Can we talk about Friday for a minute

Well, this is a little awkward.

I try to post this blog Thursday night and I see it as early reflections on the upcoming Sunday.  That’s awkward in Holy Week.  It just doesn’t feel right to post thoughts of Easter before saying something about Friday at least.  Especially since I mentioned last time how important the story of the whole week is.

But I’ll be honest.  I’m not really comfortable talking about Friday.

When I was younger, and a musician, I appreciated the beautiful and moving music and liturgy of the Friday story.  I think I still do, as I know many do.  But something’s changed for me.  Maybe I thought about it too much or wondered about things that just raised questions for me about traditional church thinking.  There are a lot more shadows now.

Mind if I share some of those shadowy thoughts?  It won’t be too in depth (deep, perhaps, but not in depth), just talking points really.

Like “Good” Friday.  I don’t know if I can call it “good” anymore.  I know, there’s a variety of explanations for the term, like it could be a corruption of “God’s Friday” or that good used to also mean holy (some traditions still call it Holy Friday).  But I think most people still understand the “good” part as being that Jesus’ death, while brutal, was required for our redemption from sin.

I have some thoughts about that.

In the gospel narratives, Jesus’ death was not “good” in any way.  I’m not sure that I can accept a death as “good” to begin with.  I know that “a good death” has become a way of describing the care and compassion, comfort and relief that can be brought to surround someone’s end of life, and I honour that.  But there is still loss and grief.  It’s not “good,” perhaps, so much as “the best that we can do” and that is, indeed, a wonderful gift.

But in that moment, for all the family, disciples, friends and enemies, even people that had no idea what was going on, Jesus is dead.  There is pain and grief.

Jesus died in a horribly brutal way after being physically and mentally abused.  It wasn’t “good” in that respect, either, it was suffering.

And just because we know what happens next, I don’t think we get to call it “good” in hindsight, either.  Shouldn’t it still be Horrific Friday and Good Easter?

That’s very “in the moment” of the narrative, perhaps, so let’s look at the bigger picture.  Jesus died to save us, atonement for our sin, even for our original sin.  But, as I’ve said elsewhere at other times, I believe that, created in the image of God, our default setting - our birth setting, if you like - is good.  We may choose a different path - to sin - based on our experiences, but we begin from good.  From the very beginning.  I’ve long wondered if the story of Eve and Adam, the fruit and leaving Eden was really about sin, especially an original one.  The original act was choice, the first act of the precious gift of freewill.

There’s been lots of choice since then, both good and bad.  And sin.  If sin is the thing that drives us further and further away from God, then there’s been a lot.  A lot.  But not just before Jesus, after Jesus as well.

An act of atonement?  I don’t know that I can reconcile a God who requires payment for our sins with a God who’s love is for all, freely and unconditionally given, with grace and forgiveness equally so.  I think I go with the latter.

I believe that the life of Jesus is the way to follow: to love as he showed us how to love.  I think powerful people, feeling threatened by Jesus’ revolutionary and counter-cultural teaching about love and grace for all, had him killed.  They tried to end him without seeing that, as the embodiment of love, as the Word made flesh, you can’t kill that.  You’ll only - sorry to sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi - make it “more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Jesus brought a world of love, compassion and grace for all.  In doing that, he sought to bring us back to God, closer to the source of love and life.  We resisted - brutally - and still do.  But Jesus continues to live in you and me.  Crucifixions of all kinds continue to happen every day and Jesus stands there with us to remind us: this is not the end.  There is new life in this world and in the world to come.  In the midst of our deepest suffering, our enormous capacity for the harshest cruelty and weakness for the simplest of temptations, Jesus is there to help us shoulder our own crosses.