The most Good Friday-est Good Friday I’ve ever Good Friday-ed

One of the many memes that caught my attention during this “stay at home” COVID 19 time says, “This is the Lentiest Lent I have ever Lented”

Maybe you feel this way too. You’ve been asked to give up things that you didn’t intend to—handshakes and hugs, walks along the lakefront, socializing in cafés bars and restaurants, not necessarily for Lent but certainly for the common good and for love of neighbor which is a spiritual practice and therefore a Lenten discipline.

Now today, Good Friday, feels like the most Good Friday-ist Good Friday I’ve ever Good Friday-ed. In some ways it doesn’t feel like Good Friday at all, because we’re not gathered in a dimly lit church, waiting in silence for the deeply meaningful rituals and practices that mark this day to begin. We won’t be kneeling before the cross, touching it with our hands or a kiss. So, it’s nothing like the Good Friday’s of years past.

And that’s exactly why today feels so Good Friday-ish. The whole week has felt Good Friday-ish…the whole month. Nothing is the same. It seems everything has changed. There’s a collective anxiety that hangs in the air. We feel the heaviness of death all around us.

Even if we do not personally know someone who has died from the virus, we likely know someone who has the virus, or know someone who lives in a vulnerable place like a nursing home, prison, detention center or we’re terrified for someone whose essential job puts them at risk . Or, we’re worried we might get it ourselves or we already have. The grief we share is palpable in these Good Friday times because there is so much loss—loss of employment, shattered dreams for senior proms and graduations, loss of physical touch to comfort someone with a hug, countless people dying alone unaccompanied by their families in their final hours.

One of the theologians I follow, Debbie Thomas, told a story this week about her own experience of loss and grief. Several years ago, her daughter had been admitted to the hospital for anorexia. Soon after her admission the doctors told her she “would not be able to see her depressed, malnourished child for several days.” She walked out of the hospital and ended up in a Catholic gift shop. A woman asked if she could help with anything, and Thomas burst into tears and said nothing. The woman left for a minute and came back with a tiny crucifix on a silver chain and placed it in Debbie’s hand and said, “Hold this. Keep it with you. Only a suffering God can help”

Thomas said she has been thinking about that a lot since the Coronavirus pandemic began. Only a suffering God can help.

· God is with us in the very midst of our loss and terror, mourning with and for us.

· When we feel most vulnerable, most broken, most hopeless we look to the very heart of who Jesus is, revealed to us on the cross.

On this Good Friday-ist of Good Fridays, and in all times of sorrow, loneliness, betrayal and grief, God is with us. We look to the crucified one who bore our suffering and draws all people to himself.

I’ll be honest with you all, or as Brene’ Brown encourages “be vulnerable,” I do not like Holy Week 2020. I’m disappointed we won’t be together for Easter Vigil tomorrow night. I’m afraid that we’ll never be able to shake hands or hug again at the passing of the peace. I’m longing to be with you for a Eucharistic feast placing bread in your hands and saying, “The body of Christ, given for you”

And in general, I’m tired, uncertain and afraid. Who knows how many more will die? How many sorrows, disappointments, and farewells will we face? I don’t want to say it out loud because it seems too much to bear. And then… a whisper…only a suffering God can help.

And I imagine Mary standing at the foot of the cross eyes swollen with tears, her heart breaking, her lungs gasping for air as she watches her son dying for the suffering of the world. Her grief, our grief, the world’s grief are held in the arms of the crucified one this night and every night. Our suffering and sorrow, our doubts and despair, our agony and anguish are joined not only to Christ’s but to the brokenness of all creation.

And yet, in John’s gospel what looks like defeat, is victory. What seems like an ending is new birth. Maybe all we can hope is that God will be here tonight, in our flesh. And that somehow, the cross will be to us healing and resurrection.

When our bodies cannot gather together to observe this solemn sign of salvation, as we usually do on Good Friday—to kneel before the cross, touch it, kiss it, meditate and pray in the presence of others, we can trace its movement over us on this Good Friday 2020. No, we cannot be together. But yes, we are deeply bound to Christ and to one another in this saving sign. Trace it on yourselves and on your loved ones, even through a screen.

Behold: the life-giving cross on which was hung the savior of the whole world.