During the Easter Triduum, The Right Reverend Thomas E. Breidenthal, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio stressed in his sermons that the Cross represents God’s relentless love as it encounters human rebellion and resistance.
For many Christians, the Cross is seen as symbolizing the atoning act of Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners.
In the Washing of Feet service on Maundy Thursday, Bishop Breidenthal raised the question: What did Jesus mean when he said to Peter, ‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean…?’ (John 13: 10). His response was that as long as we are in this world our feet will get dirt. We need to be engaged with one another and with society. In doing so our feet get dirty and require washing.
That is God’s love in action: relentless, not giving up, and that is the Cross.
Even when everything seems to be lost, as represented in the stripping of the altar to its barest on Maundy Thursday and finishing up the consecrated communion on Good Friday, we still see God’s relentless and persistent love in the waters of baptism and the new communion on in the Paschal Vigil.
What greater manifestation of God’s love than the empty tomb and the assurance of victory over everything that would hinder us from experiencing it? There is so much energy just seeing everything in the light of God’s love
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