Good Friday

Normally at this time on Friday morning I publish my Text for the Week, however my text this week is the Resurrection story in Mark 16:1-8 and I think it is completely inappropriate to publish that today, so it will be coming out Sunday morning at 6:30am. Instead, I want to simply ponder for a moment on Good Friday. This year I am going to try to sit in the silence of Good Friday, I am going to attempt to have far less of a presence on social media from now to Sunday and reflection on the sense of isolation the disciples must have felt. I also want to reflect on the fact that they would have been incredibly torn individuals. Perhaps they would have been racked with survivors guilt, allowing Jesus to die alone without doing more to intervene at his arrest. Perhaps they would have been lost and felt a sense of meaninglessness- like they had wasted the last three years of their lives following this man around only to witness him being killed. Perhaps, they would have rethought everything about their world. But I think I can safely assume they would have had two major thoughts and all of the corresponding emotions tugging at them as they sat (likely together) in their isolation. The first is they would have feel overwhelming grief at the loss of their friend and mentor. The second that they were still celebrating one of the holiest feasts of the year, a feast that commemorated God’s deliverance from slavery into freedom and life.

I have been in situations where I have been celebrating while others are grieving and grieving while others are celebrating, but I do not remember a time when I was in the midst of both the way the disciples would have been. Yet, even in these times I have found the thoughts and emotions create such tension that it is difficult to experience either the grief or celebration completely. And with that in mind I intend to think about these and similar questions this weekend.

• Did the disciples feel threatened or hunted?
• Would they have interacted as a group or viewed one another with skepticism?
• Could they continue celebrating the Passover?
• How would the disciples have viewed their faith and the Jewish leadership who just crucified Jesus?
• Would they have been tempted toward revolt against Rome?
• Was Mary a believer and if not how would the disciples have been impacted by her presence?
• What was Mary thinking looking at these men who followed her son?
• How does this vision of grief combined with religious sacrament impact my approach to both the joy and grief in the world?

I do not know which of these will dominate my time over the next 48 hours but I trust at least one of them will engage me. So I wish you a blessed and reflective Good Friday and Silent Saturday and I will be back on Sunday and I hope that at least some will reach out to me with stories of how their meditations went over these two days.