This particular day of all the ones we mark within the church, may be the most uncomfortable for us. We do not like uncertainty, pain and suffering. We want to rush right through to victory and resurrection. But what if we took some time to allow room for the ache, the longing, and the reality that things are not as they should be.

This is a day to mourn and cry, to recognize darkness and sin. We have been trained to run from death, to imagine we can avoid it. We dislike the idea of suffering. Some of us like to think believing in Jesus will be a magic charm or a force field to keep suffering from touching us. But from the moment Jesus was born until the very end of His life he suffered, and did so for us. As we consider the suffering and death of Jesus it can open up space where we can give voice to our own pain, loss and fears.

On the first Holy Friday, the followers of Jesus would have been grief stricken and confused wondering what had just happened to the One they had been putting their hopes in? They had dropped everything to follow Him, and now what?

We may have similar thoughts ourselves these days. We cannot see the way forward, so much of what we thought life was, has been stripped away. Perhaps it is time to ask if we have dropped everything to follow Him? Or do we continue to hold onto our self-sufficiency, our belief that we can have Jesus as an addition to all of the other things we have been trusting in?

The season of Lent has led us here, and it is on this day that we gaze upon the body God, stripped naked, bleeding, mocked and betrayed by his dearest friends. This is the greatest sacrifice we will ever know. God took on human flesh, came into all of our pain and suffering to show us NOTHING can stand in the way of His great love for us. This loves continues to reach for us no matter how dark or doubting our hearts may be.

As we read the accounts of His crucifixion, we see Jesus crushed under the weight of physical suffering, He stumbles from fatigue and defeat which we know all too well. He knows what it is to need help from another as he walked the Via Delarosa, and Simon was summoned to carry his cross.

He felt the pain of stakes driven through his wrists, and lungs gasping for their last breath. We hear stories daily in the news of those who are struggling for their next breath and Jesus knows their pain. He has lived it.

Look at Jesus as He is on the cross. He is holding nothing back. He chooses brokenness for our healing, nakedness so we could be clothed in His love, surrender to death so we can have life.

Truly, “I’ll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon that cross”.

Prayer: Open our eyes to see more clearly the cost of your sacrifice; the ways you emptied yourself on our behalf. We pray with the Psalmist,

“Search me, O God, and know my heart

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23

In the words of Every Moment Holy, “Today is for mourning. So, let us grieve together as those who know the world is broken, but who yet hold hope of its restoration.”

Amen