable Jewish theologian, in his book, Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarian Doctrine.