The Most Misunderstood Holidays in the Christian Year

I write this on a gorgeous Good Friday morning. The campus is quiet, and even though we do not have an Easter break, this place will be rather empty in a few hours, as students retreat to spend time with their families. Later, I will lead a quiet prayer service. And then I will spend a quiet weekend with my family. I have always loved the spirit of Holy Week, and by the time I get to Easter Sunday, I do feel a sense of rejuvenation and hopefulness. However, the reason that I feel that way may differ from the reasons that many Christians would use to explain their sense of joy on Easter.
I cannot separate Good Friday from Easter, and have never been able to do that. For many, Good Friday is a downer and it is best to move on to Easter as quickly as possible. While serving my first parish, I was part of a ministerial association that sponsored an annual seven-part Good Friday service. The service was held in one church, so it did not move from church to church as some services do today. Each half-hour segment was a self-contained worship service, with hymns, prayers and homilies. I recall that one year I was the last preacher of the day, the last one to preach about the significance of the day we were living. Enter the preacher before me. He got up and chastised the congregation for being bummed on Good Friday. After all, Easter Sunday meant that Good Friday did not matter. It was "good" because the resurrection was coming. I don't recall what I said during my homily, but he made the task much more difficult, I'm sure.
I tend to look at the equation from the opposite direction: Easter makes no sense without Good Friday. In the crucifixion, God touched earth with compassion and empathy and a willingness to experience all that is common to men and women. The joy of Easter, for me, has to do with the fact that there is nothing that I must face in this life that God does not understand. Death is not the great destroyer, because God knows the pain of a loved one's death. I am a person of deep faith, but my father's death devastated me, and no amount of theologizing about it made the pain lessen in the least. But I did have this assurance from deep within that his death would not destroy me and that I did not have to bear it alone. When I die, my children will not have to bear the pain alone, either. The God of Good Friday and Easter will be there too, and they will come to understand the connection of the one day to the other.
So, may you experience a Good Friday of deep meaning and quiet assurance, and may Easter affirm for you, and for all, that resurrection has to do with the eternal presence and faithfulness of a God whose love we can never fully imagine.