Good Friday in the Hood

Today is a holiday, the streets are full. The sun shines. Twenty of us, ranging in age from 74 to two months, stand in line outside the mission, waiting for a meal with another 70 of our friends and neighbors. When the doors open we tumble in with the rest jockeying for seats where there is a good ratio of kids to adults, and we tuck in to a beautifully prepared "easter" dinner despite the fact that today is good Friday. But volunteers don't come down to serve meals on Easter Sunday, so it is now or never for the ham and scalloped potatoes, and no one is complaining.

After the meal Beth stands and invites anyone who would like to join us for a walk through the neighborhood, to remember the path that Jesus walked this day many years ago. Some leave, some stay and we walk familiar paths through our neighborhood. The path we walk to accompany a friend to court, familiar and yet more profound as remember Jesus' experience of a kangaroo court where nothing he said would make a difference in the outcome, so he says nothing. We too have sat silent before judges, powerless.

Over and over familiar spaces transformed by the memory that the One who loves us spent his final hours, on the wrong side of town, on the wrong side of the law. Forgotten, beaten, another dead body. Just like us. But this Friday we call good. A Friday with the power to transform every day since.