Bad Friday?

In just a few short hours, I will put on my clown white and step into the role of Jesus Christ, a role I am seriously unworthy of taking. The Clown Ministry Team has put in hours of practice and we have about 25 people involved in our worship service tonight. The service has been given a total make-over with new music and different characters, but the same Gospel message. The hour leading up to the Good Friday Passion Remembrance are usually fraught with last minute emergencies and creative solutions to those emergencies. Judas is hyperventilating - just breath. One of the youth showed up without their clown shirt -- we keep extras in the office. One final prayer and we are out the door and on our way to worship.
Several years ago when I was relatively new at Mandan UMC, I had an allergic reaction to some cheap clown make-up in the middle of the Good Friday service. Like troopers, the kids pitched in and we got through it. They learned that they possess inner strength they didn't know they had. I learned that the ER doctors really don't believe any story with the words "clown make-up" in it. I now take Benadryl before putting on the white.
Last week, I was discussing Holy Week with my Wonderful Wednesday after school children. One very insightful kids asked me why we call it Good Friday when it wasn't very good at all. In his opinion, it should be called Bad Friday. A very valid point! That Friday two thousand years had nothing good about it. Jesus spent the night in jail after a phony trial, he was beaten within an inch of his life and publically called a fraud. He was made to carry the device of his own execution through a crowded city and was crucified, mocked and died. Not a very good day at all. His mother watched her son put to death brutally. Only one of his disciples was present throughout the entire ordeal. All of the others had fled in fear of a similar fate. At the end of the day, they buried Him in a borrowed tomb. He was very much dead.
Easter would change the face of history forever. But no one present on that Friday could see past the events of that day to the miracle that would come on Sunday.
In the midst of Holy Week, we are steeped in the solemn liturgy and scripture of His last days. On Easter, we celebrate the resurrection of the Son of Man who gave us hope for a better life. We have 20/20 hindsight into the events of Easter and beyond. And from what we can see, it was a very good Friday.