Good Friday Revisited

Where were YOU on Good Friday?

I was in a Community Care Clinic at the time most church services were starting, seeing where the real meaning of that first Good Friday is actually being played out. In our world today, it is in places like hospital emergency wards, community care clinics, prisons and palliative care facilities where we meet up with what the disciples were experiencing so long ago on that first Good Friday.

They were scared, They were afraid. Their lives had changed in an instant. They didn’t know what was going to happen to them. The one person they had invested themselves in, [giving up family, friends, occupations, and homes] was gone. What were they going to do? How were they going to put their lives back together again? And so they huddled at the foot of the cross, not alone, but with others who also shared their grief and disbelief. You can almost heard them crying out ‘How could this be happening to ME?’

So we go to church on Good Friday and we try to capture that day by retelling the old story with readings from the Bible and by following the footsteps of Jesus via the Way of theCross. But are we really internalizing the real meaning of what is happening and why this event is so crucial to our own existence? We sing the hymns in the minor key, the church is bare, the service somber. And that is good and as it should be.

However I would suggest that this past Good Friday it was in places like I mentioned above, where people were really experiencing what the disciples were feeling that day. We all will have Good Fridays in our lives, many of them actually, and most of the won’t be just before Easter. Will we recognize them when they come? Like the disciples, will we look for others who understand what we are experiencing? Will we converse with them sharing our vulnerability and taking strength from their compassion and understanding.

The Easter Story can teach us many lessons. This is the one I learned this year….

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NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

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