Pastor's Corner: Good Friday's goodness

Twice a year, I lead worship by candlelight in a dark sanctuary: Christmas Eve and Good Friday, the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. These two commemorations have more in common than just the use of candles instead of electricity, though. Both of these days center around the body of Christ. I don't mean "body of Christ" the way we usually use that phrase, as a way to talk about the whole church. The Incarnation and Crucifixion center around the actual, physical, flesh-and-blood body of Jesus of Nazareth.

On Christmas Eve, we celebrate the body of a newborn baby, with his tiny lungs just filling with air, the Word mewing out his first word. We sing "Silent Night, Holy Night" in the rosy glow of candlelight. On Good Friday, we remember the body of that same newborn baby, grown into a man, breathing out his last word in pain and dereliction. In my church, and many others, at the Good Friday service, we read the Passion story, from Jesus' anguished prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to his anguished cry from the cross. The service begins in light and ends in darkness; the last candle is extinguished just as Jesus breathes his last.

On both Christmas and Good Friday, a body takes center stage. The same body, as Mary, Jesus' mother, is all too painfully aware. The same child she nursed and swaddled and burped and changed now is at the mercy of unjust politicians and self-serving religious leaders, cruel soldiers and uncaring crowds. That same child now hangs suspended in the air by hard nails and tender flesh. As the old spiritual so rightly puts it, "sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble."

Even with this centrality of Christ's created body, Christianity sometimes drifts into the unfortunate (and unbiblical) territory of being anti-creation. Sometimes Christianity teaches (erroneously) that bodies are bad and souls are good. Perhaps a famous line from the Passion according to Matthew just popped in your mind: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." Of course, our minds and bodies are not always in full agreement, but that doesn't make one better or more "divine" than the other. When God made the world, God called it Good. When God made humanity, God called it Very Good. Our bodies are Very Good, and our bodies are wrapped up in the plan of salvation.

Sometimes, Christianity can get too spiritual for our own good. An example from our own history is instructive: when Europeans started to creep their fingers into North and South America, the Church used a false dichotomy between soul and body to aid the colonization. They claimed, in simplified term, "We only need to care about the indigenous people's souls, and we don't need to care about their bodies." We know where that line of thinking led: straight to the horrors of the residential schools, which is not what Jesus intended when he said to, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations."

When we train our eyes on the crucifix on Good Friday, we don't just see the Savior of all nations; we see the bodies of every person who has suffered the blows of sinful humanity. We see Christ accompanying every victim of mob violence, every betrayed friend, every abandoned child. We see Christ suffering with the afflicted of every age and standing beside them in solidarity and love. The body of Christ hangs at the center of this day. It is not easy, it is not nice, but it is good. It is good news that Christ loves us, soul and body.

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Meghan Hoewisch is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Havre.