Death and the day after....

Here's a picture of my dad.  He was 26 in this picture...same age as Matt.

Dad died 24 years ago today at the age of 72.  He had been ill for a long time...but still, there is nothing on earth that can compare to the pain of death....the death of someone you love deep in your soul...nothing.  Although that pain has subsided now, I can take myself back to that day and the pain that overtook me.  It's that deep sick, sorrowful anguish that accompanies deep love.  Both together.  Life and death.  A breath away from the other.  Strange isn't it.

But being Good Friday, I think about what it was like for Jesus friends when they saw him hanging there with blood pouring from his lifeless body.  They loved him.  They were now without that love and that friendship.  How they must have cried too. 

And like our family did when dad died, they too gathered to mourn and share their tears and pain.  They most likely ate together too, and recalled the words Jesus said to them the night before as Luke later records the event:

17 Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. 18 For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.”

19 He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me.”

So these days between death and burial, like Jesus' disciples, we gather together as a community to share in that pain, to talk about his life and recall his words to us...like we do with our own loved ones. 

Pain.  Death.  Remembering.