March 28th, 2013

Hey, everyone!

Hope you’re having an awesome week! Or better...hope you’re having a holy week! Hope you’re having an awesome holy week! Christians around the world call this week “Holy Week”...or they call it “la Semana Santa”, or le Semaine Sainte, or la Settimana Santa, or Karwoche... It all depends in what language or country you worship our Lord during these days. 

On Friday at 7:00, we’ll have our Good Friday service. Then we’ll hav... 

What? “Why do they call it Good Friday? “ 

Great question!

I don’t think anyone really knows why they call it Good Friday. Sometimes, churches have services on Maundy Thursday to remember the night our Lord Jesus ate the Passsover with His closest followers and washed their feet. “Maundy” is an Old English form of the Latin word, “mandatum” which means “commandment”. It comes from the Latin version of the words Jesus said on that holy Thursday...”A new commandment I give you that you love one another...” John 13.34  ("Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos.”…I’m not good at writing Latin but I’m getting better at Googling stuff)

Some people think “Good Friday” comes from “God’s Friday”. Like “good-bye” comes from “God be with ye”.  

Other people believe that we call it Good Friday because of all the good that came on that day. 

“What was good about that day?”, some wonder. It was the saddest day in the history of the earth. The sun hid its face so it didn’t have to watch. 

It was a day of all things sad and painful...

Jesus stumbling...

hammers ringing…

thieves swearing...

soldiers betting…

Jesus bleeding...

soldiers mocking…

women weeping...

friends hiding...

Jesus dying...

friends grieving...

stones rolling…

sun setting…

darkness reigning…

In the first moments of His nailing, our Savior asked the Father to forgive those who so horribly abused Him. Then He assured a criminal of a place in Heaven with Him that very day.  Then it became dark. For three hours, there was darkness in the whole world.  

And it became quiet. Our Lord suffered silently. 

As an old spiritual says, “They crucified my Lord and He never said a mumblin’ word…not a word…not a word.”  The cruelest, coldest hearts on the planet, employed to nail humans down and hoist them up, and do it without a qualm or shiver, watched the Son of God suffer in silence, as blood and love flowed. 

And then He spoke. And one thing He said just before He breathed the last time was, “I’m thirsty.”  Why would He say this? Say that to the most unconcerned, uncaring assembly of human beings of all time?  Did He hope that from those emotionless, cold, dead hearts, someone would care that He was thirsty? That hands that had hammered Him would now help Him?  

And yet…And yet…

“And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink.” (Matthew 27.48)

Could it be that one of them, having heard words of forgiveness and of a home in heaven…royal words spoken from a cross where a King ruled through love…had opened his heart to Him? And out of that new and reborn heart which moments before had been only dark and cold…out of that unlikely place…some pity…some caring…some good had come? 

In almost the next verse after this, our Lord was dead. But just before that darkest of moments, on that darkest of Fridays…on the worst Friday ever… someone with love for Jesus, did something good 

And this goodness grew.

Today it circles the earth. 

See you on Good Friday.