On forgetting you’ve already read the last chapter…
I have a complaint about much that is posted on Good Fridays. Almost every comment I see is anticipating Sunday, and indeed the whole later history of Christianity, warts (by which I might well mean PSA) and all.
But if you’re reading a story and really entering into it, you need to suspend disbelief – and if you’ve read it before, you need to try to forget that you know what’s coming next. Only that way can you really feel this part of the story. I was therefore happy to see Pete Enns blog about this point. Good Friday is a time when we should, if we are doing it right, be feeling apparently irretrievable loss, and empathising with the irretrievable losses of others.
And, of course, today is the day when, if at no other time, we can think “God is dead” and explore the ramifications of an interesting theology, if not the concept that maybe, just maybe, Elie Wiesel was right when he wrote “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: Where is God now? And I heard a voice within me answer him: … Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows”.
Today, if we are truly with Jesus on his journey, we are in Hell…