Good Friday: The Cost of Love

The Crucifixion of Jesus - John 19:16-30

Today, we stand at the cross. 

There are no crowds waving palms. No shouts of celebration.  No easy words to explain what is happening here.

Instead, there is silence. There is sorrow.  And the weight of a love that does not turn away.

Good Friday holds a truth we do not always want to face: love is costly.  Jesus does not avoid the pain of the world. He enters it fully. He takes on its weight, its brokenness, its violence...and does not turn back.

And yet, this is not the end of the story.

Because somehow, in ways we can barely comprehend, this moment of deepest darkness is also the place where life is being formed. The cross is not separate from resurrection. It is part of the path that leads to it.

This is what we are asked to trust: even here, even now, God is at work.

In the places that feel like endings.

In the moments that feel beyond hope.

In the silence that settles over everything.

Life is not gone.  It is being prepared.

So we stand at the cross and we trust - quietly, even if we do not yet understand - that this is not the end of the story.

Crucified Christ, in the shadow of the cross, help me to trust your love. When I cannot see what comes next, hold me in your grace. And remind me that even here, life is being made new. Amen.

^{This piece is offered by Sterling United Methodist Church and was written in collaboration between Rev. Bert Cloud and Sharon Rosenfeld. It is inspired by the book Seven Miracles: Signs of Life in the Gospel of John by Gina Anderson-Cloud, Megan Dietrick, Bill Gray, Daniel Park, Isaiah Park & Lauren Todd}