Black Friday – Good Friday

“Black Friday – Good Friday”

John 19:1-30

First Presbyterian Church

Rev. Donald E. Ray

April 2, 2010

Good Friday

Tony Campolo is a pastor and now Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Eastern College in St. David’s, PA. Decades ago -- years ago doesn’t describe how long it has been -- I heard him speak. I don’t recall now much of what he said, but recorded indelibly in my memory is his quoting from a black pastor’s sermon. In the style of black preaching, the pastor had told the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and then said: “That was Friday, Sunday’s comin’.” Campolo continued with how the pastor had described varied evils and struggles and suffering that we muddle through and endure in our lives. After each of numerous detailed accounts he repeated: “That’s Friday, Sunday’s comin’.”

Commonly called “Good Friday,” this day has also been called Holy Friday or Black Friday. How it came to be called “good” is not clear. We who identify Jesus with the Christ are Easter people. Even this day when in word and song and dance we revisit the story of the crucifixion of Jesus, it is with trust in the rest of the story. This is Friday, Sunday’s comin’.”

But, this is Friday - Black Friday. Life is a balance; sometimes a juggle. Life is Yin and Yang, darkness and light. Leaping to Sunday is like negating the path through present, grieving the loss of a loved one or something especially valued with the premature assuring that God needed another angel so we should be happy that a person who has died is in a better place or God has a plan for something better.

From my years of experience sharing with people in their grief, I have long concluded there is no other way but to feel the loss and sadness, to wrestle with the questions, to ache in the loneliness for healing to be reached. At the beginning of Lent this year, my focus was drawn to the Yin Yang, to darkness and light. With the thawing of winter’s ice, I have been able to resume my walking outdoors. Along with listening for the birds, looking for budding trees and bulbs, watching the dawning of another day, all those signs of newness, I have used the time for introspection, to reflect on the darker corners of my life. It has been a time of releasing those lingering resentments, healing a little more those old hurts, making peace with gnawing questions and doubts. Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. But neither does the light in life overcome the darkness. Light alone only blinds us to the reality of the darkness in our life. Living the darkness with light shining the way brings peace and comfort and truth.

Responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus remains an open question. The Jews have suffered the hatred of the world for millennia. Pilate found no faults deserving of death, washed his hands of responsibility, told the Hebrew priests to do it themselves if they must. The priests turned it back to Pilate - Jesus was in violation of Roman law acclaimed as God in an affront to Caesar.

In the Passion Chorale attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, we sing:

What Thou, my Lord, has suffered was all for sinners’ gain

Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.

Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ‘Tis I deserve Thy place;

Look on me with Thy favor, vouch-safe to me Thy grace.

It is not the responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion that is the point of Black Friday. The point of the cross is that in the midst of the evil, the darkness that infests life, Jesus remained faithful to the way of love and peace and righteousness, even at the cost of his life. Black Friday becomes Good Friday when we trust that the Christ in Jesus lives on for nothing in death or in life can separate us from the love that is God.

This day as in word and song and dance we revisit the dark story of the crucifixion of Jesus, a candle burns as light in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Amen.

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