Reflections on Good Friday: Have a Good ‘Life Is Terrible’ Day…

I don’t “get” the liturgical/church calendar. Never have.

I don’t “get” the liturgical/church calendar.  Never have.

Ever since I converted to Christianity and began to learn about some of the more liturgical and sacramental Christian traditions, it has never made sense to me that every year we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know that Jesus is going to be (already was, is) resurrected; that we’re supposed to spend Lent, or Advent, or Good Friday, or Ash Wednesday, or any other time, living in the shadow of death: as if we hadn’t already seen the first glimpse of the light of eternal day; as if we hadn’t already begun to live in the light of Christ’s life and victory over death.

Maybe it’s my Quaker background, a long cultural prejudice against having holidays or set-apart times of any kind. I just keep thinking, If Christ is supposed to transform every aspect of our lives, why spend some days acting or feeling as if He hadn’t even come yet?

And yet. Some people talk about Christianity in terms of the “already but not yet”—already, “the kingdom of God has come near you”; “the kingdom of God has come upon you”; “the kingdom of God is within you.” I may not know much about your heart or anyone else’s, but I can definitely tell you what a difference Jesus has made in my life—“Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee,” etc.; and if anyone thinks I’m a jerk now, or doesn’t like some of my words or actions now, all I can say is, You should have seen me before I was Christian...

And yet. At the same time, we hope in heaven, that there will come a time when God makes everything right and makes all things new. Certainly there’s plenty that’s still messed up in our world and in our selves between now and then. Any religion that’s going to reach people in this world has to speak to people in this world, with all its sorrow and worry and darkness. That’s part of what’s unique about Christianity, maybe: It claims to offer (pun intended, sort of) a God Who enters into our life and suffers with us.

And maybe that’s why, even if I still don’t really understand (or like!) giving up things for Lent etc., I have felt for a long time that my favorite church service, if I had to pick one, is Ash Wednesday—possibly the most pessimistic service of the whole year, and the one that offers us the least in some ways—I mean, as I remember it, basically the priest tells each of us, one by one, You’re garbage and you’re going to die someday. Then we go home.

Maybe it’s the same reason I sometimes feel that my favorite book of the Bible, if I had to pick one, is Ecclesiastes. Maybe it would have been my favorite even if I had never been Christian (except that I wouldn’t have read the Bible in the first place if I hadn’t been Christian first).

And maybe among my favorite songs still would have been (feel free to look down on me...) the melancholy ones from the 1990s and 2000s, songs expressing deep dissatisfaction and sadness in this life, longing for something more than this life, something transcendent.

“Our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”

And sometimes I really don’t “get” why I like those things so much, either. Maybe it’s comforting to know that you’re not the only one, that there’s someone else out there that feels this way.

Maybe Christianity is saying, from Ecclesiastes to Good Friday, Yeah, life is terrible. Life is full of disappointment. And we can talk tomorrow (or this Sunday!) about solutions (God has some...), treatments for the disease, the good news that there is more than this world, plans and advice and theology, all that stuff you don’t want to hear about right now—but for today, like the bear in the empathy video, we’re just going to sit with you.

And it’s not clear to me that the author of Ecclesiastes is even fully on board with the whole God thing, or thinks that things are ultimately good, in the end. (The ending brings it back to God but feels tacked on.) He is at least contemplating whether life might be, really and finally, a tragedy.

As Christians, we have a different perspective; Dante’s great work is called the Divine Comedy because in the long run, in the big picture, reality does have a happy ending. God does make everything right.

But you can’t get there without first walking through the darkness, and really seeing the need for the light.

So have a blessed “Life Is Terrible” Day. I’ll see you on the other side.