Yesterday was Friday, of Holy Week.
You hear it called, most of the time anyway, Good Friday. But when I think about the
Story of God and the particular event commemorated on this day, the crucifixion of Jesus, I don’t feel like calling it “good”. I feel like calling it what it was: black.
Because I don’t believe it felt good to Jesus.
And I don’t believe it felt good to those he loved to watch him suffer and die.
And I don’t believe it felt good for them to take down his lifeless body, anoint it with
spices and perfume, wrap it up, and put it away in a tomb of darkness never to be seen again.
And I don’t believe it felt good to God.
So, I have to have the blackness of this Friday.
Otherwise, how can I truly understand the brightness of this Sunday, its vividness, its
clarity, its liveliness? It reminds me that there’s more to life than meets the eye, that life is more than merely mortal, that the kind of love that Jesus loved with, that he was, still is.
Which is why I believe that life never ends: love never dies. The kind of love that will
never let go, that God birthed at Christmas, that Jesus lived, and that so many of us love with today, whether we believe as Christians or not, simply cannot be killed.
That’s why it hurts every one of us so much when someone we love dies. Bodies perish,
however it happens. And that makes life feel so dark, so black, so hopeless. But love—this kind of self-giving, flesh-transcending, deeper-than- the-heart kind of feeling, I-would- die-for- you kind of living—that truest kind of love, never dies. And I believe that’s the kind of love we all live with.
It’s what binds us together. It’s what saves us.
I won’t deny that death is real. But I will deny that it’s greater than love.
Nothing is.
Don’t you just love it? HALLELUJAH!
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