Take the Risk
Written by Abby Braun on Good Friday
“ My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.” –Mark 14:34
I didn’t answer the first time the phone rang. It was 11:00 p.m. on a weeknight and I was getting ready for bed, so I let my friend Sara’s call go to voice mail. When she called again two minutes later, I knew it was important so I picked up. Sara had just learned that her dad, who was in the middle of what was supposed to be a relatively minor heart surgery, was probably going to die before we saw the sun rise again. She called to ask for my prayers and also to ask for something more tangible of me. Would I travel home to Philadelphia with her (we were both living in St. Louis at the time) and spend the week with her and her family as they walked the difficult road of burying her dad?
I often think about that week that I spent with my friend Sara. Sitting in the funeral home for hours while people filed through to pay their respects and say goodbyes. Standing in the cemetery on a crisp fall day, holding my friend’s hand. Lots of tears and laughter and meals and stories shared. It was a week of profound grace for me. Sara asked me to go with her because my own father died when I was in high school, so she knew I understood something about what her heart needed without having to say anything.
Certainly that was part of the grace of that week for me, that I was able to offer love and my simple presence in a way that was helpful to her and her family, because I had been there. But the other grace – the one that has stayed with me even more – was the fact that my friend took the risk to invite me into one of the most sacred, most painful, most vulnerable moments of her life. It was an act of courage on her part, to ask so much of me. And in the end, that act of courage and vulnerability was remarkably transformative for us both: our lives and our friendship were blessed and enriched beyond measure because of it.
That week is on my mind in a particular way as we keep watch this Good Friday and walk with Jesus through his own suffering, death, and burial. I have often been inspired by the witness of the disciples who stay with Jesus to the bitter end, when all hope seems lost. But as I heard the Passion story last Sunday, with ears fresh from having fumbled through another Lent, what hit my heart most was the image of Jesus in the garden, admitting to his friends that he is sad and afraid, asking them to stay with him. How vulnerable he must have been, admitting this to the ones he had been leading, asking them to give what he knew they could not give. And yet that did not stop him from taking the risk to be fully human and to share his whole self.
All of this leaves me asking myself the question, am I willing to be like Jesus and my friend Sara, to take that same risk, to share my whole self and invite others into my own darkest hours? Am I willing to walk the long road with Jesus, and also to ask him to walk my long road with me? After all, that’s the only way we get to the resurrection. Now is the time, right?
Questions for Reflection:
When have you been invited into a vulnerable place in someone else’s life? How did this experience transform you?
What are the dark places in your own life and your own heart right now? Ask Jesus to enter into those places with you.
***********************
Abby Braun
Abby has served as a campus minister at St. Mary’s since 2012. After studying theology at the University of Notre Dame (BA ’05) and Pastoral Ministry at the University of Dayton (MA ’08), Abby spent four years as a Campus Minister at Saint Louis University where she met her husband, Bob. She is especially grateful to be a part of a Jesuit Parish that serves a University community. Abby works part-time at St. Mary’s and spends the rest of her days at home/toddling around Ann Arbor with her one-year-old daughter, Eleanor.
Email: aabraun@umich.edu