Good Friday reflection

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As Jesus walks or stumbles toward his death, he encounters the women. In Luke they are called "daughters of Jerusalem", nothing more. They lament the crime that is coming to pass and that they cannot stop. They are powerless. In the way the world measures power they have none at all. And Luke doesn't even tell us their names. It is amazing how many women in the Bible don't even have names. The Syro-Phoenician woman. The widow with the mite. The widow with the judge. They have no names yet we know intensely who they are.

Here at this moment in time you almost feel the Gospel writers are saying: Look how low Jesus has now fallen. All the men have fled. There are only women.

Only?

Only women? If the women in the Bible are only women, if they have no worldly power, why do they strike us, strike me, as of an awesome power? What is power anyway?

On Good Friday all power seems to be veiled and put away. It's true that some toy soldiers are moving forward to inflict terrible pain, a murder, but the soldiers and officials don't feel powerful. They are mechanical, as empty as machines. Evil has no freedom of movement, it is just a stereotype.

For us the power of Friday is in the figure moving to his cross. And it is surely in those women. Because they are there. They have shown up, they are present, they witness. They are with Jesus. They don't need titles and sometimes not even names to be fairly the most powerful people on the planet. How could that be? What is the power? It is not a power that can be cashed in or used. If you are Jesus's closest, witness, that's something you can't trade in for something more valuable. Nothing is more valuable than that.

These women are at the center. I want to stand next to them. At least I say that now but had I lived in their time there's a good chance that I would have scorned them as the other men were doing. Let's face it. there's a good chance I would have scorned Jesus too. Within my historical moment I am a coward and a conformist too. Anyway you have to take a contemplative distance to understand the deep worth of something that you take for granted when you just live with it day by day.

Gazing at these amazing women I can't help thinking of my mother. She was like your mother: a totally unique and powerful being who hid like so many women of the 50s and 60s inside a cloak of anonymity. In a way she didn't expect people to notice her. When she did something she certainly didn't expect it to be acknowledged or rewarded. When I was a suicidal teenager she saved my life, I think more than once. Well, isn't that what women just did? She was a life-giver and a life-saver. Hey, no awards were going to be passed out for that. Aren't life-givers pretty common?

But now she's dead and very few people on earth even know her name. And I would give just about anything to be able to stand next to her now.

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