Good Friday

For today: Matthew 26.47-27.61 and John 18.1-19.42.
For Saturday: Matthew 27.62, Job 14.1-14, Ps 16.5-11, Rm 6.3-11.
--
I’ve just finished today’s readings from the Gospels, those stories which describe a day of sorrows for the man of sorrows, and I’m reminded of a chapter from F. Buechner’s book Telling the Truth. It's the one on The Gospel as Tragedy where I seem to remember Buechner asking the question: Why do they call it Good Friday?

There is denial by friends, false accusation, interrogation, slapping, mocking. More questioning, more beating, more mocking…

Hand-washing, cross-bearing, nail-driving. Humiliation, question, abandon.

Disgrace and darkness.

Friday ends with a corpse lowered from a blood-stained cross. It ends with 70 pounds of burial spices smeared on a my-God-why-have-you-forsaken-me body. It ends with a wrapped cadaver placed on a bed of hard, cold rock. It ends with the grinding roll of a stone placed solidly before the tomb entrance.