I grew up in a Christian tradition that lumped Holy Week into Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday services. The entire story of Jesus’s last week of life was summed up in those two Sundays. I didn’t grasp that the rest of the week held significance until much later.
In college, the church my parents attended followed liturgy more closely. Not only was Palm Sunday full of declaring Christ the King, but sometimes we’d have Maundy Thursday services and almost always Good Friday… The liturgy, the momentum, the intentionality of the week helped me better grasp what the story was about.
Today is Good Friday. Today, churches around the world lean into the suffering of Jesus, into His death, into the despair of the day. One time, as I read the story in the Bible yet again, it hit me that the temple curtain, much like a garment, was torn not only to signify the conquering of Sin, but to note that the Father grieved the Son. Torn, top to bottom, like an earthly parent would for their beloved child, the Father tore this massively thick, woven tapestry that hung between the Holiest of places and the rest of the temple. He mourned His Son. His Son was dead. Not asleep or in a coma. His Son’s heart had stopped beating, His brain stopped working. Rigor mortis settled into His body as His breath left it. He was a rejected stone. He was the perfect Passover Lamb. And He was very much… dead.
We humans like to skip the hard parts. We like to skip to the Resurrection and point out how even death has no hold on Jesus. But we forget that the disciples likely thought He wasn’t coming back. It’s entirely probable that the disciples thought Jesus, like other “Messiahs” of the past died, and that was that. We, today, do not like sitting with that because, honestly, it feels kinda gross to sit in the dark and lonely feeling of failures that is likely what disciples felt. For the Resurrection to happen, Jesus had to die first. We cannot neglect the hard for the joy. We live in the both/and.
Today, as you go through your evening rituals, take time to remember that Friday and Saturday existed without Jesus walking the Earth. The sorrow exists. Remember as we grieve, God also grieved. As we mourn, He mourned. Sit in the sadness and the somber mood of the weekend. Even as we know Sunday is coming, let us also remember that Friday happened so that Sunday could.
Comments