When you look at the progression of what we call Holy Week, it almost feels disorienting. Jesus enters Jerusalem and is welcomed like a king. People celebrate Him, praise Him, lay down palm branches as if victory has already been secured. There is expectation in the air. There is hope. There is momentum. Then, almost immediately, everything begins to narrow. There is a final meal. There is a quiet room. Feet are being washed, and words are spoken that the disciples do not fully understand, and sitting at the table is someone who will betray Him. Then the night comes, and there is an arrest. A series of rushed and unjust trials unfold faster than they should have. It is as if the outcome has already been decided before the process even begins. Then the cross… no delay, no reconsideration, no reversal, just the sudden and violent collapse of everything that, days before, looked like it was building toward something great. And then… nothing. A day passes. No miracle, no explanation, no visible hand of God the Father intervening. There is only silence.
There is a moment before all of this that has been sitting with me… a garden. Jesus, knowing exactly what is coming, withdraws to pray. Not in ignorance nor confusion, but in full awareness. He knows the betrayal is already in motion. He knows the suffering that is coming. He knows how it ends, and still, He walks toward it. There is a line from a sermon I came across that captures this in a way that is difficult to shake. It speaks to the humanity of the moment, not just the divinity. That this was not some distant, untouchable figure moving through a scripted outcome, but a man feeling the full weight of what was ahead of Him. In that moment, He prays, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me… nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” That is not the voice of someone detached from suffering. He asks if there is another way, but still chooses the path anyway.
This is the part that I cannot get past. It is one thing to endure something you do not see coming, but it is another thing entirely to walk toward something you fully understand. To know who will betray you, who will abandon you, what it will cost you, and how it will feel, and to not turn away, harden, or withdraw, but instead continue to love, to serve, to sit at the table with the very people who will fail you. That is not just sacrifice, it is something deeper. It is a way of living that does not depend on outcomes, and that is where this stops being something distant, something historical, something we observe once a year. No, it becomes something uncomfortably close, because if Christianity is anything beyond a label, beyond a belief system, beyond a tradition, then it is this… not just believing in Christ, but living in a way that reflects Him. That is where things become difficult.
If we are honest, we do the opposite. We protect ourselves when we sense pain coming. We distance ourselves when we think someone might hurt us. We adjust our behavior based on what we believe the outcome will be. We do not walk toward suffering willingly. We do not sit at tables where we know betrayal exists. We do not choose the harder path when an easier one might be available, and yet that is exactly what is modeled here. Not just in words, but in action. Which raises a question that is harder to answer than it first appears… what does it mean to live Christ-like?
There was something else I was watching recently that, in a strange way, connects to all of this. In Vikings, there is a moment where a character claims that the name of Jesus Christ will be erased from history, that the old gods will prevail, that what they believe will outlast everything else. It is a powerful line, even if written for television, because it reflects something that has been true throughout history. Every belief system, every culture, every empire, at some point, believes it is permanent, and yet time has a way of revealing otherwise. What was once worshiped becomes myth. What was once dismissed becomes foundation. In the middle of all of that, this moment, this execution that looked like the end, did not disappear. It endured, which makes Good Friday even more striking, because at the time, it did not look like the beginning of anything. It looked like the end of everything.
The part that stays with me the most is not even Friday; it is the day after. The day we almost never talk about. The day where nothing happens. There is no resurrection, no explanation, no clarity. There is just the weight of what has already taken place. That is the space between what is and what will be. If we are honest, that is where most of life is lived. Not in the celebration of Palm Sunday, not in the resolution of Easter Sunday, but in the uncertainty of what feels like Holy Saturday. Moments where something has been lost, something does not make sense, something feels final, and there is no immediate answer.
We want to rush past that. We want to resolve it. We want to jump to the part where everything makes sense again, but maybe there is something we are meant to learn by refusing to do that. Maybe Good Friday is not just about what happened. Maybe it is about what it means to remain present in the middle of something that has not yet been resolved. To sit in loss without immediately escaping it, to trust without immediate confirmation, to continue forward without full understanding. Because the truth is, most of us will find ourselves in moments that feel like this. Moments where we do not know how the story ends, moments where we are asked to move forward without clarity, moments where the only thing in front of us is the next step, not the full picture. And maybe the question is not how quickly we get to Easter. Maybe the question is whether we know how to live in the space before it.
Good Friday is not the victory. It is the moment before the victory, when nothing makes sense yet, and maybe, more than anything else, it is an invitation. Not just to believe in something, but to live in a way that reflects it, even here, even now, even when all we have left to do is wait.
From all of us at Holy Shock, we wish you a blessed Holy Weekend.