Would You Hide or Show Your Face?

Good Friday 2012

A hymn that is often heard today asks the question, “Were you there when they crucified the Lord?” It makes me question what would my actions have been. My first inclination and gut feeling is to say yes I would have been there, maybe even going after and fighting with the soldiers that were taking Him away, but then I could also see myself following in secrecy at a distance maybe even with a disguise.

I would like to think that Joseph, if he were alive, would have been there. Jesus’ Mother, strong as a rock, the true and real stone on which the church is built, was there. She saw that Peter, the rock, was nowhere to be found. It was Mary who witnessed and suffered along with her son and saw that thirst He had to save humanity is finally sated when she hears the words, “It is finished.” His work is done now it’s up to God to raise Him from the dead.

He said that those who are with Him and believe in Him will be born to a new life. It doesn’t matter if they are women of easy virtue as Mary Magdalene, or night disciples like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea, who feared the Jews, who stuck their necks out (showed their face) and took the responsibility to go under the cross to say that they believed in Him.

There were many others who showed their faces that day; some happened to be there by chance, like the ‘good’ thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him and the centurion who was doing his job. The centurion didn’t know what to make of or how to explain the sudden black sky of mid afternoon or the shaking of the earth that probably caused him to stumble as he made his way near the cross. As he looked up at Jesus’ eyes he became convinced that, “This was no carpenter – no peasant – no normal man.”

It was this nameless foreigner who stated as written in Matthew 27:54, “Surely this man was the Son of God.”

Showing their faces also were the disciple whom Jesus loved and Mary, the wife of Clopas along with many other women.

We can still be witnesses to Christ today by showing our face and embracing a lifetime of love for God and love for neighbor whether convenient or inconvenient and to make peace and forgiveness hallmarks for our life.

The life Christ lived qualified Him for the death He died – and the death He died qualifies us for the life we live.