Why Good Friday is So Good

I love this time of year--Lent. I love it because it leads up to Good Friday. Yes, Good Friday... not Easter. Well, it does lead up to Easter, but that's not why I like it. I like it because it prepares us for Good Friday, which prepares us for Easter.

Truth be told, I usually cringe when it comes to celebrating Easter, especially as it concerns worship services. On the other hand, I relish the opportunity to commemorate Good Friday. It's easier for me to authentically participate in a Good Friday service than it is for me to participate in an Easter "Celebration" service.

I'm not trying to pit one service against the other, nor am I trying to establish that one is more significant than the other. I'm just saying that I more readily enter into the mood of the Good Friday service than the mood of an Easter "Celebration" service.

Here's why. I think that we celebrate too much as it is in church services. In fact, I think that we celebrate so much that our celebration has lost its connection with the Reason for celebrating.

Here's what I mean by that. On any given Sunday, we want services that are what? Positive. Uplifting. Upbeat. Energetic. We want our greeters to be what? Smiling. Happy. Inviting. Positive. Upbeat. We want people to feel what? Comfortable. Welcome. At ease. Jovial. We want to "change their minds" about church--church is "fun," not "boring." We want our pastors to be what? Funny. Engaging. Encouraging. Inspiring.

My gosh. It's no wonder that people sometimes get the idea that being a Christian means being disconnected from reality--as though all of the garbage going on in the world and in our lives can be (and even needs to be) all forgotten with a grin.

It's this growing disconnection that, in my experience, comes to full term on Easter Sunday. We had better "wow" all of those two-times-per-year-church-attenders with just how happy we are to be Christians. Our greeters' faces better be sore from grinning so widely for so long. Our music better be so joyful that a starving kid from India would forget about his plight. The message better be so evangelistic and positive that an atheist would feel "on the outside looking in." Never mind that most of us couldn't articulate what Jesus' bodily resurrection has to do with our lives here and now. Jesus rose, and that's supposed to make us all happy. So smile, dammit.

I'm jaded... I know. I've seen too many Easter productions for my own good. But man, if I feel like our celebration services are disconnected from reality, how is a one- or two-times-a-year visitor going to feel? Won't this Jesus, this cross, and this tomb, which normally mean little to nothing to him or her to begin with, mean even less if all we're doing is singing more loudly, grinning more widely, shaking their hands more violently, and dusting off the "He is risen/He is risen indeed" phrase for its one-time appearance?

It just doesn't seem very connected to my life. In my life, there is a raging in my soul. There is unrest. In my life, I struggle with how I am living vs. how I am supposed to be living. In my life, I am confronted with my weaknesses, my failures, and my sin. In my life, I see a popular culture who is becoming ever more aware and ever more adept at depicting just how disconnected the Jesus of the American church is with the American life. And I don't think we're going a long way to convince them otherwise in most of our Easter services.

On the other hand, a Good Friday service makes a great deal of sense to me and my life. I can feel the reality of a living Jesus as his Spirit reminds me of his sacrifice. I can feel the peace that is married to the sorrow of an innocent, holy, and powerful God-man dead on a cross. I can feel reconciled to God, because I am reminded that everything that gets in the way of Him and me was put on the back of Jesus, God in the flesh. I can genuinely mourn for all that I've done and for all that's been done to me as the result of sin, and can genuinely find life in the death of the One who has already begun to right all the wrongs.

I guess for me it all comes down to this: the messiness captured in a Good Friday service lines up better with my messy life, and therefore the message of the Good Friday service becomes powerful in my life.

I'd like to see an Easter service that captures this bittersweetness. We're still in the bittersweet right now. We're still people living in the tension of the "already" and "not yet." Christ's reign has begun, but has not yet been fully realized. And although this truth in and of itself does not permit us to celebrate and live as fully as we will be able one day, it does permit us to live to the fullest in the here and now. It connects with life here and now.

Celebrating cantankerously forces me to forsake my life as I know it will be lived immediately after the Easter service is over. I'd much rather exhale in relief after crying at the cross.

Music is Art

I don't pretend to know a lot about music, or about art. I do know, however, that I have some artistic tendencies. I don't paint or sketch. I don't write short fictional stories or wear thick-rimmed glasses and tight jeans. But I can sing and kinda play a few instruments, at least well enough to get me into trouble. And I think a lot about things and try to put them into words that capture their essence. In prose, that is.

Anyways, I've been lucky or unlucky enough (depends on how you look at it) to be tapped as the interim musical worship leader (long story) at church. Here's what I've come to realize about why music is such a hot button in churches.

An aside before I continue: I firmly believe that the terms "music" and "worship" are not at all interchangeable, and must be kept distinct from each other in order to retain their respective meanings. Worship is living life sacrificially because of Christ's sacrifice (Rom. 12:1); music is an artistic form that churches use to depict that life. Of course, I can worship through music... but I can not allow myself to use the verb "worship" to simply mean "sing" or "play an instrument." I could go on and on and on about this, but I do not wish to focus this particular entry on the subject. Nevertheless, this distinction is relevant to the rest of the entry. Aside completed. Now back to where I was initially headed...

Music is such a hot button in churches because it is an art form, and art is not meant to hide things. It is meant to reveal or depict. It brings to light what is hidden, and draws attention to what our eyes have trained themselves to filter out or pass over as insignificant. Consequently, the music that is selected and sung at a particular church reveals... well, it reveals everything about us musicians that we desire to keep hidden, and reveals all of what is hidden about us to everyone in attendance. It does this whether we realize it or not, and it does this whether we want it to or not. It does this by its very nature, apart from our will, our crafting, or our intentions.

If worshiping means living life sacrificially because of Jesus' sacrifice, then we should expect our music to reveal whether or not we are really worshiping in our lives. That's what art does, remember? It reveals. In other words, by participating on stage in musical worship in front of hundreds of people, we should anticipate being laid bare for who we really are--either as people living sacrificially because of Jesus and with Jesus... or as people who are not.

And this is shaky, scary territory, isn't it? I mean, where I am going to go with this? Am I about to state that I always know if someone is a true worshiper by simply looking at them while they sing or play? Am I going to try and establish that one musical style is a better depiction of a sacrificial life than another style? Should I make a push for the theological content of hymns as a better depiction than those blasted repetitive praise choruses? Am I about to open the Pandora's box of guitar vs. piano? I mean, the guitar kinda looks a little more like a "cross" than a piano, and what's more sacrificial than a cross, right? (I trust that you are picking up on the increased level of sarcasm in the preceding paragraph.)

But these avenues, as well as the fears, insecurities, and often selfish agendas associated with them simply illustrate my point. All of these and anything else competing with Christ for control over a musical worshiper's life will be revealed for all to see when the aspiring musical worshiper goes to sing or to play. The most flawless and grandest of performances can not hide someone's heart. I would even go as far as to say that such performances move only those seeking to consume or to be entertained... and move them somewhere that is not toward the cross. Sure, talent and technical excellence can misdirect for a time, maybe. But for those who are living sacrificially, very little remains hidden from sight. And nothing remains hidden from the One Who Sees All, the Light Himself.

And just to be clear: talent and technical excellence are necessary, but only to the degree that they allow for a faithful depiction of God, his sacrifice in Jesus, and what life is like with him. The point where our talent and excellence either fail to depict these ends (because we don't have enough of them!) or compete with these ends (because we are controlled by them!) is the point where we become depicted through our music as the frauds we really are.

Musical worship sets are not performed; they are created and set on display, just like God did the earth and its inhabitants. Likewise, musical worshippers do not perform; they willingly set themselves on display as a depiction of a sacrificed life. Musical worshipers should therefore be both excited and warned.

Spare the Rod

So here's another thing that kinda sucks about being a young pastor: confronting laypeople who are significantly older than you are about something that they are doing.

It's like seeing a sign that says "BEWARE: MINE FIELD AHEAD" and deciding to just keep on walking. You know that you are going to get blown up.

You're gonna get blown up because you've never walked in this field before. You don't know where to step. And, because you are young, you easily get fed up with getting sniped at while you are trying to carefully step, or getting pushed while you feel your way, or whatever. Then you decide to hell with it--I'm gonna charge right through this, life and limb be damned.

Discipline has its place. In fact, it has more of a place than we normally give it... at least, that's what I observe. It's much better to courageously have a hard conversation with someone than it is to try to manage them, or blow smoke, or just flat out lie to their face. Trouble is, how do you temper a hard conversation with gentleness and respect? Especially when you're getting anything but?

So, Holy Spirit, give me the courage to have the hard conversations, the wisdom to be honest and clear, the desire to be gentle and respectful, and the willingness to die Christ's death.

Oh... and if it's in your plan, just move those people to a different state or something.