Listen
Read
Luke 23: 27-31 nrsv
A great number of the people followed him, and among them were
women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus
turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me,
but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely
coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that
never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to
say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they
do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Look
Observe the visual qualities of the image: line, shape, movement, and
texture. How do the visual elements connect to the scripture text?
What emotions emerge for you as you observe the art?
Reflect
“When I consider the women beating their breasts and wailing for
Jesus, I imagine the reasons I could be doing the same. Jesus doesn’t
ask them to stop wailing; he asks them to redirect their grief, ‘Do not
weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.’ I can imagine
grief upon grief spilling out of these faithful women. Sometimes I
grieve for what is close to me—things that I can see with my own eyes,
tragedy that I can reach out and touch. But Jesus asks the women to
do more than that. He asks them to look beyond the immediate and
tangible sorrow to the greater struggle that is to come: ‘If they do this
when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?’
Sometimes we get stuck in our religious grief for Jesus. We narrow our
focus onto his death; we tuck it neatly into our calendar each Holy Week
and place it on the far end of a faded timeline. But Jesus’ death has
lasting, continual, real world consequences in the here and now. His
death is a state-sanctioned, attempted murder of love and hope. Jesus is
telling the women that their grief will be a journey, and they need to be
prepared. We need to be prepared.”
—Artist Lauren Wright Pittman
Pray
May I grieve, but may I also be prepared to move. Amen.