I used to have a member of my congregation who hated Holy Week, and especially Good Friday. The days were too sad and she did not want to be reminded that there is grief and sadness in the world. She wanted to go straight to Easter, and complained bitterly when we insisted on acknowledging the pain that leads up to Easter. She wanted only the happy ending.
Well, don't we all? I have often "jokingly" commented that if I were in charge, I would have designed this whole "living" thing differently, with no death involved. And yet, oddly enough, God didn't ask for my input, my deep wisdom when creating all that has come to be.
And so, today, like many of us, I will sit in a church, attending a Good Friday service. I will hear the story of betrayal and death one more time. I will reflect on the suffering and doubt that Jesus experienced. I will grieve for Mary, having to watch her child suffer all this and suffering with him. I will recall and mourn my own griefs, and mentally review today's all-too-common news stories of broken bodies and broken minds and broken trust and broken hearts.
I will acknowledge that this is a sad world much of the time. I will acknowledge our inhumanity toward each other and the inherent frailty of these human bodies. And I will mourn.
But I will get up Easter morning and go to church and rejoice in our risen Lord - and I will rejoice and give thanks for life and goodness and beauty and love -- and I will go out and do what I can to lessen or at least share in our communal grieving. Because ours is not an either/or world, We live with birth and with death. And Good Friday -- much as we may dislike it -- reminds us that we just don't get one without the other. And I trust that God knows the reason for this.
Well, don't we all? I have often "jokingly" commented that if I were in charge, I would have designed this whole "living" thing differently, with no death involved. And yet, oddly enough, God didn't ask for my input, my deep wisdom when creating all that has come to be.
And so, today, like many of us, I will sit in a church, attending a Good Friday service. I will hear the story of betrayal and death one more time. I will reflect on the suffering and doubt that Jesus experienced. I will grieve for Mary, having to watch her child suffer all this and suffering with him. I will recall and mourn my own griefs, and mentally review today's all-too-common news stories of broken bodies and broken minds and broken trust and broken hearts.
I will acknowledge that this is a sad world much of the time. I will acknowledge our inhumanity toward each other and the inherent frailty of these human bodies. And I will mourn.
But I will get up Easter morning and go to church and rejoice in our risen Lord - and I will rejoice and give thanks for life and goodness and beauty and love -- and I will go out and do what I can to lessen or at least share in our communal grieving. Because ours is not an either/or world, We live with birth and with death. And Good Friday -- much as we may dislike it -- reminds us that we just don't get one without the other. And I trust that God knows the reason for this.
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