No Hope Darker
March 25, 2005 (Good Friday)
By
The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
(From The Lectionary Page)
One of the great Western Philosophers once said that true happiness was not dipping one's paw into a jar of honey. True happiness was the moment just before one dipped one's paw into a jar of honey. Winnie the Pooh knew, just as you and I know, that the fullness of an experience is found not only in the experience itself, but also, and maybe even more so, in the anticipation of the experience. Childhood memories of Christmas Eve are full not of opening presents, but of sleepless nights spent waiting to open presents. The pleasure of homemade bread lies not only in the taste, but in the smell of the baking while waiting for that first bite. The anticipation of a good thing is an integral part of its goodness.
To our sorrow, it works the other way around as well. For children who have done wrong, waiting for their parents to find out is often greater suffering than whatever punishment is eventually handed down. For those whose loved ones are missing and feared dead in an accident or attack, the waiting for news is said to be worse even than knowing that their loved one is dead. Those who suffer torture report that the anticipation of pain is more powerfully motivating than the pain itself.
On Good Friday, you and I are faced with both the darker and the lighter sides of anticipation. As Christians Easter is in our hearts, even in the depths of the Good Friday liturgy. While the disciples may not have known that Jesus would rise from his death on the cross during the original events two thousand years ago, it is not possible for us to imagine that Easter Sunday might not come, hard on the heels of Good Friday, to redeem the suffering and humiliation of the cross. Our anticipation is as children on Christmas Eve: now it is dark, and we must find a way to wait (though it is uncomfortable to do so), but soon it will be light again, and great things will happen, and everything will be happy. Even on Good Friday we have in our hearts the certain knowledge of Easter joy.
Eventually the metaphor breaks down, as all metaphors will do. Good Friday is not Christmas Eve. We are not here merely to build the tension and excitement within ourselves so that Easter morning is even more joyous. We do not gather here, in a stripped and desolate sanctuary with lights dimmed, merely to gain an appreciation for the splendor and flowers and music of Easter Sunday. Friday is not a prelude to the symphony of Sunday. In our world, Good Friday is every bit as real as Easter Sunday.
Ever since I became a Christian at sixteen years of age, whenever someone has asked me what my favorite holiday was, I have said Easter. I meant it. Christmas is fun, but there are too many obligations involved for it to be a favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is great because you get the food and family of Christmas without all the shopping. And Halloween is a fun excuse to dress up and pretend and play with the darker side of things. But nothing could beat Easter for sheer happiness and joy and depth of meaning. Easter has always been my favorite.
I'm tempted lately to change my favorite holiday to Good Friday. People would look at my oddly I'm sure; think of me as morbid or masochistic. Good Friday isn't even a holiday for most people, let alone a favorite one. Yet for me Good Friday is the day that gives Easter Sunday all of its power. What joy has Sunday without the despair of Friday? What grace has Sunday without the humiliation of Friday? What good is a resurrection without a crucifixion?
The next time someone asks me to name my favorite holiday, I probably won't say Good Friday. People already think I'm odd without me having to explain another eccentricity. I'll probably say Easter. It doesn't really matter though, because Good Friday and Easter Sunday are the same holiday in the end. You can't have one without the other. Two sides of the same coin, as they say. Yin and Yang. When I say I like Easter best, they'll think I like the happiness and the celebration; the joy of Jesus rising from the dead in glorious triumph. I do like those things, by the way, but I won't be thinking of the joy of Easter accomplished. I'll be thinking of that space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday: that terrible gap when the world was without its God, when the Creator was dead at the bloody hands of the created.
That's where the meaning is, deep in that short eternity that hangs suspended between Friday and Sunday, a hole so deep that all the created world could fall into it and never be seen again. There is no death like this death. There is no darkness like this darkness. There is no despair like this despair. And, most importantly of all, there is no hope like the hope that grows out of the tear-streaked, blood-marked wood of a cross that is the only bridge across this chasm of black forgetting. Hope, in the face of such a terrible grave, is as nothing. Yet hope, in the face of Good Friday, is all we have. God grant that it is enough to keep us alive until Sunday. AMEN.