Good Friday Thoughts

[I'll start right now with a disclaimer that I'm not creating some new theology or that I have the whole picture. This brief piece merely offers my own reflections and feelings today. An understanding of the cross is still important; I promise I have not forgotten.]

It's that day, as Eliot would say, when in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

In spite of what?

The dripping blood our only drink,
 The bloody flesh our only food

I know today is good Friday and we are to meditate on the cross. On the suffering of our Savior. And Lord, help me to not forget the price that was paid. Help me not to take it lightly or to minimize it.

Nine years ago today, I accepted this all sufficient atonement as the precious remedy for a sin-sick soul. I saw the wrath of God fully exhausted upon that cross and I saw the truth of my own inability nothing to be feared in light of such incredible sacrifice.

Today, I try to meditate on the cross. But there's a tension in my soul. I try to remember, He died for me. I try to remember that historical event with sober gratitude. My fingers plunk out the sweet, longing, haunting melodies of O Sacred Head Now Wounded.

But deep down inside there's that constant reminder. Maybe it's because I'm listening to Easter music already. But He's alive! He's reigning! He died but oh, what would that have mattered if that was all?

The world around us aches with death this week in the little and the big. Writing a card to Grandma for Easter, but that because Grandpa's gone. A little life lost. The brokenness of my own sin, tearing down and hurting others and the empty longing to make right what I on my own cannot.

We are the ones deserving--yet no longer appointed to--this death march and solitude and broken-hearted heaving.

If that Friday on Calvary had meant just another death...someone standing in my place...still, what could be borne by that? What of the realization that my failures had caused pain here, or fear there, and death on a hill? I would merely be driven to further despair. I would bend under the weight of guilt, knowing my sin had put to death an innocent man. Not even just by accident. But because it was a necessity--not for love but because of sin.

But that's not how the story goes, and I cannot remember these merely sad parts today.

Should I have put to death the son of God, a Judas' fate awaited me. A driven crazy madness from the absurdity of the thing. Guilt would have been victorious in my soul; I the soldier carrying out death's destruction on the one who came to take it all.

But thanks be to God that the story didn't stop there. I am grateful, rejoicing, passionate about the work of Calvary. But Lord, thank you that it didn't stop there. That you didn't just come to remind us of our terrible plight but to rescue. Oh the despair of those three days. A work was finished, temple veil ripped in two, but I wouldn't have known it. I would have yet been broken by the awful, terrible, bloody and terrifying reality of death. I would have been those followers sulking back to my home in fearful anguish. What of those three days? Would it have been pain like I felt at the death this week?

But none of this is the case. Christ has been raised. There is hope for the wayworn sinner. There is still victory. The seemingness of things is not always what it seems. Often there's hope right after what seems to be the very worst situation imagined.

So what of us, the pilgrim folk? Who Monday see the ambulance, and Tuesday the heart sinks again, and Wednesday fail from fear and Thursday the mask wears thin and Friday face the unexpected? Is there hope yet to be found in a world of dying babies? Is it even ok that the old, grey-headed pillar has left us? Thanks be to God that He has already given us victory.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That quesions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind us of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

This week has been a week of tragedy and pain. My heart still reels from the not-rightness of it all. And yet. Oh, the bliss of that glorious thought. I bear my sin no more because of the cross, but also because of the empty tomb. If it had all been paid and yet I had to live here, seeing that wretched place of death across the driveway every day, or the little sounds of brokenness, I could not go on. But because of an empty tomb, because the wounded surgeon wounds only to heal, I press on. That's why this Friday is good. Looking back, dwelling on the cross, I am only broken again with the brokenness of this world, so bad that that's what was needed. And yet, He knew more what we needed. A living hope. Resurrection. New life. And it is finished.