Good Friday

The old folks had weird titles for things

Good Friday…

This isn’t just expectations unfulfilled. That happened already—when his preferred dinner companions seemed to be reviled bureaucrats, fishermen, heathens, and damaged women. When there was no sacred cow he didn’t take joy in tipping over. When he showed up as the conquering hero…on a donkey. When we kept saying we needed a Savior, a Redeemer, and he said, “I agree. But I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean.”

That was something. But this, this Friday is expectations obliterated, shattered, crushed, bruised and broken.

A Friday when all we have left is the tiniest shard of hope among the wreckage, only because hope is not so easily extinguished, even when it should be. Life after the loss of a loved one—how the world just goes on, even when it obviously shouldn’t. When it’s easier to believe we’re living a nightmare from which we’ll awaken, instead of the acknowledgment that this is reality, and there’s no going back.

And thank God, right? Thank God there’s no going back, and we only have to wait parts of three days to experience redemption…but on Friday, what do we have?

The memories. The tragedy and trauma. The disbelief.

How do we hold on?

We just do. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.”[i]

Even when we still don’t understand this salvation, when he continues to confound our expectations, when we still so obviously don’t get it, we have faith. For ourselves, and when we can’t manage even that, for each other. We’ll cry together, and we’ll lift each other’s burdens. We’ll exult in the miracle of our children’s smiles and the incandescent, miraculous beneficence of another sunrise, even before we know what that sunrise will bring.

We’ll remember how much he loved us. How he told us to love each other. And we’ll wait.

We’ll remind each other how we believed this God poured out in flesh, a perfectly human man who promised this faith, this hope, this conviction, would be our salvation…and then died to prove it. Because if he came once, he’ll come again, out of the tomb, and out of the air. Because he promised, in the end, this would all be worth it:

“And if it were not so, I would have told you.”[ii]

If anything is worth at least a shred of hope, if anything’s worth keeping the faith, it’s this:

“I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.”[iii]

Parts of three days is one thing, you say, but parts of two millennia? Really?

I don’t like waiting any more than you do. Who likes waiting? But the fact is, we still don’t get it. We’re still lobbying for salvation by strongmen and war, by wealth and security, when he told us what we clearly should’ve already understood:

Our salvation doesn’t come by wars won or survival of the fittest. There will never be enough wealth and security to satisfy us.

What he said, and then demonstrated, is that redemption comes through sacrifice.

And heart,

by heart,

by heart.

“Woman? Why are you crying? I’ve come back. I’ve saved you, just like I said I would. Go tell the others.”[iv]

“Why are you just standing here, looking up at the sky? He’s gone, but he’ll be back.”[v]

Waiting’s easier when you have something to occupy your time, my friends. He’s gone, and he’s here, and he’ll be back. Go tell the others.

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[i] Hebrews 11:1

[ii] John 14:2

[iii] John 14:18

[iv] John 20:17

[v] Acts 1:11