Well Begun

This morning as I was bicycling along the three-mile stretch of imagined highway that constitutes my morning exercycle routine, I realized that the “it is finished” sermon I was trying to force out for tomorrow wasn’t going to fly, but I had what I hope turns out to be a better idea. It involves the extent to which our formalizing Good Friday enmeshes us in an antinomy of penitence, to which grace is the only answer.

We’ll see how it turns out, but I desperately want to avoid both tedious, disingenuous self-flagellation and minatory scolding, the kind of “ you bettermake yourselves appropriately miserable ’cos this is Good Friday” shtick that gets so tiresome and amounts to liturgical-emotional blackmail. Having said that, I’m sure to stumble into both pitfalls.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *