The people who say the church is only a feel-good anesthetic for unhappy people, or instructions on how to enter heaven, haven’t attended Good Friday mass at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church. We take our sorrow palpable, raw, and real. In the past, I’ve met grief and salvation in the darkened sanctuary. This year, Good Friday brought me to my knees, literally and metaphorically. After we read Mark’s gospel with various speakers, our priest confessed how difficult it is to truly act out the passion, to really take on the characters of Jesus, or Judas, or Peter, or the crowds screaming, “Crucify!” It’s hard to really, truly, BE those people in their time. We know the ending and we don’t want to hang out in the sadness of Good Friday. Even those of us who love the darkness and find profound meaning in the loss, still know that the sun will rise on Easter Sunday, the stone will be rolled away, and the tomb will be empty. We pretend to be shocked, sorrowful, angry; we call upon those feelings, with varying degrees of effort. Is it a betrayal to pretend we are betraying God?
Betrayal--what does it mean? How does it feel? What have I betrayed? Sitting in the dim, quiet church, I watched my mental movie of the nasty things I’ve done in my life, the bullying, the gossiping, the playing-the-victim, the lying, the denial (even to myself), the moments where I stood in the middle of self-made chaos, with tears in my eyes and my helpless hands in the air, saying, “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” I watched the moments I’ve hid deep down come to the surface, waiting for me to acknowledge them. I felt at one with the screaming, blood-thirsty crowds, with weak Peter, who denied the Lord three times before the cock crew, with traitor Judas, who, because of greed, jealousy, demonic possession, or God’s great plan, betrayed his master and friend for a pocket full of silver. I sat in the dim sanctuary, shaking, lip quivering, tears rolling down my face, wishing it was even darker so I could be free to kneel and sob without anyone noticing. Once again, I was laid low and stripped bare in the eyes of the Lord.
I waited, listening to the quiet sounds of crying and sniffling around me; I waited to kneel and pray. Someone turned the dim lights to fully dark and I let it go. Kneeling, I sobbed quietly, only praying, “Forgive”. Fr. Tim’s message, his reason for taking us into the dark corners of our soul, is that Jesus went there, too. We cannot understand the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” until we recognize the times we have forsaken God. We cannot understand the grand sacrifice of the Son of God dying as a criminal, until we acknowledge the criminal within us and allow those dark, hidden, moldy, disgusting parts of our soul to be loved. Jesus died for the people who screamed for his blood, for the disciple who denied him, and the lost one who betrayed him. He descended into hell; he can descend into our own hell, too. When we go there honestly, we can find God.
I slowly walked forward and kneeled before the cross, praying, “Forgive…” Forgive me for the things I’ve been carrying, the sins of which I cannot speak, the sins which I constantly attempt to live down, the buried pettiness, the thirst for the blood of my perceived enemies. Forgive… and forgiveness was granted. It was always there; I just needed to find the courage to ask for it.
The thing I love about worship in the Episcopal church, is that it’s personal and corporate. I had a mystical, profound, personal experience between myself and God, initiated by common prayer and the words of my friend and priest. I sat weeping, bare and naked before my God, but I was not alone. In my community, a group of people wept with me in the darkness, crying for forgiveness of whatever transgressions lay heavy on their hearts. As I laid my heart open to God, my fellow Christians enveloped me in shared grief, in shared repentance, and in shared love.
That’s the incredible scandal of the cross and the unbelievable salvation of grace. Christ knows us each personally, separately, in all our triumphs and failures, in all our loyalty and all our betrayal. Christ knows us all personally, yet he died for all of us, corporately, together. We are individuals, but we are not alone. The only thing I can do in the face of this scandalous love is kneel down and accept it, and rise to walk out of the dark, embraced by my friends, my community, and my church.
Alleluia, He is Risen! Happy Easter!
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