In the summer of 2016, we went to Mitla, Mexico where my wife grew up. We had been married for 4 years, and I had not been yet. She wanted me to finally see the place that formed her childhood. I loved it. I loved the pace of living, the friendliness of the people, the beauty of the place, and the fun of shopping in specific shops for specific things. No store sold everything, at least not then.
Someday I would like to go back. It seems unlikely in the near future and that makes me sad.
One of the things that was striking was how religious the town was. There were festivals and parades in the streets celebrating various church holidays. The churches were large and gorgeous.
Inside were stations of the cross like I had not seen before. To be fair, it’s not a tradition I grew up with so I hadn’t seen many. In the Baptist church I grew up in we talked a lot about the resurrection (as we should!) and Good Friday was a step to get us there. We didn’t often stop and ponder what today means or sit in the grief of it; what would it feel like to watch the person you believed was God die? What hope do you have then? Is everything I gave my life to a lie?
I was struck by the portrayal of Jesus in the tomb.
I remember thinking, “That’s intense. Why would they want to show Jesus like this? Surely, they want to show Jesus’ ascending, showing his Godliness, showing his power.” But no, they want to show Jesus suffering like us. And this, friends, is the joy set before Jesus and yet, joy is not the automatic thought when I see this photo.
Jim Wilder, borrowing from Dr. Allan Schore describes joy as, “happy to be with you.” Again, not something that seems intuitive about this depiction of Jesus. But it’s there. Good Friday, the day when Jesus chooses the joy of taking our sin upon himself, “so that we may become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21) is all about Jesus being happy to be fully with us. Obviously, this came with a great deal of suffering and death. This should not be ignored. The bloodied, battered, dying Son of God knew that, in this instance, connection with his creation was found in suffering.
I believe the same to be true today. When I show up to work and serve the “least of these” then I am finding connection and joy even amidst their general suffering and the specific suffering of our current times.
I’ve struggled the last couple weeks to even know how to write. Well, to write without being angry. We’ve had massive layoffs at work due the GOP funding cuts. We’ve had whole programs disappear. I’ve struggled to understand how one of the richest people in the world was put in charge of saving the richest country in the world money and he decides that cutting from the poorest people in the country and world is the solution. I’m angry about it. To the point where I know that I have contempt for this administration and Jesus would say that puts me in the danger of hell. And that part of my anger is justified but what I want to do with that anger is not. I find myself identifying with David’s plea in Psalm 58:
Do you rulers indeed speak justly?
Do you judge people with equity?
No, in your heart you devise injustice,
and your hands mete out violence on the earth.
Even from birth the wicked go astray;
from the womb they are wayward, spreading lies.
Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears,
that will not heed the tune of the charmer,
however skillful the enchanter may be.
Break the teeth in their mouths, O God;
Lord, tear out the fangs of those lions!
Let them vanish like water that flows away;
when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short.
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along,
like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns—
whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.
The righteous will be glad when they are avenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked.
Then people will say,
“Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth.”
I know that Jesus’ anger always leads to healing1 . I’m not sure how to heal with my anger right now. All I can do on this Good Friday where it seems like darkness has won, where death has taken away hope, and where the corrupt have had their way is say with David, “Surely the righteous still are rewarded. Surely there is a God who judges the earth.”
And, like the disciples, I wait.
see Mark 3 where Jesus’ anger moves him to heal a man’s hand, Matthew 21:12-17 where he clears the temple and the blind came to the temple and he healed them, and John 11 where Jesus is “moved” to raise Lazarus from the dead. According to Strong’s, the word for “moved” is “angry”.