I called up one of my friends today to wish her an Happy Good Friday. "Happy Good Friday?" she asked, "Happy Easter I can get, but not happy Good Friday!" Good Friday doesn't make a lot of sense. Its the day we Christians celebrate our leader being executed like a common criminal. Quick, quick name a religion where the hero so thoroughly loses. I know my friends who aren't Christians don't get it. That's fine. I'm cool with that. It doesn't really bother me too much.
But it means a lot to me. Good Friday is the day Christ was hung on the cross. It has a deep metaphysical reality. All the sins past and present and all the promises past and present met in and collapsed on that one point in space time.1 It is a very weighty experience and goes beyond words. We Christians tend to pass over it and rush onto Easter with lilies and bunnies and eggs and Jesus rising from the dead again. We don't meditate on the cross nearly enough.
What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to have faith in a God like the one we have? How can we share such a ludicrous message to a world that doesn't think it's sick? Or if does, it thinks its "only a flesh wound"? Being a Christian is impossible if you think you can do it on your own steam. I've tried and I'll keep on trying; but I find that I see the most success when I'm not the one in charge.
We all know there is a God. Logical dead ends come when we pursue each point to its conclusion, but which God is it? To say that it is the Christian God is a bold absurdity. Which probably makes it either completely true or completely false; a black and white demarkation. It seems to me that it is true because ... well ... can you offer a better alternative at how the world can change? We live in a world that is full of fallen people and the only way for things to be okay is if that outside force makes it okay, obeys the obligations of wrath, and thus with the stakes high enough bets everything. I don't know. I don't get it. Thats part of Good Friday though. You don't have to get everything for it to be true. And the truth and falsity isn't what gets people, its the cost. Free? What's the catch, what do I have to do? The cost of free is too high for people want. So let them pay.
So its Good Friday and I am left with no explanations and I ask the same questions everyone else does about it. I come back with the same answer all the best theologians proffer, "I don't know, its a mystery." The payment is made and the cost is free. I'm willing to hedge my bets on that, and that is what makes it an "Happy Good Friday;" the exhilaration of the unknown.
- The irony is that even though all of existence seems to be compressed onto that one point; that one point exists in a multiplicity. To God all time is now and so all the sins: past, present, and future are not only on that one point in time; but due to God's perception of time being something that exists within atemporality, Christ has died, is dying, and will die yet. Concurrently to be both separate and with God at the same time is something that is truly painful and human.
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