Good Friday …
Today Christians remember the sacrificial, horrific death of Jesus on a cross.
Today, in churches all around the world, singing has stopped, the blinds are pulled, the candles snuffed, the light extinguished as silence fills the place we call sanctuary (safe place).
And it is okay to be downcast, it’s okay for melancholy to set into our souls, it’s okay to let loose the tears that have been gathering in our eyes.
One of the hardest things about grieving is that the rest of the world is still turning, still going on, still living. When our world has stopped … full stop, yet all around us are the sights and sounds of life, regular life.
Today, those who grieve are more free to do so than any other day. Our weeping and sorrow is shared, understood. For today we weep with the world.
As we remember the sorrow of the one who died, we also remember that the Earth cried out it’s own sorrow.Today we hear, in Matthew 27, about:
- They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. (v. 30)
- Those who passed by hurled insults at him (v. 39)
- From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. (v. 45)
- The earth shook, the rocks split (v. 51)
As Jesus prayed in the garden, the night before his death, those closest to him slept … leaving him to sorrow, to grieve alone. As he begged God to remove the cup of sacrifice, a crowd, led by one of his own, was heading to arrest him. As he cried tears of blood, he did so alone.
Those who grieve have an intimate understanding of such solitary sorrowing. And it is here that we can relate, we can know that we are not alone, for Jesus knew sorrow.
But he did not just feel the weight of what was to come for him (the humiliation, the physical pain, the separation from God), he also felt our sorrow … the sorrow that comes from living in a sin-filled world where death still reigns, where it still stings.
As he cried tears of blood he felt the griefs that we feel, knowing that it was only through his impending death that he could wipe our tears.
As we remember the one who was crushed, utterly and completely, for us, because of us, we can know that he knows grief, he knows the loneliness, the sorrow and sadness that accompany death. But,
though the shadows creep all around us,
for shadows to exist
light must also be present.
“The day love died,
something new was born.
and may we be a people,
open to grief,
the loss,
and then, yes
the rising of the Son.”
-Kate Bowler
itsawonderfilledlife 