Growing up in a different denomination, I had very little attachment to Holy Week. We went from the excitement and energy of waving our palms on Palm Sunday directly to the Good News of Easter. And the Mystery of the empty tomb was in competition with the mystery of the Easter Bunny.

When I became an Episcopalian, Holy Week was a remarkable experience for me… 

One Friday during Lent, I attended a Stations of the Cross service. We walked from station to station, reading and praying with each of the vignettes about this terrible day. I remember feeling Good Friday in a way I had never known.

Then Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, came out. With a group of friends, I went to see it on a Good Friday. When it was over, we walked to our cars and drove home…not one word was spoken.

We hold Good Friday in tension:

• Our grief for the tortured death of Jesus
• Our grief for our own mortality
• Our hope for a world that yearns to be reconciled
• Our faith that guides us through this fragile life
• Our joy that rolls away the rock
• Our expectant hearts that await Christ

For the disciples, this day feels like the end. 

They do not know that there is something amazing to expect.

Good Friday invites us to sit with the disciples, to feel the hopelessness of “the end”. And to hold that feeling in tension with our own expectation of God’s unending story.