Br. Luke Ditewig

Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

“Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?”[1]

The Good Shepherd lay down his life for the sheep, allowing arrest to final breath. “Wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

As his followers fought back, Jesus denounced violence and retribution. “Put away your sword.” Jesus spoke with authority not coercion or oppression. “My kingdom is not from this world. . . . Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Jesus spoke tenderly to his dearest giving them to each other: “here is your son . . . here is your mother.”

“Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?”

Surrendering while sovereign, Jesus announced: “It is finished.” Found already dead, his side was pierced. The crucified, cold, corpse wrapped and laid in a tomb. God wept. God and Spirit mourned Jesus’ suffering and death. Divine communal grief. Trinity broken by death.[2]

“Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?”

Powerful like “a precious fountain,” Love reaches death, reaches all.[3] Mac Loftin wrote: “Even this is not beyond the reach of God’s love. Love reaches even here, even to the nothingness of a corpse.”[4]

Where all seems lost, our hope is found. Against violence, in community, the Good Shepherd saves. All are found and held. Love and sorrow shared. “Near the cross” let us “watch and wait” with God who grieves with us, where such love and sorrow meet.

[1] Isaac Watts (1674-1748), “When I survey the wondrous cross.”

[2] Mac Loftin, In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance (Orbis Books, 2025), 67-69.

[3] Fanny Crosby (1869), “Near the cross.”

[4] Loftin, Twilight, 69.