Throughout my entire life Jesus has been my friend. I cannot recall one solitary day in my childhood of thinking Jesus was not for me, not loving me, or not compassionate towards me. Combine that faith in Jesus with a giant creative heap of imagination and you have a version of little Rebecca who was absolutely brokenhearted by passion plays and Good Friday services. Little Rebecca grew into adult Rebecca, but my spirit was just as crushed at such services. I still haven’t seen the Passion of the Christ movie for the same reason I choose not to watch movies with excessive violence towards enslaved Black Americans. I don’t need that in my noggin. My heart is wrenched by such scenes.

I struggle every single year with what we Christians call Holy Week. I don’t like to be forced into imagining the torture of my friend and Savior Jesus. Every year I have an internal–sometimes external–argument where I tell my pretend audience that “you can’t make me repeat all of this again.” You. cannot. make. me. And just to be real clear: we’re all pretending! I mean, this already happened and now we live with a Risen Savior at the right hand of God the Father. I’ve skipped Good Friday services in order to not give in to the deeply sad feelings. Sometimes I simply do not want to cry anymore.

This year we attended a Tenebrae Service and while I did indeed cry, I also felt grateful for the physicality of the memories of Christ’s death. We used our senses to experience dark and light, to listen to mournful music, to witness the Light of Life exiting the building. And I felt camaraderie with my Savior in the depths of despair that life holds. This deep sadness? He knew it. These heartbreaking betrayals? He was there, too. My friend Jesus, the perfect man, knew the same suffering that I know, that my friends know.

Of course the story doesn’t end there. Praise God, THE STORY DOES NOT END THERE. With freedom and perfect abandon we Christians worship a Jesus who did NOT stay dead. He was the Messiah–is the Messiah, the great deliverer–and death couldn’t hold him down. He is the perfect sacrifice and scripture says he died and rose again with our names on his heart and with our sins on his shoulders. His perfect and sinless self for my broken and sinful self. Amen.

All of this believing and remembering (and even present-day pretending during Holy Week) takes faith; I will not say otherwise. I couldn’t buy into it without that leap of faith. I’m here, existing with a faith that ebbs and flows but is always present nonetheless. I’m here, with outstretched hands, receiving daily mercies and grace that come from a Father in heaven who loves me and knows me. I’m here, rejoicing in what I don’t see but what I know deep in my heart until I see our Triune God face to face in glory.

I’m here.

The Spirit is with me.

And today that’s enough.