What’s So Good About Friday?

“Mimi, this wasn’t a very good bedtime story. “ My granddaughter said with tears in her eyes as we finished up the animated version of the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

“Why do you say that?” I asked her.

“Because there was so much murder,” she replied. 

After I tucked her into bed and we had spent some time talking to the Jesus that had been brutally murdered on the television screen just an hour ago, I climbed into my bed and settled in with my thoughts. 

The story, it's just such a mess, isn’t it?

There is no way to tell it softy, or G rated. 

There is no way to tell it in a way that makes us feel good in the end.

The empty tomb on Sunday does not relieve the horrible reality of the murderous Friday and the part that we had to play in it makes it even worse. 

I wondered if I had made a mistake showing it to such a young heart. But then I remembered my own heart at nine years old. I remembered the weight of the sin that I carried, the secrets I held that made me feel far from the God who seemed those days to only dwell in Sunday school. I remembered how desperate I was to be weightless of my sin... free of the guilt.

Today, we don’t talk so much about sin. Words like causation help us soften the story of what we have done and who we have become. 

I wondered if my granddaughter had ever considered herself a sinner, or was this news to her, the naming of the thing perhaps she had felt but not understood. I reflected on a recent podcast where a progressive church proponent touted the ill effect of shame she felt had been heaped upon her as a child by the church.

 “Everything was a sin and Jesus had to die and be murdered for my little white lie,” she said in a half chuckle to the muse of her co/host, both of them now free of what they obviously considered an archaic type of Christianity. 

But I had become sidetracked by my own story.

When I came to Jesus it was the antidote to that feeling of shame. The day I was dunked in a swimming pool wearing my new sundress purchased just for the occasion, and my hair in french braids, I came up cleaner than I’d ever known possible. Remembering the feeling of my hot tears on my water-cooled cheeks I wondered why my experience had been so different from that of the pod-casters.

 I did believe my little white lie had murdered Jesus, along with all the big lies from others that had destroyed people and nations, along with the hate of darkened hearts and acts of murder, jealousies, and addictions that had destroyed families, all of it mixed together and put onto Jesus. 

“Why do they call it Good Friday?” I had asked my mom once as she washed the dishes and I dried. Mom was quiet for a moment before she responded. “Do you remember how good you felt when you came out of the water after your baptism?”  I nodded. “You felt that because Jesus really did take your sin forever. It can’t come back once you give it to him. He died on a Friday and made everything good.”  I thought of Jesus on the cross and it seemed reasonable that this was a day to remember but I still could not think of it as good. 

Years later, a mother of four, and now a full-time missionary in Mongolia, another Easter week brought me to the same question. 

“What’s so good about Friday?” I thought as I stepped outside into the cool dusk air. 

Once again, I was hit with the same question that had followed me throughout my life. Why would we think of a crucifixion as good? But no satisfying answer came.

Easter morning, our home filled up with people from all around the village. It had snowed overnight and I worried we would have a small turnout. Instead, they arrived happily, some walking a couple of miles to attend. My husband began to share about Easter and the room was full of what could only be described as anticipation and joy. 

But this morning, as he preached I saw for the first time what was so good…so very very good. 

It was something he said that caught my heart, “God, the Heavenly Father laid it all on Jesus. All the sin of the world. All sin separates us from God and for a moment in time, all of the sin past, present, and future were laid on His Son…and then God turned away.” 

It was the, “And then God turned away.” that made me uncomfortable. 

My eyes filled with tears and I considered the worst. I imagined our son Joey. Joey was known for his warmth and love and servant's heart to our community. He was only ten years old. I imaged taking that innocent boy out to a field and then somehow allowing all the evil of all the world to come upon him….and when he cried out to me….I turned away. I left him there. 

Tears were flowing as I considered it. Jesus was alone and God had forsaken Him because of our sin. When Jesus cried out, on Good Friday,  “My Father why? Why have you forsaken me?” it was a cue to all the world that we could actually be free. God would not have forsaken His son unless it were true that He became sin for us. 

God made him who had no sin to be sin[s] for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

—2 Corinthians 5:21

And that Friday, that good good Friday was good because it was the way to our freedom. After that Friday, no sin could ever hold us forever. Sin lost its power to keep us in our hell or send us to a permanent one. After that Friday we had a way out and once we were out we never had to go back. I remembered my baptism, the feeling of good, the feeling of shame gone, the lightness, the joy. As my husband finished preaching, I wiped the tears from my eyes knowing I would never question the goodness of Friday again. 

God has united you with Christ Jesus. - Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. 

—1 Corinthians 1:30

I drifted off to sleep wondering if my granddaughter would know what to do with all those thoughts and emotions, with all the questions of the Easter story. And just as I felt the wave of need to explain all the unexplainable to her, I sensed permission to rest in the idea that my own road was long and walked with many questions with answers revealed only over years. Even the shame and guilt lead me to freedom.  I can trust the same for the children in my life.