It’s Good
Friday again, the day when Jesus chose to submit to a night and a day of
interrogation, torture, mockery and the unknown in order that great good should
be accomplished. Since Ramsy was
diagnosed with cancer, and since he died, this day has meant more to me than in
the past. I think before I used to feel
a little bit like a child who has been told by its parents to “say thank you to
Aunt Gerda for the money for your college fund”. You know, grateful but not yet understanding
what it all means, and a little obligated.
“Look at the great big sacrifice Jesus made for you. Aren’t you grateful? Be thankful now that he died so you don’t
have to go to Hell when you die!” All true, and I used to be awed and, yes, grateful,
but it didn’t resonate with me in a profoundly personal way.
But now I
have been through a shaking and re-ordering of my world. I’ve made a sacrifice that I had no choice
but to make. There was no decision
whether or not to give up Ramsy, or even whether or not to watch him suffer the
inexorable progress of the brain tumor as it stole pieces of him away. It just happened, and I was dragged
along. It was hard.
But in that
process, and since then, I have been in circumstances where sacrifice has been
asked, but the decision has been up to me.
I got to choose whether I was going to insist on my own way- reach out
and snatch something I wanted- or whether I was going to keep my hands to
myself, open them to God, and say, “Okay.
Let’s do it your way.” I am
shocked at the sheer willpower required to stand still and keep my hands
open. It feels like childbirth. During one of those teeth-gritting,
hang-on-to-the-kitchen-counter, “don’t give in to yourself” times this past
year, I wrote in my journal, “I wonder what will be born of this struggle?” So now when I think of Jesus facing what he
knew would be a devastatingly torturous day and all the fears around that, I
marvel that he had the strength of will to choose the plan that God had set in
front of him and trust that something very good would be born of it.
I imagine that at the end of that terrible
Friday, and on the Saturday that dawned next, Jesus’ followers struggled with agonizing
questions. Why would God let Jesus die now? It
didn’t make any sense! How would God’s
kingdom ever be established now? How
could anything ever be good again after this terrible loss? What were they supposed to do next? No dreams, no direction, no
understanding.
I do not
understand God’s timing; it does not match mine at all. I don’t understand why he sometimes acts to
grant what we have requested and sometimes does not. I don’t understand his solutions to the
problems I keep seeing, or why there sometimes appears to be no solution. I frequently (and sometimes vehemently) take
issue with the way he runs the universe. But I
believe, more confidently than three years ago, that he does in fact know what
he’s doing, that he intends good on a vast scale that I cannot even imagine,
and that he is working things toward an ultimate, elegant solution at the end
of time. If Good Friday is about making
the hard choice, Saturday is about sitting in the dark aftermath, waiting to be
able to see again. It can be just as
torturous as making the sacrifice.
And on this
side of my last three years, I am able to see the good that has come, and glimmers
and flashes of the good that will come, and to believe that the light is
explosively brilliant. I’m truly,
personally grateful now, in a grown-up way, to know that the promise of Easter
will be, and is being, fulfilled; and that it is about very much more than
avoiding Hell when my life here is done.
It allows hope in hopeless circumstances. It offers the possibility that even though
you are sitting in the dust, your spirit will rise in beauty and strength. It’s about him setting the example and now
carrying us, helping us to trust him and to open our hands.
It’s for now, while we wait in the mix of mess
and wonder, hope and despair.
Peace to you who are being wrung in a Good
Friday struggle.
Peace to
you who are in the strange Saturday aftermath of what now?
Peace will
come, and even rejoicing.
