Good Friday: Grasping and Remembering

GOOD FRIDAY 4-10-20

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Thursday night began in celebration, with Jesus celebrating the Passover with his twelve disciples. They broke bread and shared a cup of wine. But that celebration was bittersweet with the knowledge that one of Jesus’s own closest friends would betray him and the rest would abandon him in his hour of greatest trials.

As the darkness deepened, Jesus is betrayed, arrested, and taken away to be secretly tried by the religious authorities, who falsely try him and hand him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor. In the meantime, Peter has denied Jesus three times as the rooster crowed, just as Jesus predicted.

Today, Friday, Jesus is taken by the religious leaders to Pilate in order to carry out his death sentence.

But before Jesus is to die, the Roman soldiers under Pilate must put on a show of strength. These soldiers are under the impression that they are mocking Jesus when one takes off his own robe to create a sham of a cape, and another braided a pitiful crown out of thorns, and a third pulled up a tall weed for a scepter. But the truth is, Jesus was never the kind of king to wear gold and jewels and fine robes.

What they put on Jesus is just what a suffering servant-king ought to wear – not trappings of power and might, but badges of pain and suffering. There is one last item that the Christ will wear before that Friday is over, one last garment that this King will put on for our sakes. That is the shroud of death. And his royal palace shall be a stone tomb.

In many ways we may feel like we are waiting in the darkness of a tomb – a tomb of social distancing, made necessary by a virus that is causing real harm to the people we love. In many ways, the only thing we can do is wait with the disciples – huddles just out of sight somewhere, wondering what is coming next.

Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson wrote a book of poems and prayers for the ordinary moments in life, and I think one of her meditations speaks to this moment, both on that first Good Friday and this Good Friday. In her poem called “For Rock Bottom,” she writes with words that clearly resonate to all of us now” “I am separated from friends and neighbors…. My eyes have adjusted to the grim confines of this grave, and I could give up, but even here my hands grasp at the darkness in search of the God who claims to care …. I have nothing but time and will wait for you to remember me.” (128-9)

In less than three days’ time, we will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, our Lord and savior. On Easter we will be singing “Alleluia.” Truth be told, will we really feel like saying that, when our lives seem like on long Good Friday that never ends…. Where it feels like we have nothing but time to grope around in the dark?

But there is one thing we do know, one thing that we profess even in the midst of intense suffering and even despair - we cling to the hope that the Lord is near and is in our midst…. ESPECIALLY in the midst of pain and suffering, which Jesus has experience and knows well. 

God has always been in the thick of it with us. No amount of misery, no amount of isolation and physical distance, no amount of fear could ever make God turn away from us. No life is too broken, no loneliness is too deep, no death is too tragic for God to be near. Jesus walked that path ahead of us, and now he leads the way, as we walk this difficult Good Friday path with no clear Easter ending date. We walk, knowing and trusting and hoping and feeling and remembering… that Easter WILL arrive. Thanks be to God, amen.