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.