Why Good Friday is so important

Sometimes we have to face our pain and suffering to reveal a bigger truth.

Good Friday cross
"Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" This is the obsessive African American spirit we sing at Holy Week, asking ourselves: were we there? Have we remained faithful to Jesus until the end? Did we really get it?

You can't say what any of us would do, but fear could have easily overwhelmed me. Like Pietro, I could have denied it three times. I could have pretended that I didn't even know Jesus.

"Sometimes, it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble ..." the words go. It makes me tremble. Although I had heard, like the disciples, the promise of the resurrection. It must have been difficult to believe that Jesus' return was possible after witnessing the gruesome torture of death on the cross.

Sometimes I'd rather skip it. Skip the Good Friday service, skip the Holy Thursday. Forget everything until Easter.

Then I remember something that our pastor once said. He observed that at the resurrection, Jesus showed himself first to those who eventually got stuck with him.

"There were also many women there, who looked from afar ..." says the Gospel of Matthew, "including Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of James and Joseph ..."

Only a couple of verses later we read that "towards the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher." They were there. To discover the empty tomb.

They rush to tell the disciples, but even before reaching them, Jesus appears to the two women. They were there at worst. I'm here now to experience the incredible, astounding good news firsthand.

Sometimes we have to overcome difficult times, face our pain and suffering without running away, to have the greatest truth revealed.

Stay with Good Friday. Easter is upon us.