Good Friday, dense in paradox, deserves much
better than the dour metonymy “God sent his only
son to die for me”, as though his execution were
the goal and total of his living; I read it as his
Passion, not his blood, availed. Gethsemane
began at his conceiving; and deepened with each
onslaught successfully withstood until he made
a rough-hewn cross the triumph of his adamantine
faith and hallmark for his own; his Passion even then
not yet complete; until beyond Hell’s harrowing
he left the stone-cold tomb and warmed the chill
disciples into his new life to read him as God’s
all-sufficing gift, as Parable enfleshed; who did not
come to die, but so to live that I may live in him.
© The Revd James M McPherson
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