Good Friday - John 18:1-19:42

The place where we meet God is on fire.

The third holiest site in the world, Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in

Jerusalem, burned on Monday.

At the same hour in Paris, Notre Dame was in flames.

In recent weeks, three historic churches in St. Landry Parish in Louisiana were set

ablaze by an arson now being charged with a hate crime.

This string of burnings of black churches, tied to a white suspect, recalls so many crosses

ablaze in the darkest nights of the American soul.

The burning crosses were a clear message to black skinned children of God from

cowardly children of God hiding in white hoods: We don’t want your kind here.

It’s the same message the original cross sent to God.

On Good Friday, the place where we meet God is on fire.

Except that it’s not a place, it’s a face.

In John’s second chapter, after Jesus purges the temple of religious commerce, he says,

Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.

“This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in

three days?”

But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

The temple, the meeting place between God and humanity, is no longer a

building, it’s a body.

God dangeously trades in bricks and mortar for skin and bones, and God gets burned.

A woman named Kristan Higgins tweeted this week:

Speaking as a Catholic here...please don’t donate to help Notre Dame.