Nobody wants to hear the Passion story. I’ve heard of people trying to make Palm Sunday easier by moving the Passion story to the end of that service, with a pause before it so people can leave if they want.
And then not many people come to Good Friday service. Nobody wants to spend a spring evening hearing the Passion story.
I know, it’s no fun, that old story of how that poor traveling preacher was betrayed by one of his friends, abandoned by almost all the others, and then murdered by a governor who was manipulated into it by envious men who were supposed to be people of faith.
A sad and sordid story
It’s a sad, sordid story and it’s no fun at all. But we need to stay and hear it, all of it. We need to do our best to take it in, all of it, everything that happened to Jesus and his friends on that Friday so long ago. We can’t look away and pretend it didn’t.
We can’t go straight from palms to Easter lilies without a long hard look at the crown of thorns.
When we begin to understand
When we begin to understand that Jesus–our Lord and Savior, Second Person of the Trinity, truly human and truly divine–when we begin to understand that God in Christ went through that horrible suffering and painful death upon the cross for us, to save us, then we have to stay and hear the story.
Once we begin to understand that Jesus took on all our sorrow and all our pain and gave them meaning by his holy death and saving resurrection, then we have to stay and hear the story–and kneel in humble gratitude for the immeasurable, incomprehensible grace of our loving and redeeming God.
Audrey Novak Riley is director for stewardship and development for Women of the ELCA. Download Women of the ELCA’s resource on resurrection.
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