Good Friday is a day of revolution. It is a revolution in which Jesus dies at the hands of oppression, then rises to new life to bring heaven to earth, not only in an afterlife but in the here and now. And Jesus invites us to join him as full, active participants in his saving work of bringing peace, justice, and hope.
Perhaps a challenge at the heart of the Maundy Thursday story to all of us is whether we might be humbler about the sources of evil and clearer about the commandment to love in all our relationships and dealings in this world.
Any week in the news could be Holy Week. Any week in the news we are just as likely to see the dastardly worst of ourselves on display in the larger machinations of our politics and in the crush of public and private cruelties. We must learn to look directly at these things, not to look away, and to find even there in the hurt and meanness, God present in the scrum.
As we more and more see the world around us through the eyes of Jesus, we too are often moved to weep. Our tears are not only signs of our humanity, but are signs of our participation in Jesus’ divinity. The tears we shed join his tears in becoming the seeds of new life.