It's a trend I've been noticing over the past decade or so - the supreme discomfort evangelicals seem to have with Good Friday. Our friends in various traditions (reformed, mainline, Eastern orthodox, etc) don't have the same propensity to RUSH through the cross towards Resurrection Sunday. Perhaps it's the manta "it's Friday but Sunday's comin'" that haunts the movement. Perhaps it's our insane proclivity to avoid or downplay suffering in the light of resurrection hope (it's perhaps why we prefer the longer end of the Gospel of Mark or why we preach Paul more than the Suffering Servant passages from Isaiah). Whatever the reason, it seems that we can't help but sneak celebration into Good Friday. Listen to the songs and the homilies... it's like we are afraid to linger in the dark shadow of the cross .
Don't get me wrong, I am all about resurrection hope and the glorious and majestic power, liberty and life that flows into the lives of all who trust Jesus as a result of the resurrection. It's just that in order to get there, you have to go through the cross. And you have to live with the tension, the sorrow, the mystery, the grief and the sense of 'not yet' that Good Friday is all about.
It is easy to rush Good Friday and head for Easter Sunday – to glance at the cross as we hurry past it towards the celebration of the resurrection. Yet the challenge of Good Friday is to dare to linger; to dare to look up into the face of Jesus hanging on the cross. The challenge of Good Friday is to allow the death of Jesus to impact us deeply, for us to understand something of what Jesus’ death means for us. Because when we gather again at the cross we remind ourselves that in Christ, God Himself has borne our infirmities and was crushed by our transgressions. When we dare to linger at the cross we remember how Christ’s suffering makes us whole. How he died to deliver us. But we also affirm that we have yet to experience that in its fullness. It's Friday... Sunday is coming, but it's not here yet.
Good Friday gives us a window into what it must have been like for the first disciples - standing there at a distance and not seeing the cross as a place of hope, but as a symbol of despair and loss and defeat. Not seeing that at that moment that all of human history hung in the balance as redemption drew nigh but remained mysteriously veiled from their eyes and hearts.
And so I extend a Good Friday challenge to us as Evangelicals - let's dare to linger at the cross and consider again all that it means. Don't rush away or turn your eyes. You just might see something you haven't noticed before.
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