Happy Holy Week to all who celebrate!

Easter is right around the corner, and Sunday is, for lack of a better term, the Super Bowl. As a pastor, it’s basically the biggest day of my year.

First, though, we have to get to Good Friday.

Tomorrow, we will “Celebrate” Jesus’ death. We will follow him to the cross, and into death. And we will watch, as he embraces our guilt and our alienation, and makes them his own, showing us that God can make even the most crooked ways straight, once again.

And then, we will make a post about it.

Social media drives me nuts this time of year. It drives me nuts because any time I log on to see what other people are sharing, no matter the platform, half of what I see is posts that offer some version of the following:

“Good Friday is tough, BUT, don’t worry. Easter is coming”

STAHHHHP IT!

Every year, I see messages like this, and every year, they drive me crazy. Jesus deserves better from us, and to be frank, we deserve better from ourselves. Good Friday is a painful, miserable story, and I understand why we’d want to avoid it or rush through it. But we need all that this day has to offer us.

Good Friday exposes all the worst parts of the human condition. We see this ugliness in Pilate and the Romans. We see this ugliness in the Sanhedrin. We see this ugliness in the disciples. And if we’re being honest, when it’s reflected back to us, we should see it in ourselves too. As a pastor friend of mine once said “I am the place where Christ was crucified.” If we rush through Good Friday, we won’t be able to understand ourselves well enough to grow as people, to comprehend just what Jesus has saved us from, or to grasp the higher purpose that he has saved us for.

What’s more, to rush through Good Friday would be to negate its message to those of us who suffer and grieve. Good Friday is a story of death, and Easter is a story of Resurrection. But there is a full day in between, and before that, the Gospels are in no hurry to rush through Jesus’ suffering. This isn’t innovative. This is how real suffering and grief work. Grief does not neatly proceed through seven linear steps. Suffering feels interminably long to the sufferer. Healing is a journey with many steps forward, and many steps backward, each step undertaken at random and unpredictable times. Good Friday forces us to sit with this reality, to embrace the mess of being human. And in doing so, it teach us empathy for the suffering and grieving. It also helps us to see that, if our own hard times have carried on and on, at least we aren’t alone in that, because Jesus understands how that feels.

Don’t try to brush through tomorrow.

Sit with it. Embrace it. Let it teach you more about who you are, and who God is.

And if you’re ever feeling like you’re on a cross, remember that you aren’t alone, because Jesus is with you.

Make tomorrow meaningful, and on Sunday, have an Easter of abundant joy, appreciating more deeply than ever that there is no pain, no grief, no horror that God would not face for you.