We refer to this frightful Friday as Good Friday.

Good. When I hear good, I think fine, decent, nondescript.

As in the generic, catch-all answer I receive from my boys in response to my motherly after-school questions: How was your day? How did your test go? How was chapel?

The etymology of the word good shows that it used to connote something fit or adequate, having the right or desirable quality.

This morning, I spent a few stolen moments thinking through the list of other adjectives that come to mind as a descriptor of this dark Friday.

__________ Friday?

Frightful Friday,
When the One rightful son,
Before an onlooking crowd,
The curse did become?

Unnatural Friday,
When the light of life
Darkened noonday sun
With un-eclipsed strife?

Diseased Friday,
When the Great Physician
Willfully contracted
Our terminal condition?

Execution Friday,
When the Man Divine
Donned death’s shroud
For humanity’s crime?

Foretold Friday,
When He who wound time
Was bound to a cross
In a death sublime?

Good Friday, 
Yes, that covers it all.
Jesus cleared our way
Back home from the Fall.

Nothing about what happened on that Friday we commemorate today feels right. Yet, it was the only way for the Father to bring back His wayward children long exiled from home. The Father foretold this Friday, the Son came for this Friday, and we are God’s children and Jesus’ siblings on account of this Friday.

Fitting. Having right or desirable quality. Good.

Good Friday, indeed.

A few years ago, when my children were three and two years old, I had the brilliant idea of teaching them the deeper significance of the Passover. I studied the Seder meal, went shopping, printed coloring sheets. The whole shebang. My incredulous husband wondered if this was really age-appropriate, but I pressed on.

We sat down and strapped our children into their baby chairs, lit candles and began our walk through the Jewish traditions. It was a total disaster. They spit out the herbs, gagged on the horseradish and chugged the sparking grape juice. I have not yet regained the courage to attempt another Seder in the Joseph household.

Funny story aside,  today I imagined what it must have been like for Jesus to sit down with disciples for the Seder meal. I imagined the familiar scents and flavors which Jesus would have known from years of celebrating the Passover with His family, suddenly becoming ominous as He realized they all pointed to His punishment on the Cross as the second and eternal Exodus of both Jew and Gentile alike.

Thinking of the Savior eating the Seder meal that spelled out His certain death moved my soul to a deeper appreciation for his last Passover in that Upper Room.

The Seder & The Savior

The Upper Room is ready,
The table carefully set,
The disciples eager to celebrate;
They don’t understand as yet.

The Seder plate stares up at me,
Invading all of my senses,
Sights and smells arrest me,
Alluding my human defenses.

The bitter herbs, they bite me.
Meant to point back to captivity,
Yet they press me to tomorrow
When I’ll be nailed to the tree.

The roasted meat, the Zeroa,
Features the bone of a lamb.
They think of sacrifices past,
Yet I know that I am the ram.

The Beitzah points to desire,
The cries of people to be saved.
The path to their deep desire
Through my death is paved.

Karpas, the parsley-reminder
Of slavery’s back-breaking load,
Smells of relief to them, but to me
Does the darkest day bode.

Charoset paste of apples and wine,
Reminds of the mortar and brick,
To release them from their burden,
I the way of the Cross must pick.

Looking up from the plate, my portion,
I see the familiar faces of my friends.
For them, these sin-sick brothers,
I will drink God’s wrath to the end.

Oh, Father, pass over your people,
Let the punishment fall on me.
Through my ultimate slavery,
Finally set your children free.

Every year, as Easter fast approaches and catches me off guard, I attempt to reread George Herbert’s poem The Sacrifice. Every year a different stanza or two grab my heart strings and command my attention; this year was no exception. Two of the Biblical images Herbert so painfully, but poetically paints have seared my mind and heart this past week.

They buffet me, and box me as they list, 
Who grab the earth and heaven with my fist,
And never yet, whom I would punish, miss’d; 
     Was ever grief like mine? (lines 130-134)

Then with the reed they gave to me before,
They strike my head, the rock from whence all store
Of heavenly blessings issue evermore:
    Was ever grief like mine? (lines 170-174).

His Hands, Our Hands
Two Scriptures comparing humanity to divinity come to mind when I think of hands. Two rhetorical questions, one from God’s interaction with Isaiah and another from His interaction with Job.

“Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales?” Isaiah 40:12.

“Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt to bring rain on a land where no man in, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?” Job 38:25-27.

Jesus used His metaphorical hands to measure out all the oceans in one span, the way we would use our thumb and index finger to determine the amount of miles between two places on an old-school map. He traced careening canyons with his little finger. Majesty. Yet, when Jesus took on flesh and wore skin, He allowed himself to be punched with the fists of His own creatures. The phalanges that He dreamed up and placed in the intricate hands of mankind were used to box His own precious face.

His Head, Our  Fountainhead

The forehead is landing pad for smooches in our house. I love to tussle my little guys’ heads of unruly hair and sneak a quick kiss onto their soft foreheads. As they get bigger, the landing pad only grows, but the resistance also grows!

When I think of the precious head and forehead of Jesus being scarred by the tears of terrible thorns rather than kissed, when I think of His head receiving blows rather than besos (kisses in Spanish for my non-San Diegan friends), my own forehead furrows and my heart sinks.  Mary most likely kissed that forehead and tussled that head as her son grew up. Little did she understand that his sacred head would one day be scarred.

In the stanza above from The Sacrifice, George Herbert is drawing a parallel from Exodus to the Crucifix. In Exodus, when God’s people are complaining in the wilderness wanderings, God tells Moses to strike a rock with his staff; when the rock is struck, water pours out, satisfying the thirst of the people.  Herbert pictures Christ’s head as being the struck rock from whom streams of living water would flow.

Christ’s precious head being struck by the bludgeons of angry soldiers that He might become the fountainhead from which springs of living water would flow to us who are as guilty as the striking soldiers.

His head became our Fountainhead. What manner of love is this?

As Easter approaches, may we linger long on the face and hands of Christ. As we do so, may we begin to become the face and hands of Christ to others who are as thirsty for life as were the Israelites in the desert.

Palm Sunday.  The expectant people lined the streets, praising Jesus and quoting from Psalm 118 when he was approaching in peace.  The people knew He was the Messiah, the sent one, the one coming to save them. Thus, they shouted Hosanna! which means “Save us, now!” They were right to notice He was the long-awaited one and to praise Him as such. The problem was that their light and flippant praise did not take into consideration that His kingdom was an altogether different one than they expected. As a result of these missed expectations, their praises faded quickly into shouts of “Crucify him!” in a matter of days. We are not unlike them; our praise quickly turns cold and bitter when our expectations are not met in our way, when His plan for our best does not line up with our desires for what we think would be best.

As I thought about what it may have felt like for Jesus to ride in through the praises of the people He would willingly die for in a matter of days, I was blown away at His patience, His resolve, His quiet suffering. They cheered His approach with a light and airy joy, but He alone knew He was marching on to His death.

What kind of King?

A King approaching in peace,
In humility He rode on,
Onlookers cheering him,
Expecting a new dawn.

The Scriptures foretold it,
Yet none of them could see,
The dawn would begin with
The God-Man hung on a tree.

The Messiah was coming,
To bring His kingdom to bear;
Of the coronation of tears,
None but He was aware.

“Hosanna! Save us now!” they cried,
As hopes and palms were raised.
“Finally the kingdom’s come,
May Jesus’ name be praised!”

He heeded not their fanatical cries,
For He full knew the heart of men,
From “Crown Him” to “Crucify,”
The voices would be raised again.

They didn’t catch the painful truth,
As they joyfully recited the song,
“Bind the sacrifice to the altar,”
But Jesus knew that they were wrong.

For no cords would be needed;
The lamb was already being led,
With full awareness and submission.
In a week, the King would be dead.

Yet with a tender fierceness,
The King approached the throne,
Knowing the crowds would leave him,
Knowing He must die alone.

With light palms they danced
Around this coming King,
Not knowing the weight He felt,
The heaviness this week would bring.

Yet with the peace of a true King,
He marched on towards the hill,
For the Joy that was set before Him,
For the curse He’d silence and still.

What kind of King is this?
Who is this that we serve?
The King who died to bring us
The Kingdom we don’t deserve.