Today represents the silence between Jesus’ cross and resurrection. Imagine the span of time between Jesus’ birth and his death–the road from Christmas to Easter.
Christmas is a great season. Culture slows down a bit and considers the meaning of joy, and everything gets mixed together: Jesus, the New Year, presents, minty drinks, and snow. And for the Christian, there is a certain nostalgia that, when finding its proper place, deepens with the realization that all those experienced joys owe to Jesus’ entrance into the world. Most Christians love Christmas. Most people love Christmas. Goodwill abounds. Gifts for loved ones are secured. Trees are decorated. Shopping malls bustle. Everybody wants a piece of Christmas because everyone appreciates babies and presents, and peace, joy, and goodwill among men. But not long after, the joy and hope of Christmas fades. The imbalance of virtue swings across the spectrum. The realities of winter set in. Coldness. Sickness. Darkness. The Christmastime crowd of expectant shepherds, Magi, and visitors, happily marching in the light of new birth and provision, disperses.
By the time we get to Good Friday, the last rings of celebration have long faded. The train behind us has become thin. By the time we come to the end of Jesus’ road, it has become a solitary and deserted place. You see, the world understands celebration, but it does not understand suffering.
The Christian, however, understands that the meaning of Easter includes the suffering of Jesus. Try hard not to anaesthetize your vision of Easter. Do not let it become only about the resurrection, even though it’s the culmination which brings meaning to the cross and hope to the world. Culmination comes only after the story, and the best endings come only after intricate and well-woven stories, from which unresolved threads hang, awaiting fulfillment.
God’s story began long before Jesus, and some traditions recount it at Easter time to put the events into perspective. The Jesse Tree tradition does this for Christmas. Yet Christmas is just the beginning of the climax. Passion Week is the very pinnacle of that climax, and the Resurrection is the very tip of the pinnacle. It follows up on those dangling participles and punctuates those unresolved clauses. Its meaning, however, depends upon the backdrop of Good Friday, when the light was snuffed out. Why? Because light is always brightest when contrasted with darkness.
Do not reduce your view of Christ’s passion to its post-Easter effects. As these events unfold in the Gospels, our authors give us temporal indicators: “very early in the morning”, “it was the third hour when they crucified him”, “at the sixth hour…until the ninth hour”, “at the ninth hour”, “it was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath)”, “when the Sabbath was over”, etc. Some people use these markers to establish timelines (which is fine), but these may also be used as devotional markers to help us respond to the various aspects of Jesus’ suffering. And on Good Friday, we have the final, rapid-fire accounts of intense suffering.
Do not spurn the suffering of the Savior by paying it no heed. There was a reason Mary watched the whole thing–could not help but watch the whole thing. When you truly love someone, you care about their suffering. And you must behold it to understand it–to understand them. You must be present for it. This is why Jesus was so disappointed in Gethsemane when his disciples fell asleep during his anxious agony. Because for God’s sake, even God needed someone there. This is why Mark says that “the disciples did not know what to say to him.” What was there to be said? They were ashamed. They should have been. When you love somebody, you must understand their suffering. If you love Jesus but neglect his suffering, you do not fully know who it is you claim to love, and if he finds you oblivious to his suffering, you will understand how the disciples felt when Jesus found them sleeping again.
For too long I abstracted (essentially ignored) the temporal details in Scripture. I mostly thought about Easter in terms of the Resurrection. I would never had admitted this because I wasn’t aware of it. I carried its joy with me all year (who doesn’t like joy?), and I reveled in its victory (who doesn’t like to win?). This was easier. It allowed for a convenient and facile devotion at Easter. But I was missing the invitation to know Jesus also in his suffering. I understood Good Friday and a role for suffering (e.g., you cannot escape 1 Peter 4.12-13 nor the suffering in life which begs for context and significance). Yet I did not understand its implications for time.
Time and timing matter, as does our participation in its periodicity. It is not as good to remember Jesus’ suffering at some random time of the year as it is to remember it on Good Friday. It is not as good to remember Jesus’ suffering in isolation as to remember it together, nor to remember it without participating in it, since it would be a strange situation indeed should the head suffer without its body or for that body to remain uncoordinated in its awareness that the head is suffering now.
We are, at this very moment, in that soul-shattering silence between the cross and the empty tomb. Today friends abandon friends, religion conspires, and kisses signal betrayal. Today there is no justice. Today accusations prevail and the self-sabotage of souls gets the last word. Today iron impales, Mary wails, and our Savior’s face pales. Today is the sharp intake of divine breath. This is the period of disillusionment, when the world went dark, when all the promises of God fell into shadow. Today everyone but Lazarus thought it was over. Today, you must understand, it’s over.