The Danger of Skipping or Skimping Good Friday

crucifix

I worry that American Christianity with our suspicion of the crucifix as too ornate, if not idolatrous, are forgetting the sufferings of Christ and what it means for our daily living. I am not advocating a 10 feet crucifix be hung on all the churches to safeguard the practice of meditation on the sufferings of Christ. Because anything hung on  a wall can become mere decoration, and like decorations in any home, disappear into the wall and go unnoticed. But there is a similar sentiment, even spirit, behind the dismissal of the crucifix and the current trend in many churches to skip or skimp Good Friday. We Americans don’t like to meditate on suffering.

But Peter was squeamish once. He then became a Rock. When you know both the sufferings of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, you are fortified against anything and for anything.

There are solid historical reasons for Protestant’s weariness of the crucifix. Though the crucifix was meant to help people pray in midst of their suffering through visual recalling of the sufferings of Christ, it was often used like good luck charm, a rabbit’s foot. It was rubbed and oiled, carried to business meetings and even into battle fields of killing. People knelt to pray to Christ at first, but out of habit and thoughtlessness, many attributed answered prayers to the crucifix itself and began kneeling only before crucifixes and nowhere else. Like many thing in religion, the symbol became the substance.

Reformation was not just the rethinking of theology but also of practices since you cannot affect people’s mind unless you can also change their behavior. Calvin prohibited not only the crucifix but even the cross itself. For even the cross gets in the way of thinking directly of Christ. So though Luther kept the crucifix, Calvin rid the sanctuary of the cross because Calvin was convinced, rightfully so, that the human heart was an “idol making factory.”

We American Christians are perfectly fine with the simple cross as long as there is no body nailed to it, dying or dead. And one of the reasons traces to our Reformation zeal against idolatry. But getting rid of the cross does not vaccinate our hearts from idols. For Calvin did not fully appreciate that the human heart is also a “symbol making factory.” We need visuals because everything must have a stand in. And in the vacuum of the cross, other things occupied the stage.

So we don’t have crucifix but we have the American flag. On Christmas we have our creches and Christmas trees. On Easter we have our egg hunts and Easter bunnies. When you consider all these symbolic characters running around in our sanctuaries, you begin to suspect that there are other reasons why we cringe at the crucifix than simply the fear of idolatry. Isn’t it because the Christmas tree and Easter bunny are symbols of success? They are blessing you with gifts, a new toy under the tree, chocolate in eggs. And who would be so cold hearted as to oppose the creche, the baby Jesus, a God become helpless baby, chubby hands grabbing your thumb and large eyes that look to you with perfect trust as if you were a god.

Isn’t this why the two main Christian holidays in America is Christmas and Easter, when it should be Good Friday and Easter? Seasonal Christians will only go Christmas and Easter, the birth and rebirth, and just skip the whole death thing. Even weekly attenders will skip Good Friday. Isn’t there enough preaching on the cross on Sundays? But much of the preaching of the cross you get on Sunday doesn’t focus much on the suffering. The cross becomes a shorthand for the American story of success out of failure. Cross was failure. Easter was success despite failure. All four gospels, of which only two speak of Christ’s birth, tell the life story of Jesus to show that the cross was not a failure but was the whole point of Christ’s life. And in that story, the suffering of Christ was not a minor scene. It was the main scene, the climax in which sin and death was defeated. Through suffering, Christ accomplished his mission. Cross was success — which turns the idea of success on its head — for the last words of the suffering and dying Christ was, “It is finished.”

The two earliest holy days for the Church was Easter and Good Friday. So crucial were these two days that every Friday was Good Friday and every Sunday was Resurrection Sunday. Knowing the sufferings of Good Friday, they had tenacious hope for resurrection regardless of the suffering they were facing. They were able to face martyrdom because they had vivid images of the sufferings of Christ. Suffering was essential to discipleship. Today, the slightest suffering sends us reeling and questioning the existence of God. We have become squeamish Christians.

But Peter was squeamish once. He then became a Rock. When you know both the sufferings of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, you are fortified against anything and for anything.

So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God.  – 1st Peter 4:1-2

 

Corinthian Heartache

2nd Cor

The Corinthians Church kept Paul awake many a nights. He suffered ulcer, anxiety attacks and self-doubt. When they questioned his authority, poo-pooed his preaching, and raised suspicion of his so called “non-profit” ministry, it was the skewering of a dagger by a best friend. The attack was painful because it was personal.

Romans is a theology that has been tested. It is not the emotionless theology of an academician, but an emotionally grounded theology of a mature pastor. Paul knows the deep power of the gospel; it was what reconciled Paul and Corinth, his first love.

There was no church Paul loved more than this Corinthian Church. When he wrote the poem of Love (1 Cor 13), the words spilled from his quill because his heart was swelling with affection for them. Pastors have their favorite church as much as parents do. Paul’s favorite was Corinth. But Corinth kept dumping him and dating other leaders because they were better looking, had better family, and more loaded with cash. Paul was their first love, but dropped as soon as a handsomer apostle came striding into their city. Paul’s heart bleeds in 2nd Corinthians. This is why he keeps going back and forth (which leads scholars to think it might be a collage of two or even three letters). His emotions are not fully settled even when trying to ground them in a strong theology of reconciliation and new creation. He is full of bravado and fear, confidence and despair, proclamation and pity parties.

In fact, Paul wrote 2nd Corinthians because he could not muster himself to go visit them. He feared he would lash out because he knew well that hurt people hurt.

Wouldn’t Paul’s ministry have had greater influence if his emotional energy was not drained by those thankless Corinthians! Two letters, definitely another one, maybe even four letters altogether to keep the messy relationship between them alive. And he had to visit them three times. Such a needy congregation!

What Paul could have done if not for Corinthians!

But consider the reverse question.

What would have Paul done if it wasn’t for the Corinthians?

For sure, we would not have the two letters that now sit right in the middle of New Testament providing some of the most inspiring, not to mention quotable, lines. Very possible that we would not have had Romans which he wrote on his third visit to Corinth. The Roman letter is very calm compared to the storm of emotions that surge in 2nd Corinthians. But it is the calm after one has ridden out a storm, a calm that can be explained only by the eyes that has seen the rage of the waters the night before. Romans is a theology that has been tested. It is not the emotionless theology of an academician, but an emotionally grounded theology of a mature pastor. Paul knows the deep power of the gospel; it was what reconciled Paul and Corinth, his first love.

Putting the Book of Genesis Together

 

If I was a Jewish elder in the council considering what part of the oral tradition would be finally penned, I would have had serious issues with a whole lot of Genesis. It is one thing to retell a story over a lingering campfire with kids sticking branches with skewered marshmallows over the flames or while licking lamb chop juices off one’s finger with the sacrifice fire slowly dying out. It is quite another thing to commit a story into a parchment. You finalize things when you write them down. There is no chance for revisions, no space for differing editions. There is no margins for error because there is a finality to writing. While what is spoken can never be pinned down, what is written must be absolutely true. 

And what is written has rigid longevity, its rigidity being part of its longevity. Once a thing is written, it is going to be told in the exact same manner thousands of years into the future.

Those Jewish elders who translated the oral Genesis into a written Genesis probably had a greater understanding of longevity than we do today because they had a more affectionate memory of the past. Today, we have a longer human history which to keep students burning the midnight oil before a history test but our connections to previous generations are flimsy and without emotional pull. The names of even our personal ancestors only go back to the third generation at most. Anyone remember their great-great grandparent? Past history feels like a story of aliens and so the future also feels like stories of aliens, a science fiction.

Ancient people had personal connections to the past. Their very names carried that personal connections to the past as the names of their great ancestors were woven into their own names. With such bonds to the past, the elders knew the future also was theirs too. They felt great responsibility to their descendants because they had great respect for their elders.

This is the point of Genesis, that all of human history is really family history. Genesis doesn’t linger long on any individual. Many chapters fast forward thousands of years. Like a time lapse of the universe birth and growth, it is meant to help us recognize the presentness of the past. This crunching of generations, however, did not dismiss the lives of the individuals. Actually, it lifted the life of the individuals. Individual actions resonated down generations, beyond that single life. Adam dared to go against God, and now all of humanity had to suffer the discrepancy of labor and the paucity of fruit. Abraham’s willingness to leave his father to head out west was the start of a nation that still occupies pretty much the same land Abraham went west to claim.

The Jewish elders knew that, so they selected the stories with great care and much prayer. They were listening for God’s instructions by listening to each other. With that much pressure, then, I would have raised many concerns. Around the rickety table and the waning candle light, I would have recommended heavy editing before being sent out to the press. I imagine myself advising:

“I think the part of Abraham lying and basically willing to let another man make a cuckold of him doesn’t have to be mentioned, and for sure not two times, and definitely don’t have Isaac do the same spineless thing. Why make our ancestors such pricks, sorry to say that word, but that is what those stories make them look like. So let’s just scratch that.”

“We’ve got to tell it as it is!” An elder exclaims banging on the table. The candle hops a bit. He is the youngest which is not the same thing as saying young but niched into expressing that uncompromising youthful idealism.

But the young voice has sway and at the end, most of the council agrees to keep such unflattering stories.

“We will keep it. Let us remember, we are reporters, not editor?” the moderator instructs to all but looks at me.

“Yeah, well reporters edit too. But, ok, I can let that go, the cuckolding. But not Cain getting away with murder! Cain kills Abel, the first murder, and gets God’s protection?!! That is terrible. Because that is just going to encourage murderers. You kill and you don’t shed a single tear of regret but don’t worry God is going to protect your life. A murderer must be executed. Letting murderers go scot-free is the ruin of a society. You let one go, before you know it thousands will demand the same protection for their crime! I can already see it. Some loose descendant of ours arguing against execution by producing this story and saying, ‘You see God didn’t execute, so we can’t either!’ That society is headed for godless anarchy!”

“You have a great point.” the moderator butters me up, just setting me up for another rejection of my sound advice, “but if we take that out, then are we just going to pretend that Cain and Abel did not exist at all?”

“Why not! Let’s just skip it. No one will know. Adam right into Seth.”

“Sam, what does the Spirit of God say to you?”

A long pause and I really use that pause to listen. The wind whistles through acacia leaves. “Okay. Keep it.”

“Any more suggestions?”

“Okay, what about the whole Rachel and Leah pimping their maids to Jacob to steal the attention of Jacob, and the names of the twelve fathers of our tribes simply being a way for Rachel and Leah to slap each other —  ‘He will be Asher because I am happy while you are not.’ Can we just bring that down a notch? Even soap operas don’t get that sleazy! Our founding fathers’ names, which is the name of our tribes by the way, being nothing more than name calling by desperate housewives! That isn’t going to stir a lot of ancestor honoring.”

“But Sam,” I imagine the moderator being wise, so his beard is thick, knee length, and snowy white, like Gandalf, “that is what is so strangely beautiful about our story. It really isn’t about us. It isn’t about how great we Jews are. If we were ever to fall into that stupid mistake, it would be the death of us. It isn’t about us. It is about God, God’s faithfulness to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and then to Joseph even in Egypt and far from the promised land. It is about this amazing God that is intimate with us. I hear this story and true, I have to put my kids to bed before I can finish some of them. And God seems barbaric at times, like Bel or Dan, these gods of the Canaanites. Yet God’s voice breaks through, doesn’t it? It shatters anything we expected of any other gods. If our ancestors were the main characters, then we better make them look good. But all of these stories is really about God. And if God is the main character, then there isn’t a thing we can change.”

This hits me like splash of cold water after a hot day. I agree in silence.

“Well then. Let’s finish this up. I want to make it back home before sunset. Any other suggestions.”

The moderator is about to close the meeting with a prayer but I blurt out, “Well, that thing about sacrificing the son, that is just too scary!”