A Good Friday Kind of Feeling

Morning chill. Mary. Urgent purpose. Jesus. Cross. Tomb. Empty. Empty tomb. Christ. Raised from the dead. Peter. Beloved disciple. Running. Racing. Empty tomb. Where have they taken him? Fear, anguish, confusion. Empty tomb.

What a jumble of images and emotions spilling off the pages in our scripture for Easter.  As I sit here working on our Easter service, on my Easter sermon, I wonder at those first moments of the new world.  Thomas Long preached a sermon from his ext years ago and in it he talks about how the first minutes of our new world were categorized not by good news but by worse news.  For Mary and Peter and the beloved disciple, the first moments after the resurrection, the first moments of the first Easter, were moments of agony and gut sickening stress – their Lord removed from his tomb, the body missing, the uncertainty of where the movement was heading…the sting of salt being rubbed into open wounds. The agony in those moments makes the ecstasy of what follows all the more powerful, all the more sweet.  But to be sure, the joy of Easter begins with a stomach ache for the folk in John’s Gospel.  I feel their pain today.

As I think about this, I think about the culture of the church today: a culture that would just as soon skip Thursday and Friday, thank you very much, and head right into a rousing version of Jesus Christ is Risen Today.  I think about all the complaints we pastor get from over-worked church folks unhappy that we are “making” them attend Thursday AND Friday services during Holy Week.  I think of all the comments I hear about how onerous it is to have to sing or greet or even attend three services in one week…and I think of my own grumpy disposition as Holy Week progresses and I get progressively tired: is this what Christ died for?  Do we live with attitudes worthy of Mary and Peter and the Beloved’s disciple’s angst?  Are we living lives worthy of their hustling, their tears, their heartache, much less their sweet relief and ecstatic joy when they realized that Christ had risen? And if our lives are worthy of their example, then how do we come into Easter morning in any way but crawling on our stomachs? How do we gaze up to heaven and sing our praises without being utterly convicted and ashamed?

The story has really caught me, well and good this year.  I’m just not sure what it intends to do with me.  And this, my friends, is why I should never attempt to write an Easter sermon before Good Friday.