(As promised - my Good Friday meditation) ‘Why Is Good Friday Good? (The theological reason for the name) The Baltimore Catechism declares that Good Friday is called ‘good’ because Christ, by His Death, showed His great love for man, and purchased for him every blessing. Good, in this sense, means holy, and indeed Good Friday is known as Holy, and Great Friday among Eastern Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox. Good Friday is also known as Holy Friday in the Romance languages. The answer given by the Baltimore Catechism seems a good explanation, except for the fact that Good Friday is called good only in English. The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from Gods Friday (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark. If Good Friday were called good because English adopted the German phrase, then we would expect Gute Freitag to be the common German name for Good Friday, but it is not! Instead, Germans refer to Good Friday as Karfreitag—that is, Sorrowful or Suffering Friday—in German. So, in the end, the historical origins of why Good Friday is called Good Friday remain unclear, but the theological reason is very likely the one expressed by the Baltimore Catechism: Good Friday is good because the death of Christ, as terrible as it was, led to the Resurrection, which brought new life to those who believe. .................................................................................................. Two thousand years or so later we can reasonably accept the “good” in the day that Christ died. We live with, and in the outcomes of that day and they are all good beyond what we could imagine or think. However, what of that day itself? What of the Christ in that day? What of that raggle-taggle band of disciples? How good was their “Good Friday?” This is where my brain got stuck on this Good Friday just passed. I hiked through the old streets of my favourite city. Arriving at the harbour, I picked up the walkways along the water’s edge. A south wind pushed against me. It was not extreme but certainly persistent. In its commitment it had pushed the pack ice across the face of Lake Ontario and piled it up in strange and mysterious arrangements against the north shore (my shore) of the lake. It lay motionless on the surface of the water like a giant jigsaw puzzle with none of the pieces fitting but jammed tight together notwithstanding; acres of “chunked ice” and no two chunks bearing the same design. On this Good Friday I reflected upon the details of my life: my incredible wife, our delightful daughter, the beautiful congregation I pastor and on and on. I reflected upon the long journey that delivered us into present reality. In my silence I smiled as I walked. In my silence my spirit stirred and worshiped. I knew the “good” in this Good Friday. That good was God and God alone. The experience was sweet! And then, – there always seems to be an “and then.” And then, I thought of Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday and so on; those days before Good Friday. Those days had seen five university students murdered in the city of Calgary, Alberta. Those days had seen upwards of three hundred school students drown in a boat in South Korea. I found myself in tears even as I am now. I thought of five sets of parents who had sent their young folk off to University. That “sending off” was undoubtedly filled with hope, potential, dreams, pride and certainly the future. Did any of those parents entertain the notion that their kids would not be coming home? And now, on this Good Friday they are left with a dark eclipse. The question pounded in my brain: How good is their Good Friday? I understood that my acute sensitivity to this event was very much tied up with the reality that I have a daughter graduating from University. I could not imagine the nightmare those parents must be living in. How good is Good Friday for that parent who receives a text message from a child reporting that he/she is about to die in a sinking boat? “Please forgive me for any hurts I caused you, Mom. Tell Dad goodbye for me.” “Good Friday?????” I am aware that ‘for the joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross.’ We make much of the joy and aspire to possession of that joy. Perhaps we should, but I am suspicious. My suspicion is that we think joy and suffering are mutually exclusive; to live in true joy is to be suffering-free. And anyone suffering cannot have or experience joy. Whatever it may mean – the joy set before Him – it certainly did not nullify His sufferings or magically make them less. They were what they were, and please let us not be as arrogant as to think we have any real understanding of the true weight, measure and nature of His sufferings – JOY notwithstanding. In referencing that day – that actual day, – and our Lord’s experience in it and that, of that bewildered band of followers; in referencing that day ahead of the outcomes, before the outcomes were apparent, those other designations cited in my study are not at all inappropriate: Long Friday, Sorrowful Friday, Suffering Friday, etc.. And so, on this Good Friday as I sauntered along and wept and prayed and worshiped, still looking through a darkened glass, it seemed I caught a hint, just a shadow of something I had not seen before. The good in Good Friday is the “transformational mystery” (the only way I can express it) in/of suffering in bringing good outcomes out of evil. With that in mind, I asked my God on behalf of those who this Good Friday were experiencing a Long Friday, Sorrowful Friday, Suffering Friday – a Friday in which the outcomes were eclipsed by suffering – that grace would be mixed with the sufferings and that once again, as difficult as it might be to imagine, this Long Friday, Sorrowful Friday, Suffering Friday will become a Good Friday for them.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 02:05:03 +0000
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