On Friday.

“It’s Friday – but Sunday’s coming!”

I’ve already heard this several times today across my Twitter feed and in various Facebook posts. We know this to be true. We know Sunday, chock full of resurrection newness, is coming.

But what if we didn’t know? Can you imagine a cross-heavy Friday without the knowledge of Sunday?

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Today I find myself pondering the friends of Jesus, the men and women who followed him for three years. I think of his mother who knew him much longer than that. They believed Jesus was different, that he was deliverer and destined to be King.

Judas, a zealot at heart, knew Jesus would eventually call down the armies and angels of heaven to defend himself and inaugurate the new kingdom. Peter knew Jesus would reign over Jerusalem, and the disciples would rule alongside him. Mary knew her son was an integral part of the Mighty One’s salvific plan to bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things. She knew it from the start.

But here they were all huddled at Golgotha on a Friday. Well, not all of them. What we’re told is that the women stayed. The women watched Jesus die. They watched their understanding of the world die. And, as people well-versed in lament, they stayed in the hurt and wept. John was strong enough to linger, too, we’re told.

Peter was nowhere to be found. He already was devastated by his own denial of Jesus the night before, already torn apart by a torrent of tears. Judas didn’t make it to Friday. When he saw Jesus ambushed and arrested – and no divine armies coming to save him – Judas realized his own mistake, his own betrayal, that final kiss. He couldn’t live with being so wrong about Jesus, about the coming kingdom, about everything.

So at the foot of the cross on Friday were the dumbfounded friends of Jesus. How could this be the end? What about the victory against Rome? What about Jesus seated on the throne dispensing justice? What about the grand reversal where the meek ones would inherit the land? How could this state-sponsored death be right? A savior nailed to a cross, labeled by the mainstream ‘a terrorist’ is not what we were promised. Where do we go from here?

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How many times do we not see what God is doing? Nothing seems to be converging, in fact everything is unraveling around us. We thought we knew what to expect, how God was working it all together for good, but then this. It feels like the unwelcomed unexpectedness of death – and we, too, are gripped by paralyzing disorientation.

What do you do next when everything you know to be true is wrong? What’s next when it falls to pieces in front of you? When a son dies or a marriage crumbles or jobs leave town or depression harasses day in and day out… When your world comes undone and there’s no savior on the horizon – where can we go?

What do we do with a crucified Messiah?

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We bring our stunned-silent selves to the foot of the cross and the now dead body of Jesus. We join the weeping ones in their disorientation and dismay. We sit together and mourn what should have been, what we hoped it would be. We seethe with a sadness too deep to name. We think it – though no one dares to say it out loud – We’ve lost.

Disorientation, doubt, and denial all find their place within the passion of this week. And when we recognize these feelings in our own lives, there’s a place to go where we aren’t alone in our pain. When we don’t understand what God is doing – we go to Golgotha on Friday afternoon and sit.

This is a day for the speechless among us.

Before Sunday, we confess our own bewilderment at the way things are, about how confused we feel by it all. We sit in such company and whisper the question, “Is God really at work among us?” On this day, it’s okay to not know the answer. On this day, we don’t know much of anything.

On Friday we gather with other bewildered believers. We weep. We ache. We wonder what could possibly be next… other than the inevitable burial of a friend. Is anything else possible? On Friday, we just don’t know.

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