Tell Him, "My Hands Are Empty"
Good Friday is the place where we should return, again and again, so as to depend only on God, letting all knowledge and all stories go. This is the place and the state that invites God to act, to intervene in our lives. Good Friday is the best time for this meeting in history which shows God as an acting, active God.
...Jesus is resurrected, yes, but Jesus is also still on the cross. And if I want to be with Him, I have to go where He is. To arrive at a Good Friday is a gift from God, an invitation from God to re-begin my life with Him. It’s a big gift from God if I realize that I have to re-begin my life. God is so rich that He doesn’t permit us to use blessings from the past. He wants to share with us blessings from the present. His presence is out of time, which means it is a continuous presence. He overcomes time in this way. And even those experiences of past blessing are nothing when you are in a new trouble. It doesn't help. You have to tell God, these past experiences are not tools in my hand. My hands are empty again and again and again. Why doesn't God speak to us through the Bible? Because we know everything and our hands are not empty. We cannot listen to His voice because between Him and me there is a Bible passage. My hands have to be empty. To say to God at the beginning of the day, I will open the Bible and I want to be taught by You, not by my knowledge about the Bible. ...
You know, the history of European theatre begins with the empty tomb. The first theatrical representations used the liturgy as a starting point. Or more precisely, the visiting of the empty tomb. In these early plays, the Marys are going to the tomb in order to meet the dead Jesus and they are asking the angels where the dead body is. And we, we too cannot find the resurrected body so we are always looking for a dead body, returning to the tomb. This is our general condition, to search for dead bodies.
Because we have to go back to the beginning. Always re-beginning. Where is the Messiah? What happened? John and Peter run to Jesus' tomb in their desperation. They don't know what they will find there. And John himself tells us that when they entered the tomb, the scriptures were resurrected. Had they not understood anything of the scriptures before this? But they had to throw out all of their previous understandings and re-begin.
[AV, 2005]
...Jesus is resurrected, yes, but Jesus is also still on the cross. And if I want to be with Him, I have to go where He is. To arrive at a Good Friday is a gift from God, an invitation from God to re-begin my life with Him. It’s a big gift from God if I realize that I have to re-begin my life. God is so rich that He doesn’t permit us to use blessings from the past. He wants to share with us blessings from the present. His presence is out of time, which means it is a continuous presence. He overcomes time in this way. And even those experiences of past blessing are nothing when you are in a new trouble. It doesn't help. You have to tell God, these past experiences are not tools in my hand. My hands are empty again and again and again. Why doesn't God speak to us through the Bible? Because we know everything and our hands are not empty. We cannot listen to His voice because between Him and me there is a Bible passage. My hands have to be empty. To say to God at the beginning of the day, I will open the Bible and I want to be taught by You, not by my knowledge about the Bible. ...
You know, the history of European theatre begins with the empty tomb. The first theatrical representations used the liturgy as a starting point. Or more precisely, the visiting of the empty tomb. In these early plays, the Marys are going to the tomb in order to meet the dead Jesus and they are asking the angels where the dead body is. And we, we too cannot find the resurrected body so we are always looking for a dead body, returning to the tomb. This is our general condition, to search for dead bodies.
Because we have to go back to the beginning. Always re-beginning. Where is the Messiah? What happened? John and Peter run to Jesus' tomb in their desperation. They don't know what they will find there. And John himself tells us that when they entered the tomb, the scriptures were resurrected. Had they not understood anything of the scriptures before this? But they had to throw out all of their previous understandings and re-begin.
[AV, 2005]
posted by CS at 6:24 PM
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