humiliation

Tim Brauhn 2-08-2017

Refugees threaten to reduce us to a holy nothing. In so doing, they free us from our own selfish pursuits. And that is scary.

Joseph Bathanti 2-11-2013

Station #10, from the Norwalk Stations of the Cross. Oil on wood panel by Gwyneth Leech (2005)

Hemorrhaging from the concertina
crown, brass knuckles, scourging, cigarette burns,
lurching the last meter of Golgotha
where He must dangle three hours in urns
of japing ether, He drops His bloody tree.
Executioners rip His clothes away,
cut cards for His keepsake convict jersey.

Cathleen Falsani 9-14-2011
[caption id="attachment_33194" align="alignright" width="232" caption="Roger Ebert (Photo courtesy of Mr. Ebert)"][/caption]
Walter Brueggemann 4-22-2011

In Christian confession, Good Friday is the day of loss and defeat; Sunday is the day of recovery and victory. Friday and Sunday summarize the drama of the gospel that continues to be re-performed, always again, in the life of faith. In the long gospel reading of the lectionary for this week (Matthew 27:11-54), we hear the Friday element of that drama: the moment when Jesus cries out to God in abandonment (Matthew 27: 46). This reading does not carry us, for this day, toward the Sunday victory, except for the anticipatory assertion of the Roman soldier who recognized that Jesus is the power of God for new life in the world (verse 54). Given that anticipation, the reading invites the church to walk into the deep loss in hope of walking into the new life that will come at the end of the drama.

He has been working since he was a teenager. He graduated from high school, went to college, graduated, got a good job with a good company, married, had children, and bought a house.
Nadia Bolz-Weber 9-16-2010

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then, there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.