My Good Friday Ritual

For years I have had a Good Friday ritual.  Each year, in addition to curating a Good Friday experience at Parachutes (www.ParachutesAlaska.com) or attending a worship service, I always watch “Until the End of the World” by U2 on the Elevation 2001 – Live From Boston DVD.  I watch that performance for two reasons: the songs lyrics about grace extended even to Judas with the backdrop of the last supper and for the portrayal of good verses evil acted out on the stage at the end of the song.  It reminds me of the grace and salvation offered at the cross as well as God overcoming  the devil and his works on Good Friday.  

I also watch Jesus Was and Only Child on the VH-1 Storytellers episode with Bruce Springsteen.  That DVD is part of my observance each year because of Springsteen’s explanation of the song drawing the listener to Jesus’ relationship with his mother, Jesus’ humanity, and our own humanity.  A wonderful song written about Good Friday.

Today I added a new piece to my list of Good Friday touchstones.  I burned a podcast to CD and plan to listen to it each Good Friday.  Burned onto that disc is an interview with author Tony Jones on the Homebrewed Christianity podcast ( http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2015/03/30/did-god-kill-jesus-w-tony-jones ).  Jones discusses his book “Did God Kill Jesus?”  It is a good discussion of one of my favorite topics – atonement theories.  However, it is not the atonement theory discussion that caused this to be added to my observance, but rather Jones’ explanation of Rene Girard’s understanding of the atonement and the cross.  Jones renames Girard’s view as The Mirror model of atonement and explains that what God is doing on the cross is showing humanity its violence and displaying that violence will never work and has never worked.  Humanity is forced to look at the fact that we are so violently destructive that we even killed Jesus.

Joel K