Good Friday

It’s not good, is it?  There’s an understatement.

Death after death after death after hundreds of deaths.  Ominous clouds of fear and anxiety cover the world.  Vital signs on medical devices and financial spreadsheets crashing in tandem.  The lonely and the lost, the unseen and the unknown confined to their homes, to be seen even less, known even less.  A society already disconnected, having what few bonds of brotherhood that remain, forcibly severed by the necessity of separating our lives in order to preserve them.  It’s not good in the slightest.

And yet the calendar insists this is Good Friday.  Though the upheaval to our daily routines has caused the days of the week to lose all meaning, I’m willing to be convinced it may well be Friday.  But it’s not good.

I catch myself thinking this is no way to celebrate Easter.  And yet, as my mind wanders down that rabbit trail, I wonder if that’s true at all.

All of us, including the healthy, the young, the fit, the strong – those we’ve come to describe cautiously as “relatively low risk” – are sacrificing simple pleasures and freedoms we’ve taken for granted our whole lives.  And we do so not principally for our own sake (though in part, we do) but mainly for the sake of the sick, the old and the already-weakened.

Maybe, in some way, we can understand something of the Good Friday sacrifice by the one who had it all, who gave up his freedoms for people in desperate need.

Families are keeping themselves separated, parents from children, sibling from sibling, grandparent from grandchild.  Though it breaks our hearts, we’re putting distance between ourselves and those to whom we feel the closest bonds.

Maybe, in some way, we understand something of the Father and Son who, on Good Friday, turned their faces from each other and separated themselves for the sake of the world.

Frontline workers, carers, doctors, nurses and many others who receive even less adulation are putting themselves in harm’s way to serve and to save those who they don’t even know.  Not their mother, but yours.  Not their brother, but yours.

Maybe, in some way, they’re a modern parable of the Good Friday saviour, who could have chosen safety but instead chose suffering, to protect and to rescue even those who misunderstood, misrepresented or mistreated him.

Some of those frontline workers are not those who would have considered themselves heroes.  They are paid many times less than some others.  They are in jobs less sought after, careers less craved.  Yet when push comes to shove they are the ones deemed essential to our collective survival.

Maybe, in some way, they remind us of the rejected one, the discarded one, who on Good Friday became the cornerstone, the keystone, the foundation on which our lives rest.

Maybe, on reflection, this is a pretty apt way to mark Good Friday.

Good Friday was a day of mourning, where the spectre of death loomed large.

And as Friday spilled into Saturday, the noise faded, the people dispersed and all that was left was the stone dead silence of the tomb.

And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Easter Saturday stumbled, grieving, sobbing, into Sunday.  Resurrection Sunday.  Where from the tomb – the very notion of death itself – burst out life, bright and breathing.

Life out of death.  Victory out of the jaws of defeat.  A new way forward, when all hope had seemed lost.

In our home we’re a few weeks away from what will – probably – be a lockdown labour.  Our third child will be a daughter of the quarantine.  A CoronaBaby.

This Easter we’re constantly reminded in the most physical and visceral of ways that even in a time of death and despair, life bursts forth.

This Friday might not seem very “good” at all.  But on the other side of every tearful, fearful Friday, is a Resurrection Sunday.  

So even amidst the chaos this Good Friday, have a happy and above all a hopeful Easter.  There is always hope.  Always.  Friday is never the end of the story.

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