Presbyterian pastor Rachel Srubas writes of the paradox at the heart of Good Friday and the three-day “triduum” of Holy Week:
Jesus anticipated his arrest, passion, and entombment, calling this triduum “three days and three nights … in the heart of the earth,” and likening it to the prophet Jonah’s journey “in the belly of the sea monster” (Matthew 12:40). Thomas Merton, the brilliant contemplative writer of the twentieth century … also wrote of Jonah (or as Merton and others have called him, Jonas). In The Sign of Jonas, … Merton said, “It was when Jonas was traveling as fast as he could away from Nineveh, toward Tharsis, that he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale who took him where God wanted him to go…. Even our mistakes are eloquent, more than we know.” [1]
A sense of sacred irony, of eloquent mistakes, has for centuries enabled Christians to call the Friday of Jesus’ tortuous execution “good.” This is not a matter of putting a happy spin on a grisly, unjust tragedy. Good Friday, and all Christian life, is about embracing paradox. Jesus’ teachings and his death reveal sacred contradictions. The truth that you and I may try to avoid, the pain we’re loath to face, point the way toward our freedom from captivating lies that perpetuate our suffering. When you and I embrace Jesus’ essential paradox—that to lose is to gain and to die is to live—we come to God, who gathers up the broken pieces of the world and makes them more complete and beautiful than they were before they broke. God integrates all fractious dualities into the wholeness of life that Christians call eternal salvation. It’s a life we get to live here and now, by grace and faith. It’s the life toward which Lent has always pointed.
Like Father Richard, Srubas considers the cross a “collision of opposites” that leads us deeper into reality and the presence of God:
Following his jubilant entry into Jerusalem (which Christians celebrate on Palm Sunday), Jesus told his disciples, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:23b–24). Pay attention to that pivotal unless and understand: without the fatal fall, no glorious resurrected life can be lived.
From this divine paradox, it follows that there can be no compassion without passion, no responsive loving-kindness unless there first comes suffering. Until God ultimately mends all of creation’s broken pieces, there will come suffering.…
“You will know the truth,” Jesus said to those who trusted him, “and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). By his clear-eyed honesty, Jesus revealed holy, ironic wholeness. Denying pain would intensify it but facing hard facts of life and death would lead people deep into reality, the only place where God eternal can be found.
________________________________________________
Sarah Young
My Savior-God, I long for the absence of problems in my life, but I realize this is an unrealistic goal. Shortly before Your crucifixion, You told Your followers candidly: “In this world you will have trouble.” I’m thankful I can look forward to an eternity of problem-free living, reserved for me in heaven. I rejoice in this glorious inheritance, which no one can take away from me. Teach me to wait patiently for this promised perfection rather than seeking my heaven here on earth. Lord, help me to begin each day anticipating problems—asking You to equip me for whatever difficulties lie ahead. The best equipping is Your living Presence, Your hand that never lets go of mine. Discussing my problems with You frees me to take a more lighthearted view of trouble—seeing it as a challenge that You and I together can handle. Please remind me again and again that You are on my side and You have overcome the world! In Your conquering Name, Jesus, Amen
JOHN 16:33; I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world
PSALM 73:23 NKJV; Nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right hand. 24 You will guide me with Your counsel, And afterward receive me to glory.
PHILIPPIANS 4:13 NKJV; I can do all things through [ a]Christ who strengthens me.
ROMANS 8:31;What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Young, Sarah. Jesus Listens (p. 102). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
Click Image for John White's Original Vision For CO2's
