A Good Friday People

Love in the Age of Corona #6

The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1521

It is finished. The Seven Last Words have been preached. The Candles extinguished. The Host has left the sanctuary and the altar has been stripped.

Jesus is dead. God became a man and walked among us, knowing that we would never tolerate God’s true nature. Knowing that we would murder our Creator before surrendering our own misunderstanding of Creation. God knew. And still God came. And suffered. And died. 

The hands that reached into the mud and sculpted the first human have been nailed to a beam and hung on a post. The breath that spoke the universe into being and filled the lungs of the first man and woman with life has stopped. Murdered by our pride and fear. God is dead.

Yes, Easter is coming. But there can be no Easter without Good Friday. There can be no risen Lord without a God who loved enough to offer, for all time, the model for life and ministry, for service and sacrifice. 

Tonight, God lies dead in a borrowed tomb, wrapped in borrowed cloths, anointed in borrowed aloes and spices. Love died on this night.

Those are horrible thoughts to contemplate, but if we aspire to be an Easter people, we must also be a Good Friday people. If we want to see the empty tomb, our arms have to feel the weight of the corpse as it is lowered from the cross. Our legs must carry it to the tomb. Our hands must wash and wrap it in the darkness. And our backs must lean into the stone and our shoulders roll it over the door. Our memories must wrestle with all we have seen and heard and done... and not done... on Good Friday.

What a holy labor it is to suffer with Christ. Our suffering is our sacrifice. What a blessing it is to be given an opportunity to imitate the heart of God, to lose everything for the sake of God and our neighbors.

Don’t miss Good Friday. The pain doesn’t last forever. But without that pain, Easter will be nothing more than a pageant and a fashion show.

May God bless your sacrifice, and grant you the consolation of hope on this holy night.

Amen