Is Good Friday good?
Last night a good friend and I sang together to prepare for the Good Friday service at our church. We’re singing “Were You There,” but without the joyful last chorus, “Were you there when Christ rose up from the grave.” We’ve decided to leave it dark, ominous, uncomfortable. My friend has this amazingly beautiful tenor voice, and he quietly ends our a cappella duet with a very soft, clear, “Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?” The question just hangs in the air. It’s one of those services illuminated with only a few candles—the last candle is extinguished when they read the part about Jesus breathing his last. Everything is dark and bleak.
As a matter of fact, the African American slaves who created “Were You There,” never sang a Resurrection verse—that was added later, after the spiritual hit mainstream America. Well-acquainted with suffering, the slaves were comfortable dwelling on dark reality.
I didn’t grow up attending a Good Friday service. Focus on the season called “Lent” just wasn’t part of my evangelical repertoire. But one day in Ft. Worth I attended an Episcopal service on Ash Wednesday and heard a wonderful sermon on the season of Lent, and why people observe this forty day period leading up to Good Friday. It’s not about religious duty, or “dead works,” to make us holier or help us earn salvation. It’s about meditating on, and calling up, the agony and suffering of Jesus. It’s about feeling what the disciples felt after their Teacher and Friend suffered a cruel and malicious death. It’s about sacrificing something in order to daily remind yourself of the self-control, love, and power Jesus had to have in order to sacrifice himself for us. It’s a time for walking through a time of devotion and remembrance in order to go deeper with the Lord.
In his book “Reliving the Passion,” Walter Wangerin, Jr. explains that, “for us, who return backward into the past, the Resurrection comes first, and through it we view a death which is, therefore, less consuming, less horrible, even less real. We miss the disciples’ terrible, wonderful preparation. Unless, as now, we attend to the suffering first, to the cross with sincerest pity and vigilant love, to the dying with most faithful care—and thus prepare for joy.”
That’s the real point of Good Friday. We prepare for joy. When we dwell on Jesus’ suffering with as much intensity and real emotion as possible, we are more awakened to the miraculous, redeeming power of the Resurrection. This week I was deeply moved when I read Luke 22:44, which describes Jesus’ condition in the hours before his arrest. Luke recounts, “being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” Jesus sweating blood is an ugly, painful image of his humanity. Sometimes it’s easy for us as moderns to forget that the Son of God suffered human feeling and pain when he died on the cross. Contemplating the fullness of his suffering and sacrifice humbles me and gives me renewed gratitude for Christ’s abundant love for me. So yes, Good Friday is good.
So, this weekend before you put on your Easter best, may you take some time for dreadful contemplation on the death of Christ. Remember, His death was for you. And too, His victory over death. I wish you a desolate, dark Friday, that you might experience a fresh and exquisite joy this Sunday.
