Today, we find ourselves at the end of words. Today, God says No to everything that separates us from him, but only because God also says Yes to everything that reconciles us to him. This is something we can’t do for ourselves, regardless of how much we wish we could. As Karl Barth writes, “That God has intervened in person is the Good News of Good Friday. What he has done, He has done without us. He has done it entirely in his Word which became flesh.” He has done it once for all. In him, the world is converted to God. In him, we are made friends of God. In him, the covenant is renewed and restored. In him, in Jesus, God is for us, irreversibly and absolutely.

As we walk to the foot of the cross, we find that we’re not alone there. Near the end of Saint John’s Passion narrative, we hear what seems to be an odd interruption to the flow of the story: “Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

Far from being an insignificant detail, this is a crucial part of what happens at the Cross. The faith that we find at the foot of the Cross brings us together, where Christ gives us to each other as mothers and sons and brothers and sisters. On a God-forsaken hill outside the city gates, in a place where it might seem that all hope is gone, we are given a family that we didn’t know we had and never expected to find. Three days later, when we walk with broken hearts to the tomb, we will find out the extent to which we’ve been given much more.