April and the Legacy of Good Friday
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T. S. Elliot once called April the “cruelest month”— perhaps because, in April, we flirt with beauty and the opening of spring. The word April has likely connections to the Latin word which means “to open,” indicating the early recognition of budding trees, blooming flowers, and a world coming back to life in the beauty of spring. Yet we still have gray days that pull us back into the chilliness of what feels like late winter.
The Greeks and Romans had a sense of this. April was also probably named after the goddess of love, Aphrodite (the Romans had the same idea but for them, Aphrodite was called Venus). As we all know, romantic love can be a beautiful thing; but it can also leave us cold, wondering what went wrong and if things will ever be right again. Perhaps, in the perspective of those early calendar-makers, the lingering potential for disappointment fit with this time of year.
In April, we learn to live with the tension of expectation and endurance, disappointment and hope, death and resurrection.
Today is Good Friday. This strange name fits also with our description of April. For the Friday remembered in our Christian tradition wasn’t good at all, at least not for Jesus and the disciples. Only with perspective have we come to the sacred conclusion that the tragic events of that day could be considered in any way good.
As you move through this day, may it be with a pensive meditation, a renewed awareness of all that is around you: the beauty of the blossoms and budding trees; and also damage by the late frost and blooms undone before their time. This is April. This is life.
This is the legacy of Good Friday. This day in our tradition encapsulates disappointments and broken dreams, hopes cast aside and visions evaporated in the heat of crueler realities.
Good Friday calls upon us to think about these things: meditate on all that is not but could have been; all that is needed but is being stifled; all that was but was overcome; all that is but shouldn’t be.
Sunday is coming. But for now, it is Friday.
Love,
David
David Jordan
Senior Pastor