Good Friday (A Poem For Christmas)

I do realise that Good Friday is actually a separate holiday from Christmas. But I also realise that if it hadn’t been for Good Friday, we’d have no reason to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Christmas is about how the same God we all tried to push away came down and invaded our world anyway, come to rescue us from the broken reality we created, come to give us life at the cost of his own. Even at Christmas, the shadow of the cross hangs over the manger, and the glory of Easter resurrection is just around the bend! So this Christmas, I submit to you that a poem about Good Friday is not out of season:

With every sin
We say to Him:
“Get off Your throne, it’s mine”
We yell and scream,
We shake our fist,
We tell Him He does not exist
And finally…
We nail Him to a cross

And somehow,
He does not resist –
He lets us kill,
He goes to die,
And finally…
A cry: “It is finished”

We tried to push Him
From His throne,
And down He came –
But on His own:
He came to die our death
He came to bring us home