Stopping Time

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

So begins W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues.” The poem alludes to the old tradition of opening and pausing the sweeping hands of a clock at the moment that someone dies. It is not just a life that has stopped. Time itself seems to stop.

 

Today, Good Friday, time stops. Our tradition tells us that the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross is the pivot of reality. With his death, the fabric of the universe, like the veil of the temple, splits in two. Before, and after.

 

We honor that division in our worship with our services today, which remember Jesus’s three last hours on the cross. They conclude at 3:00 p.m., the moment when our world changed.

 

Many of you, of course, will be unable to be in church. But Jesus’s passion will be with you wherever you are.

 

I encourage you to remember it. At 3:00, pause in your busy life and remember that your life was ransomed. Set an alarm if you need to. Stop at this moment when the world stops. Remember that your whole being is wholly a gift from God.

 

Stop all the clocks. For a single moment, at least, know just how much God has done for you.

 

Yours in Christ,
Anne+