Good Friday

Note: this post is actually a journal entry I made following a Good Friday service at my church in 2008. Even tho it was a year ago, it is still meaningful to me, and I decided to share it.

March 21, 2008

Good Friday. An interesting name for the day. Sometimes on Good Friday I’m able to find some time to reflect, and it tends to cause a rather somber mood. Not really melancholy, but sort of like that. It is definitely a reflective mood, a reflective feel to the day. Today was one of those. Borne of a terrible tragedy, Good Friday’s special significance is a great victory, a great winning of a cosmic battle, victory won at a terrible price. I suppose it is in the nature of our Memorial Day in the US. That May holiday is a day to celebrate our nation, our freedom, all the strengths that make us a great and blessed nation. But if you spend any of that day in a cemetery, which you should, it is a sobering day, too. So many flags. Of course most of the flags in our local cemetery mark the graves of people who answered the call to arms, gave up their lives for a few years, and then returned home, married, raised their families, pursued their careers and lived full lives. Some, perhaps most, never saw hostilities. Some, of course, did “see the elephant”, and lived with terrible memories. A few of the flags mark graves of men who gave “the last full measure”. These are the ones that cause sober reflections. These are the ones that remind me of Good Friday.

We had a Good Friday service at church tonight. On the way there I was listening to a song that said something like “Jesus bids us come and die, that we might live”. I don’t think the artist would have expected my line of thinking. It struck me that the important message in that song was that if we surrender to Jesus, we will really learn to live. I’ve been thinking lately about the awesome, I’ll say terrible demand that Jesus makes. In the words of Bonhoefer, he bids us come die. That’s it. Die as in dead, to myself, to my aspirations, to my dreams. Lay it at the foot of the cross. The song sounded like we are to make a wise investment. Sure the price is high, but the payoff is “REAL LIVING”. Surrender because the payoff makes it worth your sacrifice. That scratches the modern itch of personal significance. I’m not sure Bonhoefer would like that thinking. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my reaction was too cynical.

At our service tonight, we were held in the lobby until past the time the service was to start. Then it began with the Pastor addressing the crowd in the lobby, making some remarks to the effect that we were going to reenact some of the dramatic events of the Passion Week, starting with the Last Supper. Then we were invited in to the worship center, which was arranged with tables and chairs. The tables were set as if for a meal. There was appropriate singing, and the appropriate and familiar scripture passages were read. Then the Pastor administered the holy rite of Communion, the Eucharist. In our tradition we call it the Lord’s Supper. I think I like the term “Eucharist” better. I don’t know why. The table attendants served the bread, then poured grape juice into wine glasses. It was only a couple fingers, enough to wash down the bread, and more than we usually get in those little plastic communion cups. I realized that I have developed the habit of sipping from a wine glass. Had it been a paper cup or a tumbler, I suppose I would have knocked it back. But I sipped it. It felt awkward drinking communion in multiple sips, and not all at one time. When the next song began, I hadn’t finished my grape juice. After we finished the next song, I picked up my glass and finished my juice. I didn’t see anybody else drinking at that time, but I was determined to finish mine. The communion cup is often described as a “cup of blessing”, and it is a symbol of the blood of Jesus. I wanted to make sure I could get it all. I suppose it would have been inappropriate to go back for seconds, but it seems to me like a good idea. I noticed a lot of glasses that were partially finished. Lots of leftovers. Why would people not want it all? Why would there be leftover cups of blessing? I guess they weren’t thinking about it the same way I was.

The congregation was then invited to follow the Pastor through a little passageway that had been prepared. It was a single-file walkway between two rows of fake plants. (Maybe some of them were real, I didn’t stop to look.) This was to represent the Garden of Gethsemane. I’m sure it wasn’t anything like the real thing, but it was very meaningful. Sobering.

The walkway opened to an area of the worship center that had chairs prearranged in a semi-circle around a wooden cross, that I’m sure was built for the occasion by a very talented craftsman who attends our church. I don’t know if the planners intended for the arrangement to look like an amphitheatre, but that’s what I thought of as soon as I saw it.

There were some more songs, and some more scripture read. All this was obviously carefully selected and very well done. There were some interludes for prayer, and the prayer times were specifically intended for one kind of prayer or another. There was one where we were to pray “deliver us from evil”. There was another that was confession. We could pray silently or audibly. I didn’t pray audibly. When I am prompted to pray for deliverance from evil, or especially when I am challenged to enter a prayer with the intent of confessing sin, I generally have some things that I need to do business with, me and God. Sometimes that is a wrestling match. I’m often reminded of Jacob wrestling with the angel in the middle of the night, all night. When it was over, Jacob realized who he had been fighting and demanded a blessing. Part of his blessing was a life-long gimpy leg. Wrestling with God is not something to do lightly. Blessing from God can leave you scarred. Better, and definitely blessed, but scarred none the less. It’s serious business, and I’m not going to do it audibly in front of other people. Several people did pray audibly. I was surprised to find their audible prayers a distraction for me.

I noticed that the audible prayers of confession were almost all (one exception, I think) “we” prayers. “We confess that we haven’t always been faithful.” Not bad, but not gut-level. It seems to me that when we pray “we confess” prayers, like “we haven’t been faithful”, or “we haven’t listened for Your leading”, there is too much wiggle room. When I say “we”, I usually mean the rest of the group, but not necessarily me. When I do manage to confess, I think it needs to be “me”, and it needs to be just between me and God. There are times where corporate confession is appropriate. I don’t think Good Friday is the time for that. Good Friday is a time for anguish about the blackness in my heart, the evil in my own soul, the reason I need deliverance. It’s a time to consider that my sin puts me at risk of being forsaken by God. What a terrible thing to contemplate. “My God! My God! WHY have You forsaken me?” Yes, I know. By Jesus sacrifice I am delivered. But we have to wait for that until Sunday. Black Friday didn’t become Good Friday until Sunday happened.

We sang another song,

“Man of Sorrows, what a name- for the Son of God Who came,
ruined sinners to reclaim, Hallelujah, what a Savior!”

Then we filed out in silence. It was a very good service, deeply meaningful and moving.

The purpose of the church

The purpose of the church
I came across this comment on somebody else's blog. The blogger wrote:"My life goal is to inspire a movement of authenticity among all generations of Christians that morphs the face of the evangelical church into a place of being real with yourself, others, and God." I was disappointed. This sounds, to my ear, so much like a post-modern new-agey touchy feely sort of thing. I'm sure that the things this gentleman is trying to promote are good and healthy experiences for Christians. But I'm not comfortable with the idea that our experience of life is the most important thing for the church to pursue.I've been thinking and rethinking the purpose of the church for at least 30 years. That is no claim to any authority on the subject, but it's not a new topic. My thinking on the purpose of the church has gone down a different line. I think Jesus mentioned it in the Lord's Prayer, when he said "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven". I understand that phrase to say that it is the Lord's prayer that one day God's desires will be reflected in the way people interact with one another. Not just evangelical Christians getting along in authenticity, learning to be real, but hungry people having enough food to eat. Little kids in Africa surviving to adulthood, and not losing both parents to AIDS, or murderous rebels, or malaria. Black people and white people getting along in harmony. Rapacious interest and debt policies toward third-world countries replaced with programs that genuinely promote growth and stability. Our world is broken in so many ways. I believe that one of the first purposes of the Church is to set those things right, to work to fix the brokenness. And I wonder why this blogger would hope for that only in the "evangelical" church?