Lent Day 39: Good Friday and Grief

A busy day yesterday didn't permit me time to post, and I am sorry for that. Here's the meditation I shared during our Maundy Thursday worship; the video of the service is available here.

Now we come to the Friday we call "Good," a concept that can be hard to explain to people who don't know our religion well, but do understand that this is the day our prophet/ the one we believe to have a connection with God unlike any other human being was put to death. A brutal death. 

Crucifixion was the epitome of Rome's brutality. Though our Christian scriptures describe a process that took three hours, it was much more common for it to take days. The bodies of the crucified were left on the crosses until the scavenger birds picked their bones clean. The unremitting cruelty of it, the torture the victims underwent, was a feature, as they say, and not a bug. Rome designed it this way, because it was the penalty for ultimate crime. the worst possible crime, in their eyes: insurrection. For Rome, those who dared to claim power in opposition to Rome, or whose political activities might undermine Rome in any way. were the criminals deserving of the worst punishment. 

Jesus' crime was a political one, though Christians love to claim otherwise. We love to say that Jesus was not political. His execution states that he was. The inscription the procurator had attached to the cross stated "The King of the Jews." This was the problem. This was the crime: not even, necessarily, that he claimed the title, but that others claimed it for him.

Every year we observe this week and we re-enact these steps:

Palm Sunday, a day of promise and joy, a day when the idea of Jesus as King might just fly.

Maundy Thursday, a night when Jesus knows his death is imminent. Jesus gathers those he loves and knows best, and he knows one of them is about to hand him over. The grief begins here, with the knowledge of betrayal. It is no wonder that Jesus intones, "Remember me."

On Good Friday our grief comes into full bloom. Tonight the church I serve will host a Tenebrae, the Service of the Lengthening Shadows, as we read seven passages of scripture detailing the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. As the service begins, we see a large candelabra with seven lit candles. After each passage is read, a candle is extinguished. The fullness of the grief is expressed with the tolling of a bell, with the church in deep shadow, almost darkness.

Today is a day (and yesterday was, too) when we might notice our grief. Grief about and within the Jesus story, of course. But other grief as well. Grief calls up grief--new losses or even ritualized losses, as we have in Holy Week, remind us, unearth, and air afresh even our most ancient sorrows. (I have just spent nearly an hour talking about the primal wound of adoption.) 

As everyone has grief of some kind or other, whether old or new, this is a day and time to be gentle with ourselves. If grief rises up, respect it. Honor it. Cherish it as the evidence of love--even complicated love--it surely is.

Today's devotional card from A Sanctified Art reads, 

On the
worst
days of
our lives,
we are
not alone.

Whatever your faith tells you about this day and what it means--the salvific action, the rescue of humanity, a downer before we get to the fun of Sunday--I always come back to this: In Jesus God showed the fullest possibly solidarity with humanity, the fullest possible communion with us. There is no pain we can feel that God was not willing to participate in, not as our punisher, but as a suffering sibling.

On the worst days of our lives, we are not alone. God is with us.