Freeform Friday 11 - Good Friday

I feel the same way about Good Friday that I do about a memorial service for a truly committed follower of Jesus. There’s always this tension, on Good Friday and at such memorial services, between sorrow and celebration. When my grandmother passed away we truly celebrated her life and her love for Jesus, but to this day I still feel an amount of sorrow because she’s gone, because she won’t be sitting with my family on Sunday for Easter dinner. So I celebrate my grandmother’s life and what she did for God’s Kingdom, but also feel the sorrow over her absence.

I also feel sorrow on Good Friday, reflecting back upon Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. At churches all over the world, people will gather and remember what Christ did. They’ll think about the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ trial before Pilate, Jesus’ beating at the hands of the Roman soldiers, Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary and ultimately his crucifixion, the Son of God hanging on a twisted tree. With images such as these, it’s almost impossible not to feel some amount of sorrow or to carry around the somber weight of what Christ did for us. The sorrow and weight, though, need to be held in tension with the reality that Sunday dawns and, with it, a new reality.

We shouldn’t be filled with sorrow to the point of breaking on Good Friday; Jesus already went through that. Good Friday should be a somber celebration: we recognize what Christ did, yet celebrate what his death means for us and the entire universe. Because Jesus died on a cross the world is being renewed: from the hearts of people to every corner of creation. And while Christ’s death, which initiated that renewal, is a somber reality, we need to willingly celebrate it, because it is good.