A number of years ago, I went to a lecture about the most important day of the church year.
That day, of course, is…
Well, here is the challenge. Because what I learned during the lecture was that, across Christian history, across the Christian movement right now, there was not and is not a single answer to that question. Many of us in the West in 2017 would rank Christmas and Easter pretty high on our lists. (Some of us would put the Blessing of the Animals into our Top Five.) But the lecturer told us about times and places in Christianity in which folks might have said that the defining day of our faith was Pentecost or the Transfiguration or the Ascension or today:
Good Friday.
I’m intrigued by that last possibility. By the possibility that the most important thing to know about Jesus is what we find out when we stand at the foot of the cross.
Good Friday says that God knows firsthand what it is to wait, what it is to suffer, what it is to die.
Good Friday is the antidote to the anxious possibility that God is distant or indifferent.
Good Friday is the promise that, no matter what, we can turn to God with confidence and say: You know what this is like.
What could be more important than that?
