Reflecting on that First Good Friday

I always imagine the first Good Friday as cloudy, with a dark threatening sky. One version of the crucifixion story says that the sun was blocked and that there was an earthquake, even. Others have cited evidence that there was actually an eclipse. We don’t really know, but it couldn’t have been a nice day.

I also feel for the disciples on that tragic day. Imagine giving everything up, your family, your home, your job, to follow someone who was so charismatic, so inspiring that you KNEW he was someone special, and then watching as he is arrested very publicly, dragged before the authorities, accused of blasphemy, and executed.
Not only would you have felt in danger yourself, as one of his followers, of being arrested yourself, but you would have questioned whether he was really who he said he was.

We know the rest of the story. We know how everything he told them was true, how he warned them that this was going to happen. It all makes sense to us because we know the whole story, from beginning to end. We may even feel a certain impatience with the disciples for being so thick-skulled and not understanding, but those last days, those emotional days before the execution of Jesus must have been incredibly confusing.

One minute they are preparing for the Passover feast, renting an upper room to gather for the Seder meal, even riding into town on a donkey, with the crowd getting caught up in the event like they KNEW this Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. “Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” they all chimed in. The disciples must have felt proud to be associated with him, shooing away people who got too close, the children who wanted to ride with him, the women who must not touch this man of God.

How could it have gone from that to THIS so quickly? Now they are left to sort it all out, scattered from each other in fear, cowering in hiding places all over the city while their Lord was being nailed to a cross.

The women, the Marys, stayed anyway. Jesus’ mother, another Mary, and Mary Magdalene, whom some said was Jesus’ favorite--they all stayed with him at the cross, kneeling on the ground, sobbing openly.

And John, the beloved disciple, who looked younger because he had no beard, risked his own safety to be there with the women. The guards paid no attention to the grieving group. They were looking for weapons, for signs of an uprising by the followers of this troublemaker Jesus. They were having their lunch using the cloak they had stripped from Jesus as a tablecloth.

They were too busy trying to look fierce and do the bidding of Caesar’s army to notice the interaction between the four stragglers and Jesus, who was telling John to look out for his mother as if she was his own. “Behold, your son,” Jesus also told Mary, of John, knowing that John could not replace him as her son, but would remind him, in his love for Jesus, of all that Jesus had tried to do.

But Mary cannot be consoled so easily, although she had suspected for awhile that this time was coming. Hadn’t someone warned her that her heart would be grieved? When they told her what a great man her son would become, hadn’t they also told her that first there would be sorrow?

John, too, felt as if his heart would break. He had seen and understood so much of what Jesus had said, that as the Son of God Jesus was one with the Father. Couldn’t he have used that power to destroy these soldiers, to save himself from this horrible death?

But Mary Magdalene knew this could not happen. He had said that the temple would be destroyed, and that Jesus would rebuild that temple in three days. He was speaking of himself, Mary realized at that moment when the sky was at its darkest, as Jesus breathed his last breath. And at that moment she resolved to be there when he returned.

A Transformative Peace

Over the last 25 years that I have attended Holy Week services, I have learned that the experience is powerful, transformative, and more moving than I could even anticipate.

There have been Holy Weeks that I have come to with things on my mind, outside disturbances that weighed on me heavily, even a resistance to the experience at times, and despite myself, have been swept up in the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil when we have done it, and of course, Easter Sunday, which is always made more glorious for having walked through the events earlier in the week.
It is not an easy walk. Maybe we should advertise a disclaimer, like we do with dramatic television shows: “Viewers may find this disturbing,” or “Warning: Viewer discretion is advised.”

After all, we are walking with someone through the last days and moments before his execution. That it is our God who is being executed makes it that much more disturbing. Many people, MOST people choose to stay away, to look away at the most painful moments, just as many of Jesus’ disciples ended up doing at the last.

We who are courageous enough to be here do so for many reasons: out of a sense of obligation or loyalty to a God who has walked with US through tragedy; because we believe that our God NEEDS US at this time of need; because we know that there is more going on than just empty worship.

This time of year, more than any other, is an experience of ANAMNESIS, of re-living the walk to the cross, and not just telling the story. If it was merely a re-telling, we could all read our Bibles in the comfort of our living rooms.

But here is one place where our liturgical tradition gets it SO RIGHT: by physically touching and consuming the bread and wine, by solemnly carrying out the furniture and decorations from the altar, we are RE-LIVING Jesus' last experiences. We are living out in our BODIES Jesus’ beginning the Eucharist, his command to “do this to remember me.” When we strip the altar, we are physically participating in Jesus’ stripping before he is hoisted on the cross and nailed to his death.

And sometimes we are even willing to allow someone to wash our feet, and turn and wash another’s feet, though proud Episcopalians have resisted this over and over, perhaps out of embarrassment over the ugliness of feet, or out of distaste for having to “do as I have done” even if Jesus DID say it.

Tonight is a time of sadness and a time for the hope of possibility as well. If Jesus is asking us to REMEMBER him, then he must mean that his Spirit will be there for us. If Jesus is asking us to love others as he has loved us, to do what he has done, then there’s much more to the story.

This is merely the end of one chapter, with more to follow. Of course we know that.
But before we can have Resurrection, we must first have death.

The world, and all of the people who avoid Holy Week, want us to fast forward through that death part, to avoid the pain and sorrow that comes from any ending. Tonight is not a Hallmark Hall of Fame sort of event. It is too complex; there are too many conflicting emotions, and the naked reality of sorrow and betrayal and torture, and yes, promise.

Which is why Jesus says almost ironically just before he is taken away, “Peace is my last gift to you; my own peace I leave with you; peace which the world cannot give, I give to you.”

This is not a peace which says emptily, “everything is going to be okay,” as some would have us say. This is a peace which passes all understanding. This is a peace which says, “everything is NOT okay, but you will be okay, because God is with you.” It is the sort of peace which will get you through ANYTHING, even death upon a cross.