The Final Word

Last night’s Holy Thursday service included a tradition that my church has (fairly recently) instituted, the washing of the feet. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at that long-ago Passover supper, assuming the role of the lowliest servant, modeling the behavior he asked his followers to share: to serve others.
If only it were as easy as joining the queue to wash and be washed. But it’s increasingly difficult to be a good person, to understand and not judge, to give others a second, third or even fourth chance. We don’t live in easy times. Of course, first-century Jerusalem was no picnic either.
On Good Friday (and other days, too), I like to re-read one of my favorite Michael Gerson columns. Gerson died in November 2022. I often wish he were still alive and writing. He wasn’t afraid to discuss his faith or his struggles — or to be joyously optimistic when the times called for it.
One of those times was Good Friday. Not that things started off well: ” It would have seemed that every source of order, justice and comfort — politics, institutional religion, the community, friendship — had been discredited,” Gerson wrote. “It was the cynic’s finest hour.”
And then, he wrote, something happened: “The cynics somehow lost control of the narrative.” Even those who believe the body was moved must admit that “faith in the figure Rome executed has far outlived the Roman empire.” For those who believe, Gerson said, Good Friday and Easter legitimize both despair and faith. But most of all, they remind us that God is on the side of those who suffer, the side of those who hope.
“There is a truth and human existence that cannot be contained in a tomb. It is possible to live lightly, even in the face of death — not by becoming hard and strong, but through a confident perseverance. Because cynicism is the failure of patience. Because Good Friday does not have the final word.”
(A holy water font in the Cathedral of Seville in Spain.)