"Good Friday"

by Kimberley Thompson, Tastemaker in Residence

Last year at this time, the world had shut down due to Covid 19. Everything was discombobulated, individually chaotic and globally uncertain. Countries seemed knee jerk and cavalier border by border and continent by continent. Messages from governments were looping and knotted, beseeching and inflammatory. One never felt more alone, yet oddly all in the same ark. Grief, arrogance, fear, confusion and disbelief whirled around our lives like eddies in a stream. 

Easter as a "greeting card holiday" was nonexistent; no community Easter egg hunts or family celebrations with laden tables. All days were "days off" from school, work, public events and private. 

Easter as a Holy time was forced to dismiss the pageantry, symbolism and community we have taken for granted for centuries starting with Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Lent and culminating with the shouted "He is Risen" celebrations of Easter morn. Dried palm branches lay neglected, altars weren't adorned with trumpeting lilies and sermons remained unspoken.

Now it is 2021 and still under a pandemic cloud, we search for the meaning in Easter. 

Our emotions have run from the Alpha to the Omega and back again. Humankind has risen above its nature to give solace, bring hope, and lend a hand (shoulder, feet and ears) to those who have needed. And yet at the same time, we have descended into such an unforeseen dark valley that one sees no shadows because there is no light. 

Redemption. 

For me, the word redemption has been working its way to the front of my cortex as I ponder the second most "Un-normal" Easter I can remember. 

The Oxford Dictionary has 2 meanings for redemption:

    1. The action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.  

    2. The action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or the clearing a debt.

Easter, and the time preceding, is the ABC list of redemption. The very visceral walk through the last 40 days of Christ's life before his action of giving His Life to save those who humbly acknowledge Him as their Lord and Savior is the first definition. We are redeemed, as the old hymn says, "By his blood."

But it is the second definition from Oxford that crushed me this Easter. Redemption being something we can gain back; something we can "buy back" whether in hard earned dollars, truly contrite actions/behavior or sentences served. A clearing of a debt owed. A clean slate. A new start.

All of us have needed redemption. It could be the redemption of our souls by the shedding of Christ's blood and subsequent death on the cross. It may be the forgiveness of our sins against another person. It could be court mandated via a judges ruling. And yet...

No one remembers the redemption during these dark times. The talk (and sheer hyperbole) is of what happened "before" the bill was paid and a life changed. 

We discuss missteps taken since the redemption, the feet of clay, the "deserving" of George Floyd's death. Dear God, we all need to look in our mirrors to see what our redemption looks like. And how we inwardly and outwardly HONOR and UPHOLD the nature of redemption.

Our hearts have hardened like the stone in Christina Rossetti's poem "Good Friday." Her heart has hardened against the sacrifice and redemption of Christ. 

She sees others wounded and shaken; there visible grief at the magnitude of Christ's last day and the awareness of their own denials. And yet she feels nothing. She looks towards the Shepherd for redemption to smite her heart of stone. To pay the price to regain her heart.

“Good Friday” - by Christina Rossetti 1830-1894

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,

To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon - 

I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.