The devastation of Good Friday is in our midst.
When the world as we thought we knew it is crumbling all around us, we can easily be at a loss as to what to do, confounded as to how to react, despairing of any action that makes any real difference. The worst trick of such despair is that it makes us believe that our contribution—our action, our agency—is just a drop in the bucket that won’t amount to much. The problem is too wicked. The reach of degradation is too vast. The malevolent onslaught wreaks a seemingly unstoppable erosion of the very fibers and sinews of integrity, dignity, and connection.
We bear witness to many forms of crucifixion this day. Civil liberties. Immigrant and refugee lives. International students’ academic pursuits and livelihoods. Free intellectual inquiry and speech. American democracy. The safety and dignity of LGBTQIA+ persons. War torn countries. You need not look far; the faces of the crucified Christ are right in front of us, flashing on our hand-held devices, embodied in our cities, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, grocery stores, and homes.
If you’re like the disciples (and I confess that I am), you might be tempted to hide away in an upper room, watch voyeuristically from afar, live in denial, escape in a myriad of ways, pretend that you can go back to former routines. A crucial exhortation of the Easter story is the courageous call to do that one next faithful thing in front of us, within our reach. That is all that is asked. Take that one next faithful step. And choose to do so every day—whether that is to share the burden of someone’s cross as did Simon the Cyrene, give of one’s most precious belongings as the woman who anointed Jesus, bear witness as those on the road to Emmaus, go to death-dealing places and advocate, mourn, and lament; or seek, find, and cultivate the empty tombs of our lives where hope, witness, advocacy, courage, and action can spring anew.
The devastation of Good Friday is in our midst. The gaping chasm of Holy Saturday threatens to swallow our world. The mystery of Easter is that God chooses spaces of death and despair to be transfigured into places of Light—inviting us daily into this holy, co-creative agency.
– G. Sujin Pak, dean