we say hallelujah

Sometimes I don’t know how to be quiet. Maybe that’s surprising, I don’t talk much. But I am noisy, noisy, noisy. I crave solitude, i crave silence, not because I know how to be still (because really, I don’t), but because my mind won’t stop moving, won’t stop thinking and questioning and doubting, and I want to move with it, make more noise.

Have you read Intimations of Immortality? It is a beautiful poem, by William Wordsworth (the name of this blog is, in part, inspired by that poem). I find myself in many of its lines.  But here, here especially:

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized

All of my questions, piled high and towering. My misgivings, carried to him, this gracious God who listens, who hears me. Sometimes he only asks that I be still, that I slow down, let him seep into me, pore by pore, this holy and wild and restorative wind.

Because it is Holy Week. And I nearly forgot.

Because tomorrow he goes to the cross, and holds the entirety of this shattered world in his wounds, and maybe all of my questions can wait. It is time to kneel.

Because this is the story that redeems mankind, this splintered wood upon a splintered back climbing that dusty, cruel hill. I can see him, and I want to reach out and wipe the sweat off his brow, brush the hair from his eyes, tell him that I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that you are carrying my sin, that I have caused this.

Because this postlapsarian world is cracked right down the middle; it keeps me up late into the night and my eyes are red with weeping. But this cross, this crown of thorns, this Son of Man gasping beneath the weight of my sorrow, my darkness and my rebellion--he is the repairer of the breach. He binds up the wounds of this broken, bleeding earth.

Because pain is not without purpose. Because he knew heartbreak and loss, searing pain and stunning brutality, and it all worked for our redemption. We are redeemed.

Because of him, my pain is not without purpose. Because we have all been wounded, because our hearts have been broken, but the cross is before us, it is all paid for, and we possess a lasting hope.

Because of that great and terrible silence, his last breath, creation hushed.

Can you just be still with me? he asks. Can you mourn with me? Mourn for me?

And they wrap his battered body, their hands in his wounds, his blood on their hands, their lips, their tears mingling with the scent of death, of wounded flesh and a savior lost.

Rabbi, where have you gone? You have left us, and we long for your voice to fill the silence.

And this is the tension. This is when we are pulled taut, and we wonder where he has gone. We are straddling two kingdoms, one crumbling, the other rising. It is the fault line, great tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet. May we not fear the breaking, the shfiting, the rising, the falling--he comes, he comes.

And Good Friday is good because it is a promise, a seal, and the victory will be final, complete.  Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.

We kneel before this cross, brutal and bloody and oh Jesus, it hurts to look. Here is pain. Here is darkness. Here is the evil of man on display; we murdered our own God, our own Savior.

But in three days I will raise it up. Even still, I will redeem. Even still, I will love.

And Good Friday is good because we say hallelujah, it is finished, we are loved, he has loved us--right up to the very end.