A Good Friday Reflection

Friends, I wanted to share a brief reflection on this Good Friday. I read a variation of this (not something I typically do) at our Good Friday service after a fairly long scripture mashup. From Genesis through Exodus, the historical books and the Prophets, and on into the Gospels themselves, I wanted us to have a sense (from the scriptures) of what is going on in the larger story. Anyway, I hope it helps you to experience the crucifixion of Jesus from a slightly different angle this year.

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While there’s much that could be said about the cross, 2,000 years of reflection and theology and metaphysics, we end Friday with the unresolved tension of Jesus interred in a Judean tomb. Our temptation, today and every day, is to rush past the discomfort, the sadness, the sorrow, and on to the Joy of the Resurrection. But for those earliest followers of Jesus, this rush was not an option on the table.

I'd invite us to consider the highlights of Israel’s story and the great narrative arcs of Abraham, Moses, Covenant, and Kingdom. The reasons for this are manifold, but in some small way, I hope they give us a sense of the Hope and the expectation that the early disciples of Jesus carried…the great promises given to Abraham; the covenant with Moses; the firm commitment that develops over the generations to keep Torah with rigor and intention and purity of heart and hand.

The people of Israel were a peculiar people who kept circumcision as a sign of a covenant with an invisible God who had no idol and only one temple; this people who ate strange foods, had strange haircuts, wore strange clothes, who claimed to be, in fact, quite strange and uniquely set apart; this people stubbornly clung to the belief that their God would deliver them from the hand of foreign oppressors. But, time and again, generation after generation, they had been steamrolled, subjugated, enslaved, and brutalized by empires: Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans.

There had been movements and men who claimed messiahship over the land before…from the Maccabean dynasty that devolved into self-centered hedonism to the Zealot Warlords whose aspirations ended in fire and blood, the hopes and expectations of the people had been raised before. Would anyone deliver them? Would God do what he did in Egypt once more? Would the Lord show them mercy, compassion, and unfailing love?

In this context, we see Jesus the Nazarene – the resolved Rabbi and Promised Prophet who set his face like flint to Jersusalem; working miracles and telling parables, proclaiming a Kingdom that knew no end. There was none quite like him before and none quite like him since. His reign was unexpected, his Messiahship unorthodox, and his Lordship, ultimately, unwanted. And so it was that on a Friday, at the beginning of Passover, the life of Jesus, the claims of Jesus, and the hopes laid on Jesus seemed to culminate in the most unlikely and frustrating way. But for many others, this is simply the way things had always gone, the way Messianic movements and religious reform ended throughout the Roman world for a century before and a century after…with Iron Nails driven by an Iron hammer with the Iron Fist of Rome into the flesh of a man who dared defy an Empire.

As the sun faded on Friday evening and the Sabbath day slowly dawned, Jerusalem, the city of peace, was filled with everything but that elusive quality that is so rare in our world (namely, peace) ... Judas, the betrayer, was dead by his own hand; the Disciples, scattered and hiding; Peter, restless and ashamed; Mary, grief stricken and unable to sleep; Pilate, uneasy and unsure; the Pharisees, anxious and afraid; the crowds, satiated with the religious rituals of Passover and, as crowds always do, moving past the latest gossip and on to the next item of the day.

But in a tomb, nondescript and unimpressive, with no shrines, no worshipers, no lines of adoring fans…in a tomb, God rested, largely unnoticed and already on the way to being forgotten after a few short hours. And in this tomb, God waited. And in this tomb, God observed the peace of Sabbath rest, his labors complete, his work done.

Perhaps we can allow ourselves the grace of being disrupted with those first disciples. With expectations and hopes and dreams interred; our agendas distorted, confused, and destroyed. With myriad questions unasked and unanswered…uncertain of outcomes and expecting the worst. In these times of frustration and dissonance, we linger with thoughts as yet unformed, “How…why….what now…” with no other option than to sit and wait and, perhaps, pray.

Tonight, we are invited to sit by the Tomb…wondering if the answers to our questions will come; longing for the barrenness of winter to give way to Spring; hoping for a good resolution and for the restoration of all that was lost. And so we listen…for us who know how the Story ends…we listen to the Spirit for guidance and wisdom and peace in the midst of our own Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays - the stories in our lives whose endings we know not…and we seek the kind of peace that only God has when he knows Resurrection is coming but the end is, as yet, unclear to us. I pray that we can allow ourselves to be drawn into God's much larger Story and find in Him the fulfillment of all our hopes, our longings, and our desires.