Good Friday

What would Easter look like without Good Friday?

As I sit with the weight of Good Friday, preparing to preach tonight, I find myself wondering: What would Good Friday have felt like if we didn’t know Easter was coming?

What if we didn’t know the resurrection was just around the corner? What if we didn’t know that in three days, God would turn grief into glory and death into life?

How deep might our despair have sunk? How unbearable would the silence feel?

Would we, like Jesus, cry out “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Would we believe, even for a moment, that God had left us? That all the good Jesus had done—healing, teaching, forgiving—was gone with one brutal, unjust death?

It’s tempting to move too quickly past this day. To skip to resurrection. To polish the cross and fast-forward to lilies and alleluias. But that’s not how life works—and it’s not how faith works either.

So let me ask a harder question: What would Easter look like without Good Friday?

Can we truly celebrate the joy of resurrection without first facing the sorrow of the tomb?

Good Friday demands that we acknowledge pain, loss, injustice, grief. For many of us, that’s not theoretical—it’s lived. We’ve known what it is to feel abandoned by God. We’ve walked through dark nights of the soul, when tragedy strikes, when relationships fracture, when we are pulled in every direction except the one God seems to be calling us toward.

In those moments, it’s hard to imagine the “before,” let alone the “after.” The darkness can feel endless.

But even in that deep night, something quiet and sacred happens: We keep going. We plod toward morning. We cling to the hope that the sun will rise—because it always does.

Even on Good Friday, God does not leave us alone in the shadows. The light will break through. Hope will take root. Faith will be rekindled. Sight will be restored.

But we’re not there yet.

For now, Jesus remains in the tomb. And we wait. We grieve. We listen. We remember.

Because only when we’ve truly entered the depths of Good Friday can we fully celebrate the height of Easter joy. Only when we’ve wrestled with pain can we rejoice in healing. Only when we’ve wept can we understand resurrection’s laughter.

So tonight, we stay here—by the cross, in the silence, at the edge of the tomb. Sitting with the arrival. Not because we’ve lost hope, but because we know what’s coming.

And when it comes, it will be even more glorious for having waited.