Hope in A Weary Throat

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.” So sings the artist, Florence Welch; fitting words for us today.

After betrayal, wrongful conviction, and torture, Jesus takes his final breath and cries out in pain: the temple curtain—so the story goes—is torn in two, and the sky above darkens… There’s no denying that this is a bleak moment, to say the least.

A few years ago, while performing, Florence Welch miscarried on stage. And later, after the internal bleeding was controlled, it was determined her pregnancy was ectopic—nearly taking her life, too. In a recent interview she reflected, “The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death.”

So often, this delicate balancing act between life and death can be such a profoundly confusing, dissonant thing to wrap ourselves around. If we’re honest, life is full of these moments that go beyond the grasp of comprehension. Something of the same exists in the paradoxical "goodness" of this Friday. 

I imagine the disciples might resonate with Welch's poignant words.

After watching Jesus mend broken hearts and heal brutalized spirits, they come ever-so-gradually to see an image of what it is to be fully alive—to delight in life, to honor it as a gift, to love it as intended.  

But in drawing close to the very source of Life incarnate, they eventually also come face to face with the reality of death, and of death-dealing powers. The closer they get to Life, the greater their proximity to pain. And so it is for those who would follow the way of the cross…

Friends, I don’t know what draws you to this Good Friday story this afternoon. It might be as straightforward as faithfully observing an important moment in the Church's liturgical life. Or maybe the entry point is the reality of something similarly troubling or momentous happening in your own life. And perhaps you enter into it burdened by the weight of our shared life together. For as the Reverend Osagyefo Sekou puts it, “It's Good Friday in America.”

“...but Easter's coming,” he also adds—empathically but somberly. Because one ought not be too quick to proclaim the promises of resurrection while the moment of crucifixion is ongoing.

This is precisely the place where living as Easter people in a Good Friday world begins. It is not to diminish or dismiss suffering; to band-aid over pain with platitudes. Instead, it is first to behold.

And then, after bearing witness at the cross and at the grave, to lift a victory song by willingly entering into the beauty and terror of this life: both that of our own and of our neighbor’s. 

Easter living under Good Friday’s shadow may be a meager song in a weary throat, to borrow the words of Pauli Murray, but where else would hope begin but in a weary throat? 

It’s always darkest before the dawn.

Amen