The Evening Sky on Good Friday

Looking up at the sky tonight, I couldn't help but think about what it must have been like on the actual good Friday. What did the apostles think as they looked into the sky at the darkness? Just a few days later they must have seen such hope in the sky. The stars were symbols of the heavenly host, watching, waiting for the Messiah to make himself known. And now, he was gone. The moon was no longer the loving eye of God staring at them in joy, but the sly smile of Satan gloating his victory. Jesus was dead. The dream was over.
When you think about it, God left them hanging for about 40 hours. Jesus had left hints, but they didn't get it. So for two nights they sat and stared at the sky. How did they react? Did some cry all three days, overcome by sorrow? Did some think about joining in Judas' fate? Maybe others were numb from the shock. Some may have prayerfully ask for God to carry them through. Maybe one or two shook their fists at the Heavens and vowed that they had had enough of God's empty promises. Maybe others just say and contemplated what had happen in the last few years.
Because we know about Sunday morning, we look over the anguish of Friday night. I had a friend that was headed to a Lutheran Good Friday Service tonight. As he talked about it, I could see that some of my more conservative Church of Christ friends were sort of snickering. Why would you go to a Lutheran church to celebrate Good Friday? They do all sorts of weird stuff this time of year.
What they try to do, from what I can tell, with thier liturgical calendar and services, is help people experience Christ. From what I see in other religious groups, there is a value in living out Christ's reality in our lives. Thus we have lent to remember his forty days in the desert. We cry at his death on Friday. We celebrate when he is raised on Sunday. Every worship experience tries to connect you to the life of Christ. Such an approach may lead to hyper-allegorization, but it does try to immerse the congregants in the life of Christ.
We could learn from that in the Restoration Movement. Jason Ashlock spoke in chapel today. He talked about how we too can stand and look at Christ and scream "Hossana! Save us now!" That cry for salvation is just as necessary in the church as it is in the world. We have lost our connection to what Christ did. Because we fear messing up dates we divorce Christ's death from a day on the calendar. We don't realize that in so doing, we are making him a little farther from reality.
In churches of Christ, we have a heritage of baptism. We talk about how immersion is so important because it is a symbol of the death, burial, and resurection of Christ. In that act, we become one with Christ and our story becomes his story. Similarly, we value the Lord's supper because we want to remember his death. Why don't we take those values further? Why do we divorce Christ's life from any sort of real life holiday, and thus miss out on an oppurtunity to imagine what it was like to live with him.
I suggest that we adopt religious holdiays. Let's celebrate Christmas, Easter, Passover, whatever. In doing so, maybe we will be able to make Christ less a historical figure, which we can debate, pick apart, and analyze, and more a living being in us. Let us realize that we live out his life symbolicaly in many things that we do. We are called to carry his cross. Let's do what ever we can to show that Christ's story is our story and is still being told. It is not some old volume that is stuck on the shelves of history. It is a story that we live out everyday.