Above the desk in my office hangs a painting. It was a painting done just for me. I "commissioned" my sister to make it for me. So, it holds sentimental value in more ways than one.
It's a simple painting. Silhouettes of travelers along their journey, backlit by a sunset of many colors. They walk in a single file line across rolling hills, perhaps not knowing their final destination. Many of you have probably seen that painting. And if you have, or even if you haven't, you probably recognize many of the travelers. There's a wizard, a dwarf, an elf, two men, three hobbits and a horse. They make up a fellowship, the Fellowship of the Ring. Yes, it is Gandalf, Frodo, and company along their path recounted in the Lord of the Rings.
But in my painting, there's a quote hovering above them. It is a quote from Tolkien, and from an elf. As the band travels through Lothlorien, a almost pure and magical place, this elf makes an observation. Many bits and pieces of news have traveled with the fellowship, and news has arrived from elsewhere in Middle Earth about the stirrings of a shadow, and of evil growing in the land. And so the elf makes this observation:
"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."
As I looked at that painting last night after our Maundy Thursday service, I could not help but notice how true and how fitting this quote is to the Good Friday story. As we go through this, the darkest of days for the church, we see and feel and experience how tangled and mangled love becomes connected to grief. Jesus knew his world, and his life, were in peril and that he was going to the darkest of places. Yet, he went forward. His love grew greater.
As we witness this Good Friday, and as we find ultimate grief clinging to a cross, we find it mingled with love. The two are
inseparable on this day. And though our grief is real, it is only the love that grows greater. This love that understands grief, that has felt it, knows that grief is not the end. As grief grows into doubt on Saturday, this love knows that Sunday is coming.
On this Good Friday, mingled with grief, Love grows the greater.
