Do you see the blood on the faces of the wounded, the blood poured out on the airport floor? In the blood is life, and in that life so fragile is our fundamental human kinship, our mortality. This kinship knows no boundaries of nation or race or faith. We all bleed, and, cut deeply enough, we die. It's as simple as that.
We see the blood; we grieve; and, shaken by fear and anger, we seek blood on blood. Let the enemy bleed, too, and more. In that desire, too, is our common humanity. Blood calls for blood and death for death. It's the way things are in this world. And we hate that way even as we embrace it.
Now, in this most holy of weeks, we look to our faith. What answers are there for those who suffer, and what justice?
Here is what I can offer: the one who bleeds. Jesus was no angelic messenger or ethereal voice from beyond. He walked with and among-with sinners and the good, among enemies and friends-and he was true-true to God's love, true to God's will, true to a way that was just and gracious. And when his Hour came, in his humanity and ours, he bled and died.
This week, we need Good Friday.
The Lord we serve entered fully into human life and human death. The blood of Christ and the blood of victims are indistinguishable. There is absolute kinship, and our God joins the grieving. No, our religion doesn't explain the inexplicable. Rather we have a faith that the one who walked in the way of humanity is also present in our human weakness and even in our bleeding and our dying.
But there is one difference. In Christ's suffering, blood does not call for blood.
It stops here, Christ says. I'll take it, but I won't pay it back. His way is not the world's way.
And, yes, there is still more. There's Easter. Christ who died was raised, and he does not forget those whose suffering he shares. Justice does not die with the victims. The one who in his life sought the least and lost, who in his death embraced mortality, who in his suffering rejected vengeance, in his resurrection rewrites our human destiny.
In his love there is more-a new beginning, a new creation. And in our oh-so-fragile living, his way is the way eternal and true. Like him, we walk with and among our neighbors and, like him, we carry with us compassion and hope.
