"Good" Friday

Today - "Good Friday" - is the quietest day of the church year. We began the Triduum last night with our Maundy Thursday service of feasting, fellowship and storytelling as we sat around tables. As it closed with the foretelling of what was to come and a prayerful Taize song, we will continue that service tonight. It will be a service of peace and prayer and readings from the Gospel with short reflections that will hopefully help us to process- maybe even understand a little better- the significance of the events we are remembering.

With the events of betrayal, denial and death on our hands, it can be difficult to understand why we might call this day "Good" Friday. I have heard a great variety of reasons for the name we have come to know this day by, and by far, I think I resonate most with the description Barbara Brown Taylor offers when she wrote:

Today, on the quietest day of the year, we have come to sit in the presence of one who was fully who God created him to be every day of his life--who loved God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength, and with all his mind--and who loved his friends so much that he stepped into the oncoming traffic of death in order to push them out of the way. He furthermore did it all with no more than the basic human equipment--a beating heart, two good hands, a holy vision, and some companions who could see it too--thereby showing the rest of us humans that such a life is not beyond our reach. Whatever else happens on Sunday, here is enough reason to call this Friday Good. (full article can be found here)

Let us gather, sitting at the feet of Jesus and remembering these mighty acts as we relive the events of today. Let us remember not just in that historic, yes-this-happened sort of way, but in the way of anamnesis, much as we did last night gathered around tables. That is, to remember by doing, experiencing, and allowing ourselves to feel as we fully engage with the crucifixion of Jesus.