What makes holy week holy.
For those new to the Holy Week it composes Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday, including Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Easter itself isn’t in Holy Week; it stands alone. Traditionally this is the busiest season in the church year and always something of a sprint from beginning to end for Pastors. It is also my favorite time of the year, though Christmas comes in a firm second. I have a particular fondness for Good Friday, and upon researching it I discovered that this may be my Lutheran-ness showing. It seems that in Lutheran tradition from the 16th to the 20th century, Good Friday was the most important of all holidays, and abstention from all worldly works was expected. During that time, Lutheranism had no restrictions on the celebration of the Eucharist on Good Friday; on the contrary, it was a prime day on which to receive Communion, and services were often accentuated by special music such as the St Matthew Passion by Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach. So my love of Holy Week, Good Friday in particular, is just in my genes (my family comes from Wittenberg, Germany so there are a lot of Lutheran Genes in there).
The other day my oldest daughter, who has also inherited my love of words and deep thought, asked me why we call it Good Friday and not Bad Friday, or Sad Friday. After all, it’s the day Jesus is crucified, so what makes it so “Good”? It sounded like a pretty bad day to her. I had to give this one some thought. At first I was tempted to give the easy answer, which is that the “good” in Good Friday refers to good in the sense of “holy” which is a truthful and accurate answer, but it was a deep question and I felt it deserved a deeper answer.
The truth is not everything happy is good, and not everything sad is bad. Our human brokenness tempts us to try to categorize life that way, and even try to live out our lives seeking only the happy and pleasant. This often leads to shallow lives of fruitless pursuits, plagued with selfish decisions and broken relationships. The good life is often the life that embraces the hard, the painful, and even the sad for the sake of wisdom and growth. In fact the difference between the truly wise and the truly bitter is that though they experienced the same trials, the wise embraced them and learned from them lessons of humility and perseverance while the bitter hid from the lesson’s hardness and sought out only ways to become “happy” again. This will ultimately always fail and lead to bitterness as the pursuit of happiness as an end unto itself always turns a person inward in a deepening circle of selfish destruction. Happiness is the pleasant byproduct of a life that has attained peace through the exercise of faith in the face of trials. So, maybe Good Friday is good precisely because it is hard and sad. So, happy Holy Week! May it lead us all down a path toward true peace that is only found when we let God teach us the deep lessons.
The other day my oldest daughter, who has also inherited my love of words and deep thought, asked me why we call it Good Friday and not Bad Friday, or Sad Friday. After all, it’s the day Jesus is crucified, so what makes it so “Good”? It sounded like a pretty bad day to her. I had to give this one some thought. At first I was tempted to give the easy answer, which is that the “good” in Good Friday refers to good in the sense of “holy” which is a truthful and accurate answer, but it was a deep question and I felt it deserved a deeper answer.
The truth is not everything happy is good, and not everything sad is bad. Our human brokenness tempts us to try to categorize life that way, and even try to live out our lives seeking only the happy and pleasant. This often leads to shallow lives of fruitless pursuits, plagued with selfish decisions and broken relationships. The good life is often the life that embraces the hard, the painful, and even the sad for the sake of wisdom and growth. In fact the difference between the truly wise and the truly bitter is that though they experienced the same trials, the wise embraced them and learned from them lessons of humility and perseverance while the bitter hid from the lesson’s hardness and sought out only ways to become “happy” again. This will ultimately always fail and lead to bitterness as the pursuit of happiness as an end unto itself always turns a person inward in a deepening circle of selfish destruction. Happiness is the pleasant byproduct of a life that has attained peace through the exercise of faith in the face of trials. So, maybe Good Friday is good precisely because it is hard and sad. So, happy Holy Week! May it lead us all down a path toward true peace that is only found when we let God teach us the deep lessons.
Comments
Post a Comment