Holy Week

The “Good” in Good Friday

Perhaps I was six or seven when the question first came. What is “good” about Good Friday? Our lives are full of questions; or at least mine is. These days most of my questions are about more mundane things, like “How did those spots get on my shirt or on my necktie?” Any man over seventy-five will understand.

After more than seven decades, the more profound and intellectually jarring theological question about the goodness of Good Friday still stirs in my spirit. I don’t have the one right, true answer as many of my conservative friends suggest they have. The soup stains on my necktie are so much more easily explained.

Other friends, more secular searchers, ask, “Why a focus on the cross? Isn’t there a better, less violent, symbol?” Without answering, I think of all the modern-day crosses people bare. I have been with families after a painful death, a murder, a rape, or a drowning. There are realities of starvation, war, captivity, and financial ruin. Abuse and discrimination are crosses of a different sort. Sin is woven within the human condition. Evil is present. No matter our desires for something less violent and more velvet — there is brutality and death.

I recall the historic theories of the atonement. Jesus’s death is portrayed as Ransom, Substitute (suffers for), Penal (suffers instead), Example, and Victor. Each theory today is understood in decidedly individualistic ways. It is a quid pro quo formula as in Jesus did this and I get some reward. Such theology appears deeply embedded in St. Paul’s perspective (I Corinthians 15 or II Corinthians 5).

It was my beloved New Testament professor, Robert Lyon, who challenged me to think beyond this; to think more deeply and widely. The word study he assigned me was on the word λύτρον, meaning either redemption or ransom (Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28). I can still see the twinkle in Bob’s eye as he said, “And the context? Who is this ransom for and why? What is the larger Biblical frame?” These were the years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights struggles over racism and sexism. Bob wasn’t dismissing classic atonement theories out of hand; he was asking for more – for a deeper grasp of the whole of the scriptural story. What does “ransom” have to do with justice? What if this is bigger than an individualistic transactional act? What if it is transformational for the entirety of God’s purposes? What if it is not primarily about one’s personal “free of sin” credit card? What if it is for ALL and for the entire Creation!

Walter Brueggemann suggests we speak of the execution of Jesus rather than his crucifixion. ALL THINGS are seen as potentially redeemed and redeemable: corrupt institutions, the violence of every empire, the despoiling of creation. Brueggeman speaks of God’s purposes as displayed in the life of Jesus as prophetic imagination. He speaks of “the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is birthing before our very eyes.

For me, even with food stains on my shirt, the questions in my spirit find greater meaning. This is the GOOD in Good Friday – God’s promise displayed for all persons and all creation. If we have eyes to see it and the will to live into it.

How can it be? Notre Dame Cathedral engulfed in flames? And, early on Holy Week no less. There are not words to capture the sense of our world’s spiritual and cultural loss. Serge Schmemann, comes close when he writes “beauty and human genius lies gravely wounded” (New York Times, 4/16/19).

In response we hear brave words about rebuilding. Good. Yet, we know some things are forever gone. Amidst the rubble and ashes lies an awareness that all our desires for permanence are ephemeral. Constancy and immutability are never fully within human grasp. Great Cathedrals serve as pointers to something more eternal yet even they come with no guarantee-of-forever. Small rural African-American churches, like those destroyed by fire in Louisiana recently, served as miniature cathedrals, for their faithful. They too now grieve irreplaceable loss. Our call is not to believe we hold a final word or permanent design as to what God is about. At our best we point the way, catch a glimpse of something better, and share what we have seen with others. We offer our best, our highest aspirations, mixed in with our frailties, our vulnerabilities. How then shall we proceed? In the places we live and work? In Louisiana? In Paris?

This Easter, with Notre Dame in view, I am reminded of a favorite poem by Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” Closing lines include these delicious words:

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest…

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice Resurrection.

Practice Resurrection — My prayer is that you, that we, will practice our Easter prerogatives and that the practice of resurrection will become routine. May it be our habit, our nod to that which is indeed eternal.

Philip Amerson