"The Good and the Bad" - A Good Friday Reflection from Rev. Lee Yates

Scripture: Psalm 22

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

While other lines of scripture may get more attention, this one was so profound that Jesus quoted it and at some point, all of us have heard it and shouted, “Amen” or at least given a deep “uh-hu”. At some point, we have all felt the sting of betrayal, the crushing weight of expectations, the emptiness of failure, or the gulf of grief that seems to separate us from God.

“Yet,” the Psalmist writes, “you are holy!”

It seems we are not the only ones with confused feelings. Those who came before us also felt the mix of emotion that makes up the human experience. Great sorrow swirled with sporadic joy – deep anger mixed with profound compassion – doubt that cripples us while we sing about the might acts of God. We get to hear the psalmist wander through their emotions as they transition from praising God to verbal flagellation, seemingly forgetting the original blessing of being created in God’s image. The writer shares fears and helplessness with intermittent please to God for help. We get to hear the psalmist wonder if the God of our ancestors will show up today and then turn around and proclaim God’s presence and say with assurance that God will be known for generations to come. We are not the only ones with confused feelings and inconsistent expressions of faith, fear, hope, and praise.

We don’t always give ourselves permission to feel everything. We compartmentalize the hard stuff and only let other things out when it is deemed acceptable. We share different pieces of ourselves with different audiences. The faithful words of praise are openly shared in worship while the lingering questions and doubts get squashed or reserved for conversation with only our most trusted partners. Sometimes we will admit them to someone else who is struggling, but only as a form of commiseration – unsure if we will own those thoughts when we no longer need to feel needed. We wander from setting to setting. We wander through ages and stages of life. Sadly, we don’t pause often enough to wonder about the big questions and often lack the courage to ask them in front of others who might commiserate with us – others who might enter a conversation with us – others who might wonder and eventually wander with us.

This day in the lectionary calendar is often called “Good Friday.” There are various reasons for that, but maybe it’s more of a “Last Call Friday” or “Last Chance Friday.” This is a day where those who skipped Lent or tried to safely compartmentalize self-reflection till after Easter can jump in and still welcome the chaos of our human condition. We can open up our hearts and let the complexity of our emotions run wild. We can find connective comfort in the words of those who passed on their wondering to us. From prophets and psalmists to the writers of the Gospel, we can easily find ourselves in the story. Maybe not literally, but surely in the contradictions of motivations and roller coaster of emotions.

We see the same mix of feelings in Jesus as he carries the weight of expectations, the loneliness of leadership, and the burden of a calling that must have felt suffocating. Yet he still celebrates Passover with loved ones. He still pays attention to friends and family, encouraging them to care for each other. He still shows grace and mercy to strangers. Then, he cries out with the pain of rejection and exhaustion, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In that moment, maybe more than any other, we can find a relational moment with Jesus. As he echoes generations of questions – generations of suffering – generations of people who felt unseen or unheard – Jesus unleashes a cry of human honesty that invites us into relationship and challenges us to better know ourselves.

May the suffering of the past and present be with us, along with the hope and joy that both carry. May the questions and contradictions of our humanity bubble their way to the surface and bring us all closer together in curiosity and grace. May the cry of the suffering servant and praise to the eternal one be heard in a harmony that echoes from generation to generation, assuring us that we are not alone, and so that:

All the ends of the earth shall remember

    and turn to the Lord,

and all the families of the nations

    shall worship before God.

For dominion belongs to the Lord,

    and God rules over the nations.

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Rev. Lee Yates serves as Vice President for Higher Education and Leadership Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He is also pastor of Covina Community Church, UCC.