Making Friday Good Again
Today is not Total Depravity Awareness Day
I’m up before dawn on Good Friday. The Good Fridays of my childhood were memorable, enjoyable even. On our liturgical calendar, Good Friday was the only occasion on which Evening Service did not coincide with School Night.
The restrictions of the Sabbath—the restrictions that kept us from putting gas in the car or frequenting a restaurant and causing a manservant or maidservant to labor on the seventh day—did not apply on Fridays. We took advantage of this. After the evening service we—along with a considerable number of other congregants—made a traditional pilgrimage to Perkins Family Restaurant in the heart of Newark, New York. We went out for ice cream and coffee and pancakes; we went to Perkins because there was no other place to go.
I have always liked Good Friday, a day for introspection, for melancholy reflection. A day to wonder about my complicity in causing the grief and shame that weighed down that Sacred Head. Good Friday, a day to contemplate our sinfulness, as though it were the International Day of Total Depravity, Wretch-Like-Me Awareness Day.
A lot has happened since then. Perkins closed years ago, for one thing. Many erstwhile congregants have died; most of the rest have moved away. I’ve travelled and have acquainted myself with other cultures and faith traditions. What language can I borrow? is now a legitimate question.
I contemplate the Cross now, unable to put my faith in a transaction. Unable to believe that Quantity X of my wretchedness requires the administration of an antidote of Quantity Y of a Savior’s blood. I’m unable to believe that there is a greater balance on which Love will be weighed against the mass of my depravity. I’m unable to believe in an equation in which Love serves as only a variable, able to be balanced against the weight of my transgressions, however heavy these might be.
On this Good Friday, I will not go to church. I will not go to Perkins. In a few hours, my husband and I will fly to South Africa, to a country with a history as twisted as (and entangled in) that of our Reformed Tradition. We are off to rest, to celebrate. Eight-and-a-bit years ago, like modern-day Huguenots, we fled to the Cape of Good Hope, escaping our faiths as we followed our Faith. Ten days later we departed Cape Town, finally able to stand side-by-side at passport control, for now we were a married couple.
I see, on the Cross, the purity of a Love that is undarkened by oppression, by injustice, by physical pain. I see that el amor no sabe de cuentas—that Love keeps no record of wrongs, or even of rights. I see Love that abounds in the context of the knowledge that what is seen is temporary, and that only the unseen is eternal. I see Love that reminds us that even though the world can be shit and people can be jackasses, Love is there, beneath the dirt and blood and thirst and pain, asking only that its oppressors be forgiven. And in this I don’t see death. Here I see the fulness of Life.
Hi Daniel, trust you are continuing to write as you're able. I'm not traveling to S.A. this year but will remain in Sioux Falls. . . a journey of its own to make Christmas with family good again, perhaps. In the current post election chaos I'm looking for statements that help me think in a new way. I know you to be a thinker so am passing this along. This comment came about in a small group discussion led by Marianne Borg online: "Just a thought….What if the work to continually birth love, justice and compassion into this troubled and confounding world, often in response to hatred and injustice, IS the return of the Messiah?"
Thanks for this insight into your life. I was wondering about you just last week. I was missing your thoughts. Happy Easter.