Quote of the day - Was it good?

For Christmas, the girls got The Story of Jesus for Children DVD. It is excellent, narrating the Christ story from a few children's viewpoints. Tonight it was on in the van on the way home from the gym.

We were going through the passion.

The girls watched wide-eyed, tight-lipped. The twins had questions, which Brielle tried to hush so she could hear the movie. I gave her the Daddy version of "Suffer the little sisters and forbid them not--questions about this shocking story are a very good thing, Miss Brielle."

Melía asked this one:

"Daddy, was it good that Jesus died?"

How would you answer that one?

Nothing about the scene on the tiny LCD screen was appealing or good. The sounds surrounding us were horrifying.

Yet nightly we praise Brielle when she includes, "Thank you for dying on the cross" in her bedtime prayer. It's called "Good Friday," isn't it?

But could I honestly answer that the corrupt trial, torture and execution of a perfect man was "good"? It brought me back to the gore and grimness of holy communion this weekend. "What kind of a sick religion is Daddy teaching me?" my daughters must be asking.

How far should I go to help it make sense? How much mystery should I let ferment in their minds? How many of my answers should I lay on them, and how many should I help them work out on their own? How much of what I'd like to tell her is just more than she can handle right now?

How much do I myself actually know about this? Grappling with Melía's question, I'm thinking I often overestimate how much I know.

And realizing that is definitely good.

Easter Sunday

Good Friday is hard to explain to kids. It’s hard enough for me to understand for myself how and why we creatures slew our Creator. After who He made us to be, how could we have made such monsters of ourselves? I take that confusion and try to explain it to my little ones and always feel unsatisfied.

But Easter is simple.

Easter is literally a different story. “He is alive!” What must have seemed most unexplainable to the shell-shocked friends of the crucified Rabbi seems so delightfully easy for me to explain to my children. He was dead, but God raised him from the dead. Even Melía, my Princess of Why, doesn’t need to inquire about the reasons for that. Of course God raised His Son! Of course Jesus is alive!

Lent is a soul-search, a fast, a repenting. Good Friday mourns the death of God, an impossibility marking the deepest, darkest point in the history of human evil. These are things to be pondered, observed, remembered.

But Easter is to be celebrated.

In the “Bright Sadness” of Lent the body or mind may rest from some pleasure, while the heart rests from the delusion of self-sufficiency. This rest creates space for reflection on what took Jesus to the cross, including my part in the crime. This is well and good.

But after forty days of facing my own complex cries of “Crucify him!” the simple joy of saying “He is risen!” is warm sunshine on a shivering soul.

And maybe, at three and four, that’s what the simple souls under my care need most.

Good Friday

I remember when Brielle first learned that Jesus died.

We were reading a book called The Legend of the Three Trees. In the story, one sapling dreams of growing up to be a treasure chest. Another young tree looks forward to being a great ship that will carry kings. The third just wants to stand tall, point to heaven and remind people of God's beauty and love.

Each tree's future ends up looking nothing like what it envisioned. The first becomes a mere trough from which animals feed. Then one day a baby in swaddling clothes is laid in it. The second becomes a humble fishing boat. And one stormy day a passenger wakes up from his nap and silences the wind and waves.

The third tree is chopped down in its prime, cut into planks, and set aside. But it gets worse. After years gathering dust and cobwebs, men make this tree into a cross. To this cross is nailed an innocent man.

Treasure chest. King's vessel. Symbol of divine love. Each tree did nothing it had dreamed and became everything it had hoped.

I'll never forget the weight on my chest the day 2-year-old Brielle looked at the Golgotha picture near the end of this book, and I saw the recognition in her eyes. She knew what Jesus looked like, because she'd seen the pictures: Good Shepherd, Teacher, Friend. But here, Jesus--the one who loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so--was being hurt. Jesus--healer of dead girls, feeder of thousands, teacher of peace, lover of children--had enemies. How could this be?

"Daddy, why are those men hurting Jesus?"

"I don't know, Brielle." The mystery of evil still confounds me.

"Lots of people liked Jesus, but some people didn't like him, and were not nice to him at all. These people didn't like him so much--" I falter, breathe in and sigh, discomfited at the gravity of what she is about to learn about the human race into which she has been born. "They didn't like Jesus so much that they nailed him to that cross, and they hung him up until he couldn't breathe anymore. And then, Jesus died. They killed him."

"Why, Daddy?"

"I don't know, Brielle. I don't know why people are so bad that they want to hurt such a good man as Jesus."

"Oh." We are quiet.

"But Brielle, do you know what?"

"What?"

"Jesus loves people so much, that even when those bad people were not being nice to him, he was still nice to them. He even prayed, 'God, please forgive them. They don't know what they are doing.'"

"Yeah."

"And Jesus even loves us when we aren't being nice. And he forgives us too." Forgiveness is still over both of our heads, but both Daddy and daughter knew enough to sense that it is a nice thing done to people who aren't being nice. "But he can teach us to be nice."

The conversation moved on, but that moment changed so much. I was suddenly embarrassed by our species, heart-broken to have shared with Brielle the truth about humankind. I felt like an adoptive parent breaking the news to a child that her birth parents were a hooker and a crack dealer, worried she might feel guilty by association. I felt as if an innocence had been lost.

Jesus, for Brielle, was no longer just a nice guy. He was a nice guy that we killed, a God murdered by His children. He was not only the Good Shepherd. He was the sacrificial Lamb. Did she have to know? Did the perverse truth have to come so soon? Did the joyful story of baby Jesus' life have to take such a horrific twist?

Like Peter faced with the prospect of Christ's death, I want to pull Jesus aside and say, "Never, Lord! This will never happen to you!" Faced with the prophecy of our own denial, I say with Peter, "Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will."

But it did happen to him. And more than deny him, I helped slay him.

Forgive me, Lord, for I do not know what I am doing. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner raising angels who are destined to fall. Let your tree point us to the loving beauty of heaven. May we find grace amidst the guilt and shame of the Friday we call "good."