Happy Holy Week Baysiders! Hope spring is treating you well and the good Lord is blossoming in your souls this season.
Those four letters in the title of this blog entry bring so much joy and relief. Fridays in our culture are happy days. Friday is the day we can let go of the stress from work, the evening of the week you finally get to take the girl you asked out on a date, the time to meet up with your girlfriends, a jump start to the fun weekend plans you have, and the day to have movie night with the family. It’s a pretty darn good day. So it makes sense there is a Friday on the Church calendar called Good Friday, right? It’s something we do for fun and relaxation. Well, not exactly. Good Friday is good because its about what God has done for us and is wiling to do to be with us.
In Church history across all Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) Good Friday commemorates the suffering, crucifixion and death of Jesus of Nazareth more than 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. The name Good Friday is entirely appropriate because the suffering and death of Jesus, as terrible as it was, marked the dramatic culmination of God’s plan to save his people from their sins. This moment in human history was the worse thing that has ever happened: the death of God. We killed God. With our violence, sins, and self idolatry autonomy, we defaced God. What makes this Friday so special among the rest is God allows this for the sake of love. The sacrifice of God on the cross is God’s visible, tangible, and historical expression of love for the created world. He was willing to be with us at the cost of losing heaven and God the Father. The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, ” For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The cross is the pivotal moment of love displayed. God in Christ becomes one with us being treated as a sinner and taking on our sinful consequences. As ugly as it was, its so so good and beautiful because this sacrifice of love changes how we see God. He is willing to go to most extremes to be with us, in our suffering, sin, fear, troubles, and never leave us alone. No matter what issues we might have against God, it can’t be that he doesn’t love us; the cross doesn’t allow us think that.
Good Friday is the day we remember God becomes not just empathetic to our humanity but embodies our experience. So before you start singing Rebecca Black’s Friday or Katy Perry’s TGIF, consider how deep the Father’s love is for us, that Jesus went through the fire for you and I so that not only every Friday can be good but everyday of the week is now good.