During Lent, we have been trudging ever-deeper into a story whose deepest, darkest point will happen on Friday. Each week, we have been meditating on notions such as letting go, emptying out, allowing to die what needs to die. And now the inevitable: Jesus is killed. Death has arrived. It is the inescapable destination point of the Lenten story, and of the Way that we disciples have resolved to follow. The Way is the way to the cross. Friday is the day where we are confronted head-on with the reality of death. If the road we are on doesn’t lead to some kind of death, then surely we are on the wrong road.
My son and I made hot cross buns last night – gluten free ones, which took some extra effort (including three kinds of flour and a pre-steamed oven), but they are pretty good. This morning I asked, “Would you like a hot cross bun for breakfast?” He replied, “No, I’m saving them for Happy Friday.”
Happy Friday. I smile whenever I think of my son’s re-naming of Good Friday. I want to tell him that it’s not a happy story at all, that it’s a very sad story: the story of love itself nailed to a cross; the story that aches and tremors under the crushing, bruising force of all the evil that humanity has to offer. And yet – and this is the great surprise of the Christian story – it is by going through that suffering and death that new life can be realised. Would you call it happiness? I’m not sure. Maybe other words are more appropriate: joy, ecstasy, love realised in the heart, love bursting into creation. I don’t know what words to use to try to convey the devastation of death, of all hope lost…and then, on Easter morning, the unimaginable surprise of life risen again.
May God be with you in these coming holy days – as you journey down, down, down, to the foot of the cross, and then rise up again on a brand new morning.
Words by Rev Andreana
Image by Marg Edwards