The Thing You Cannot Undo

Good Friday

You know the thing you cannot undo.
You did not come here today without it.

There is a charcoal fire in the courtyard. It is cold, and you are standing at it, warming your hands, keeping your distance from the door. Close enough to see what is happening. Far enough to stay out of it.

Someone looks at you across the fire.
You are not one of his disciples, are you?

And something in you goes quiet.

I have said versions of it my whole life. Not in a courtyard. Not with a rooster waiting. But when I saw what it would cost and chose the easier thing. When I kept my distance. When I stopped going to the places where he might find me.

I do not know him.
I do not know him.
I am not one of them.

And then the rooster.
And then the silence.

You are standing in the cold with the words still on your lips, and you cannot take them back.

This is where you are when they lead him out.
Not at the foot of the cross.
Not with the ones who stayed.
Here. At the fire. In the cold. In the thing you cannot undo.

And he goes.
For you.
Knowing what you just said.
Knowing what you will say again.
Knowing what you carried here today.
Knowing what you have never told anyone.
Knowing everything you are not and may never be.

He goes anyway.
All the way to the cross.
All the way to the end.

And then one word.

Tetelestai.

He bows his head and gives up his spirit.

Not after the stone is rolled away.
Here.
In the dark.
While he is still on the cross.

It crosses the dark.
It finds you at the fire, in the middle of the thing you cannot undo.

Not after you have made it right.
Not after you have wept enough.
Not after you have become someone better.

Here.
While the guilt is still loud.
While the grief is still heavy.
While the words are still hanging in the air.

He was finishing that.
On the cross.
In the dark.
Before you could see it.
Before you could help it.
Before you even turned around.

Tetelestai.
It is finished.

“The Denial of Saint Peter,” Rembrandt, 1660.

These midweek devotionals aren’t sermons. They’re meant to complement the Sunday homily. I’ll share the sermon below after it’s preached: