Some of you have read this reflection before, while to others it may be new. To me, it was an epiphany past that still shapes my understanding of Christ's passion and of the truth that faith is truest that holds when pain is most and hope seems least. "[We] often hit Good Friday and reflect upon Christ’s death but it’s always with the rose colored glasses shouting, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.” The truth is I knew that, as did the disciples who Christ told that they would see Him again. The difference is the experience. The disciples weren’t saying it’s hard today but He’ll be alive again on Sunday. Although Christ had told them that they would see Him again and he had explained that he would be raised to live on the third day; He had also mentioned that He was going to prepare a place for them in His father’s house. They knew he was the son of God, so his father’s house meant heaven. They may have thought that they wouldn’t see Christ again until heaven. Even if they knew that they would physically see Him again on Earth, they were mourning. Their Lord and friend was dead. Some had denied Him in His final hours. Others stayed and watched Him stand in the face of false accusations, face insults and lies, suffer torture, and finally, agonizingly die. John specifically came to mind. I identified with him as He stood at the cross caring for Mary. I felt the strength that John must have needed to care for Mary and to watch his friend die; a strength that doesn’t come from yourself, but rather can only come as love flowing through you despite yourself. I imagined John’s heart and eyes flooding with grief. I pictured him slowly walking with the aged Mary, helping to guide her footsteps down the hill at Golgotha, lending his shoulder while she cried, and wondering to himself to whom would he turn as she and others turned to him. I could almost hear him asking, “Why now? I miss Him already. Who will teach us? Who will teach me? What will I do without Him?” To think about the passion of Christ in death is humbling. To consider His death was the only sacrifice for erasing sin, overwhelming. To think that He died for me is truly and heartbreakingly awesome. Still, this is only thinking. This is not watching, wondering if you had been a better person would he have lived; if you hadn’t denied Him would He not have been killed; if you had spoken would the lies have been disproved. It is not watching someone you have learned to love, cherish, and hold above all else, perish. For while we each came to know an already risen Christ, the disciples knew and loved a living, human Christ who died and then rose. They loved the man before they loved His deity. We can reflect upon Christ suffering and how sad it may have been, but we cannot know the pain of losing a Lord, brother, son, confidant, teacher, and friend all at once. We’ll never lose Christ, whereas they did for two days. The Jewish literary tradition explains eternal suffering as dictated by the distance you are from God for eternity. In other words, the disciples experienced hell, in the truest sense for two days as they were completely separated, physically and spiritually, from Christ, something that we never have to experience unless for some reason we choose it. In the midst of celebrating the angel of death passing over their ancestors, the disciples faced God himself dying before them. We don’t like to talk about [that] pain or about God’s justice; rather, we like to focus on the hope and love that comes from Christ...[I]t it is too easy to look to Sunday on Friday without appreciating the torment in between; and, that without [that] suffering and justice, hope and mercy are meaningless...[T]he disciples had lost Christ for a while. The hope I seek, they did not yet have available. And that makes Easter morning, the stone rolling away, all the more precious to me." |
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