It's a gray, dim, rainy morning, fitting for the day when we remember Jesus' crucifixion. The church building is quiet as a few people enter and leave the sanctuary during our day-long prayer vigil. As part of my reflection, I recalled a post I published on a Good Friday a few years ago. I found it and re-read it. I decided to re-post it today, because it still expresses well how I feel on this day every year.
One of my sons, when he was 9 years old, asked me, “Dad, why do we call the day Jesus died good Friday? What’s good about it?”
When I heard that question, old tapes from my past immediately began to play. I had to stop myself from saying that, even though Jesus’ death was sad, it was a good death because it made eternal life possible for all who choose to believe in Jesus. But I did stop myself. My son had asked a perfectly reasonable question, and I told him so. “There wasn’t anything good about it,” I said.
I came from a culture that didn’t even hold Good Friday services. To do so was considered too “Catholic.” My wife and I, both from the Deep South, were recently trying to remember whether our churches even observed Palm Sunday. There was certainly no processional or waving of palms. (Again, that would be too Catholic.) We decided the only mention of it was in Sunday School, where it was referred to as Jesus’ “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem. Growing up, we never heard the term “Maundy Thursday.” If anybody in my congregation was in church on Good Friday, it was because the downtown churches were having a “community service” that – God help us – included Episcopalians, Catholics, and other pagans.
Ironic as this sounds, those most likely to refer to the day of Jesus’ crucifixion as “good” are those least likely to observe it. The logic goes like this: there’s
The other half of the irony is that those traditions that observe Good Friday don’t act as though there was anything good about it. How do you celebrate the humiliating death of a perfectly innocent man?
The labeling of this Friday as “good” is rooted in the assumption that Jesus was simply playing a pre-ordained part, and it was all for the best. Jesus and God played this little drama they wrote where Jesus stands in our place and takes all the punishment that God’s anger demands. This “satisfaction” theory of atonement is more the creation of St. Anselm in the 10th century than the New Testament. It skews both the scriptural witness to Christ and the biblical meaning of atonement. Yes, the scriptures teach that Christ died for our sins. They also teach that the blood of Christ’s cross is our peace with God and with one another; that Christ offered himself as a ransom to the powers of evil so that he might free the human race from their clutches; that in Christ’s death God poured out his love for the human race; and that Christ emptied himself and entered the depths of human suffering. Underneath these various interpretations lies the assumption that Jesus was killed, not by God, but by human beings. Human violence, jealousy, and fear killed the Son of God. He succumbed to and absorbed it all.
The only “good” on that Friday was the goodness of the One who died. Goodness was crucified. Friday wasn’t good; Jesus was.
Last week in my seniors Bible study, we read the story of the crucifixion from the gospel of Mark. The deeper we journeyed into this drama, the quieter the group got. When we read about Jesus being nailed to the cross beam, stripped of his clothes and hoisted up to die of blood loss and suffocation, there were quiet gasps around the table, as though these life-long churchgoers were reading the account for the first time. When he “breathed his last,” one member of the group burst into tears. We just paused and let her cry for all of us. “It’s just so sad,” this devout woman said. “He took on himself all my sin and all my sadness and all my suffering. He did it all for me.”
Enough said. In fact, the less said, the better. As a pastor, I have been present at the death of many people. I remember a long night in the hospital with a mother and father whose son was shot in the head, and who died as the sun was rising the next morning. I also remember the death of a one-month old infant who had been born with a serious congenital heart defect. And I remember standing with a woman at the side of her husband’s bed as he took his last, slow breaths before dying of cancer. I learned long ago that death is no time to speak. It is a time to shed tears, to embrace, to stand in reverent silence, but not a time to speak.
How then can we let our impatient speech defame the death that absorbed all death? Even the most erudite human words, when uttered at the foot of the cross, sound like childish chatter. This is not a time for theological discourse. There is plenty of opportunity throughout the church year to ponder the meaning of Christ’s death. But not today. At the foot of the cross, the most reverent response is silence.
Like many others, our church holds a 12-hour prayer vigil on Good Friday leading up to the time of our Tenebrae service. (Tenebrae means “shadows.”) After silent worship has been kept for a full day in the sanctuary, corporate worship begins. The Tenebrae service includes music and scripture readings, but moves toward darkness and silence. During the Middle Ages, this service was observed over the last three days of Holy Week, but fell out of usage in the early 20th century. Many traditions have revived Tenebrae in recent years as an apt way to recall the seven words of Christ from the cross.
At the beginning of the service, seven candles are lit. The service closes with the reading of Jesus’ seven words from the cross. After each word, one of the candles is extinguished and the sanctuary lights are dimmed until, finally, we are sitting in darkness.
Those in attendance are invited to leave when they are ready but to remain silent until after they have departed the building. There is nothing to say. There is no word of comfort to lighten the moment; no theological wisdom that will make it more palatable. Every word is a distraction; a denial of the awful crime committed by humanity.
A new word will come. But not yet.
Copyright 2012 by J. Mark Lawson
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