Reflective Good Friday

Today's weather belies the pathos of Christians remembering Christ's passion and death this Good Friday. And though I've been reflecting the various ways I've previously spent this day, today has hardly been one for me to sit still and contemplate while soaking in the rays. I've been busy getting the house ready for Easter - a mini spring cleaning of the first floor in about six hours. I still have windows to wash tomorrow and the floor to clean one more time, but the house is aired out, rugs are washed, and every crevice has been vacuumed. I belong to that rare tribe of persons for whom cleaning is cathartic and a contemplative act. Really. And today it has been more so due to the multitude of friends updating their status on facebook - bible quotes, hymn verses, prayers, deep thoughts, and plans or reports of services that try to grasp the significance of what it means for Jesus Christ to be killed, dead, and buried in a tomb. And though the 'repeats' are few and far between, nearly every friend has turned to a poet, apostle, or renown theologian to help them put articulate today's meaning for Christians. That fact, I believe, places me in good company as I cite the second verse of what I've come to affectionately call the "Asbury Fight Song" because it was so often sung during in Kentucky; Charles Wesley pens the words:

'Tis mystery all! Th' immortal dies!
Who can explore his strange design?
In vain the first born seraph tries
To sounds the depth of love divine
'Tis mercy all! Let earth adore:
Let angel minds inquire no more.

Who does understand it? It's been eleven years since I began my seminary journey and I am as dumbstruck as I was as a kid asking my Nana how God could die. I now know proper theological vocabulary to describe the importance of today - forgiveness, reconciliation, justification, redemption, the climax of the covenant, new creation and triumph over the powers of death all pivot on the atonement that was accomplished in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But I don't understand how Christ could have died - even for 36 hours or so one weekend in first century Palestine. Oh, I know the manner of death was crucifixion - but God being dead - I just don't get it. I know I would never have gotten it if I had been one of the Marys or Salome standing there at the cross that horrible afternoon (Matthew 27:56, Mark 15:40-41, Luke 23:27, 29) or in the company of Marys, Salome, or Joanna the morning of the resurrection (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1, Luke 241-10) and I doubt I would have gotten it even if I had been walking with Cleopas on my way to Emmaus a little while later when we bumped into Jesus who then explained what the scriptures meant, beginning with Moses and all the prophets (Luke 24:13-33). Thank God I'm a 21st century girl because I have the witness, testimony, and tradition of the 2,100 years between the historical event of the cross and the moment of today to rely upon about the reality of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. I also have the experience of knowing not just the grace, peace, joy, and love that is the result of the Triune God in my own life and, as importantly, I have abiding and sustaining friendships with brothers and sisters who inhabit every continent of this globe involved in ministries that astound me even as they attest to the wondrous love of God.
Therefore, I can contemplate the death of Jesus today and really dwell on it. I can, metaphorically speaking, stay here and sit vigil as the cleaning turns to baking and cooking preparations till Sunday morning when the resurrection is announced, the gates of hell are busted open and the chains of death are destroyed, but all that time devoted to contemplation does not mean I will comprehend it. So why do it? Why not just rush forward to the pageantry and celebration of Easter morning when the tomb is empty?

Because when I survey the wondrous cross, it causes me to tremble, to see his sacred head now wounded reminds me that divine love became human not so I could understand God but that Christ can embody humanity and understand me and every other human being of creation. His humanity allows us to contemplate the divine - even as he breathes his last and it is finished.