Why Good Friday is not a Day of Happiness

Why Good Friday is not a Day of Happiness
Rev. Douglas Olds

10 April 2020

Earlier today, President Trump, a hero to a large portion of conservative American Christians, tweeted out "HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY TO ALL!"  This tone-deaf tweet belies his claim of Biblical competence and familiarity with Church praxis.

    Good Friday is the day humanity cursed and projected our sins onto Jesus to scapegoat and kill him, as we cowardly abandoned him, yet he forgave us from the Cross. The forgiveness was sacrificial: it dissolved all the sins we laid upon Jesus as we scapegoated, abandoned and cursed him. It was not a good day for humanity.

    What was good about that Friday was the cosmic forgiveness by Jesus from the Cross: acknowledging its sacrifice, its righteousness, and his divine Lordship changes our hearts and humanity. We deserved Jesus' enmity--his penal justice--but instead, we gained his restorative justice through the liberated indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the consolation of our griefs, the courage to face the death of our bodies, and the welcoming of our souls into the Life Everlasting. Salvation indeed.

     However, this victory of the Cross was accomplished at huge cost: the profane, gruesome, and horrible death of God's beloved Son. We do not escape that cost and its sufferings in this life, even if we share in its ultimate victory and love. Jesus was good that Friday, but he wasn't "happy."

“Jesus Christ is not a quick answer. If Jesus Christ is the answer, he is the answer in the way portrayed in crucifixion.” -- Kosuke Koyama.

   Christians have the experience of sharing Christ's sufferings.  We are Easter people pulled back into Good Friday episodically throughout our mature existence. We are warned: 

Acts 9.16 (Jesus:) "I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” 

Matthew 10: 38 (Jesus:) "whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me."

    Paul notes how this suffering works out in his life, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." Galatians 2:19–20.

    And which suffering he shares with all believers in Christ's atoning work: (Romans 5:3-5) "And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us."

    Perhaps masochistically, Paul sees suffering as beneficial participation in Christ's work: (Colossians 1:24) "24 I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church."

    He repeats this link in 2 Timothy 2:10: “Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.” 

2 Corinthians 11:23-28 gives Paul's list of the sufferings he's undergone for Christ and for the sake of His Gospel.

    Paul links suffering with striving, striving which does not end with one's justification by faith: (Philippians 3.) "10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

    While Paul in other places in his letters expresses the hope that our current sufferings bring forth eternal life and glory, he is aware--as are mature Christians--that suffering is endemic to the Christian life. It is that suffering that marks Good Friday.

   Greeting someone with "Happy Good Friday" is either ignorant of the scriptures, ignorant of the mature Christian life, or tone-deaf to the reality of our dependence on Jesus' grisly atonement on the Cross.