Holy Friday

 

"Even bein' God ain't no bed o' roses"

----The Green Pastures

Today we come to that place where we all must come. That day when darkness settles down on us in the middle of our lives. But not just once but more than the admit. William Inge was right when he wrote there really is a dark at the top of our stairs. But we can’t brush over this day and cosmetize that cross and then rush on to Easter. 

In our time we don’t want to deal with that dark road which is really ours. We don’t want to upset our children with dismal things. Why they might have nightmares. So we look back on that hill faraway but most of us don’t linger there. So we have diamonds in our crosses and some of us put this decoration around our necks or tattoos on our bodies not having a clue to what that day—and this day truly means.

We really do not face the evil, the blood and the gore, and the spittle and the brittle laughter out there. Or the jeers even from the religious leaders that should know better. This was the cross and all four gospels tell this sad story in their own ways.They crammed it full of all the things the eye-witnesses had told them. The dark moments in the garden, the kiss of Judas. Simon of Cyrene forced to carry the cross for Jesus. They say he fell three times dragging his cross up the  hill. And Herod is there and Pilate is there and there blood-thirsty crowd is there. And criminals who will be punished with him are there. And all the scourging and the jeers and the injustice it all does not even come close to capturing that crucifixion. 

And so on our Good Friday we run headlong not into their story but ours too. Thomas Mann once said of great literature, “It is, it always is, however much we say it was.” We know pain. don’t we? And we know a world of unfairness. And we know too, too much about cancer and mental illness and the dreaded Alzheimer’s plus that long sad list of pain and tears.  And we know about those little girls in Nashville or all those other places. No thoughts and prayers—not yet. 

We must face our own horror. And our own Herod's and Pilate’s and pious religious leaders. And all those homeless and the poor on food stamps.  We know about the waste of life that should not be taken away—slow or fast. The list of our sorrows is long. Clergy abuse of little children. Women abused and hidden behind those suffocating Scriptures that keep them in line. We know about money, money, money and power that is strangling us to death. What of those 20 states who’ve passed cruel laws that punish the transgenders and their parents. We don’t have enough time to write them all down. But that man of sorrows knew so much. Like us. And he was nailed to that tree—where even God seems to be silent.

It was not all dark. There were women that stood weeping and the thief who agonized but saw even there a goodness. Or that young man who lifted a spear  of sour wine  to Jesus’ parched and bleeding lips. We cannot forget that other Joseph who offered his own tomb. We cannot leave them out. Nor should we.

Somehow God was there that terrible afternoon. And like Jesus we forget that sometimes our own bitter cup cannot be taken away. This is not the time for happy-clappy tunes or jubilation or even preaching it’s Friday but Sunday’s comin’. Oh yes, its is—but not now. Not today. We have to stare at our own Via Doloroso—our way of sorrows.

We must not try to forget all the injustices out there today. Even in the dark at the top of stairs—a kindly light may just come.

Thanks be to God for Good Friday. Then and now.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com