The Mourning
Today is Good Friday. As a kid I always wondered why it was called “good.” Celebrating a death and calling it good seemed backwards. Now, further along in my faith journey, I understand the depths of just how good that Friday was: for my life, for my future. And while I celebrate being made whole and fully forgiven by Jesus’s death, I am learning how to mourn my sin that helped nail him to that cross.
I used to want to rush to Easter Sunday. It was then that we would get chocolate in our Easter nests, have a big family meal and sing all those upbeat Easter hymns. And within the Christian sub-culture, I think there is a similar tendency. Rushing through Friday to get to Sunday. It has been my experience that more emphasis is given to positive outcomes as it can be uncomfortable to sit with the hard and challenging.
Don’t mishear what I am saying. There is absolutely a time and place to celebrate life and healing and the hope of eternity because of the resurrection. Sunday will come. But we must walk through Friday and Saturday first. And I don’t want to miss the mourning and sorrow that then prepares my heart for the hope of Sunday.
Last year was the first time I ever took the Lent season seriously, preparing my heart and mind for Easter. I wrote the following exactly a year ago. And find myself there again: cheering, crying, waiting, mourning.
At the end I share a passage from Isaiah as interpreted in The Message. Don’t rush past it. Read it. Sit with it. Allow yourself to mourn and grieve. It makes what is ahead that much sweeter.
Tears started to form in her eyes, standing in the middle of the bath tub, wet bangs plastered to her forehead. "But momma, I don't want him to die. I want him to be alive and with me forever!"
In that moment, in her nearly 4 year-old way, my daughter summed up all that I was feeling inside.
The last 47 days I have found a sweet resting place in scripture. As Lent has progressed and I dug deeper into the book of Jeremiah and then into the gospels for Holy Week, I have felt sorrow and guilt, anticipation and exaltation. As one person put it, there is staccato celebration and legato mourning. We cheer. We cry.
I have delighted to see just how Jesus Christ, the Messiah, fulfilled all of the Old Testament promises, from the garden to the cross. I have been greived my own sin. Tears in my own eyes as I realize that just as the envy of the Pharisees put Jesus on that cross, so did my own envy, and my pride, and my selfishness and my anger... I could go on and on. I have anticipated this day for the last 5 weeks. This day that as a church we turn our eyes collectively to the cross. It is the centre of our faith. It is the central point of all scripture.
It. Is. Finished.
And now... now we wait.
The silence comes tonight. Waiting. Greiving. Sorrow. Uncertainty. Not knowing exactly what will happen next.
As our pastor reminded us today, we live in a time where it is always Saturday. Yes, we know that Sunday is coming. We know the story does not end at the cross. But for now, I want to sit in the sorrow, the mourning, the waiting.
And this is where Elizabeth's words summarized all the feelings inside. I don't want him to die. There is a sorrow and grief so deep that Jesus had to die. It isn't right. It isn't fair. They did that to him. We did that to him. I did that to him. I want him to be alive and with us! But that's the whole point. He had to die SO THAT he could be alive and with us forever.
Isaiah 53:1-10 in the Message puts it more beautifully than I could:
"Who believes what we’ve heard and seen?Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.
Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him."