Today is Good Friday.
Why is it “good?” How could it possibly be good?
- In a culture that is ever so quick to get to the product
- In a culture that is ever so quick to avoid suffering and pain and seek ways to medicate ourselves to avoid pain
- In a culture that is ever so quick to jump to the bunnies and eggs
- In a culture that is ever so quick to commercialize, capitalize, and consumerize
- In a culture that is ever so quick to jump to the good news of Easter Sunday and Resurrection
- In a culture that is ever so quick to minimize the extent of Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion
- In a culture that is ever so quick to ‘disneyize’ the events of the brutal death of a man
- In a culture that is ever so quick to grab hold of grace as if we are entitled to it
Today matters. Dark Friday matters. His death matters. So, let’s not be so quick to bypass this day. There’s a reason why in the Christian tradition – this day and service is considdere the longest and darkest day of the year.
Let it be long. Let it be dark. Let it be silent.
While the good news of our beauty are clearly exemplified in the glorious news of the Resurrection…the depths of our darkness and depravity are also exposed in the last days of Jesus’ life and crucifixion.
And once we understand, if even for a glimpse, the depths of our depravity and brokenness, the amazing depth of God’s grace and mercy is that much more understood and experienced. We understand that our broken image can be restored by the Creator of that original beauty.
Thank you Jesus for this day. For Dark Friday. For Holy Friday. For the cross, sacrifice, and atonement.
Thank you God that you have redeemed this day to be good.
Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.Isaiah 53
Filed under: christianity, church, emerging church, faith, Jesus, seattle, dark friday, easter, Good Friday, holy week
I preached on this last night, not being ashamed of my tears, I was virtually shaking when I remembered Jesus’ suffering.
However, one young person sitting in front, left demonstratively. Yes, our cultural influence is strong! But Jesus is also LORD of culture.
I committed when I was on your blog to know nothing but Christ, crucified. And to sit in the tension and the dark, not leaping forward into the light, but letting the darkness settle in.
I was never sure why they call it “Good Friday.”
I thank Jesus for his sacrifice, pain and suffering that day so that someone like me could have life.
Thank you so much for this post. We do need to sit in the darkness of this day. It’ OK to do that. I think, also, that it gives us a greater appreciation of the celebration we have come Easter morning! But for now, yes, let’s just sit and not hurry and not gloss over the heaviness of what Jesus did and suffered and why.
This darkness is made even more meaningful in realizing the debt that had to be paid. Thanks so much for sharing these thoughts.
Was reminded of this passage today, and in your post:
“One of the things our theology most needs is a tightening up on the handling of symbolism. For how many theologians and spiritual writers, for instance, is not Jesus’ self-oblation on a cross simply the exemplar of the ‘holy death’? The category invoked is ‘death as we know it, but made by a holy person the occasion for the ultimate act of surrender to God.’ In that category, Jesus is supreme. The symbolism of death remains unchanged. Whereas in reality the symbolism of death is here broken open. This is the meaning of ‘dying you destroyed our death.’ Our ‘death.’ What we have made death into…
What a fuss we make about death! The way we think about death is the extreme case of the ego’s habit of characterizing a larger reality, of which it is part, by its effect on itself. If we could be observed by some being from outer space who was perfectly integrated into the life process, he would say: ‘These humans regard their re-entry into the life-cycle exclusively as an unfortunate event happening to them. They seem to have some other thing going on for them than life, and they understand death not as a part of the life-process but as the cessation of that other thing…It is very difficult to convey what they mean by ‘death’.” (Sebastian Moore, The Crucified Jesus in No Stranger)
[...] to the collective wisdom of our larger staff, I pulled this video from last week’s Good Friday [...]