On this morning, 2000 years ago, I see Jesus' friends waking up with eyes red from tears, hearts raw, souls anguished. Their hopes lay dead and buried with Jesus in a borrowed tomb. It was dark outside, for the light had gone out of their world. He was dead, the promise ended, the present eviscerated, the future still-born. The Messiah was no more.

My childhood questions continue to haunt me on Good Friday. Memories of taunting the priest of my adolescence with "What is so good about Good Friday?" remain on some level legitimate. Now as an adult, and as Priest, the numbers of people who do show up for the Good Friday liturgy catches me off guard. It is a time of worship punctuated by graphic accounts of betrayal, pain and alienation, and by the chanting of a psalm of lament that reminds each of us that we have, at one time or another, probably been despised.

Just as we see Jesus on a colt, being joyously hailed as a king, being castigated and killed and yet "commending his spirit" to God at the end, with sure confidence of God's love, so we too, we the Body of Christ alive in the world, we here at St. Thomas' Parish are living into change, honoring our past, keeping our eyes on an uncertain, perhaps tumultuous future, yet we can have confidence of a joyous future together, celebrating Christ's victory over suffering and death.

In this morning's Gospel story, Martha is serving at table. Lazarus is the minor celebrity that comes with overcoming death and getting to tell about it during dinner. The focus abruptly shifts to Mary, and her prophetic action of anointing Jesus: "Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair." The impact of her action is not readily apparent, since nard is one of those Biblical words - like cubits, and talents, and myrrh - that doesn't connote anything particular to most of us anymore.