First impressions can be deceiving
Good Friday, at first blush, appears misnamed.
What could possibly be good about a day that recalls the public execution of a peace-loving prophet falsely charged and wrongly convicted?
Good grief! Imagine a court ordered execution lasting six hours. Jesus' death chamber experience would be viewed today as cruel and unusual punishment.
Good grief! What could be worse? Nothing, unless the good of the day has the means to neutralize the injustice of the grief.
In other words, first impressions can be misleading.
Take that opening scene in the movie "The Martian." While caught in an unexpected storm on the surface of the red planet, Matt Damon's character is impaled by metal fragments from a flying antenna and left for dead.
Mark Watney's friends abandon his lifeless body and blast off from Mars headed home. Believing their colleague is the victim of a tragic set of circumstances, they grieve their loss and reluctantly go on with their lives. (Sound familiar?)
Following his colleagues' departure, Mark regains consciousness and discovers the metal that punctured his space suit has sealed in enough oxygen to allow him to get back to the space station. Once there he performs surgery on himself to remove the embedded piece of metal from his abdomen.
Then reality sets in. He can't survive indefinitely on a three-month supply of food. By stretching what's available he can feed himself only for a year. Yet he looks beyond what appears like a death sentence to focus on hope.
This botanist's scientific mind contemplates how he can survive on Mars until he might be rescued. He creates a greenhouse of sorts with hope of growing sustainable food.
Fertilizing the soil of the lifeless planet with human feces, he plants cutup pieces of potato from the space station galley. To irrigate the soil, he needs to create a flame to generate heat in order to create water from hydrogen.
Mark is discouraged to realize that everything is flameproof due to NASA regulations.
And then he discovers a fellow astronaut's small wooden crucifix. As he stares at it, he gets a brainstorm.
With his pocketknife he scrapes wood fragments from the cross into a miniature pile of kindling. Looking into the face of the lifeless figure on the cross he says, "Given my current circumstances, I'm sure you won't mind. I'm counting on you." He successfully ignites the wood shavings into needed fire.
As a Christian minister, I find great delight in the fact that it was a cross that became the means of hope that kept the astronaut alive. The cross was a source of life. As my homiletics professor in seminary would say, "That'll preach!"
Good Friday is a day in which I contemplate a solitary figure impaled by pieces of metal, nailed to a wooden cross and left for dead by his friends. Death seemed certain. There appeared to be no cause for hope.
That first Good Friday was anything but good. And the rest of the weekend did not look promising. But then came Sunday. What had seemed hopeless resulted in an unexpected and unexplainable ending. First impressions had been misleading. Good grief!
The One left for dead surprised His friends. He defeated the odds and was very much alive. And the caption for what is pictured in the Gospel could well be "Good grief! Never underestimate what a cross can accomplish."
Easter weekend is a perfect opportunity to contemplate the possibilities that are not initially evident. Unanticipated unemployment may be the "cross" that allows for the dream job you couldn't imagine becoming a reality.
A dead marriage may be the means that finds you seeking help that can revive a relationship that seems beyond hope. A doctor's diagnosis might be the very thing that awakens your hibernating faith and motivates you to begin to redefine what it means to really live.
From my perspective, the cross and the empty tomb are what kindle our faith and fuel our hope against the backdrop of certain peril.
• The Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos is a former Naperville resident and Neighbor columnist who wrote regularly about faith and family.