Good Friday?! Holiday or Holyday?

Good Friday? Why exactly is it that we cannot celebrate Good Friday in our public schools? I’m not sure I know why. A federal district court in Chicago in the case of Metzl v. Leininger (1995) said it was unconstitutional. But a federal court in Maryland said it was not unconstitutional (Koenick v. Felton (1997). Most states have decided to follow an Indiana court (Bridenbaugh v. O’Bannen (1998) in upholding the holiday so long as it was called a "Spring Holiday". Does that make sense to you? Why do we have to call the day a Spring Holiday instead of Good Friday? Doesn't it make more sense to say Good Friday. After all, I thought all Fridays were good. We celebrate the end of most people's work week and even have a restaurant named after the popular phrase "Thank God It’s Friday (TGIF)" and so what's so wrong with calling this Friday, Good Friday?

Good Friday! Historically, good Friday represents the day of Christ crucifixion. A crowd of people stirred up by the Sanhedrin cried out to crucify Jesus. Isn't our society, stirred up by the media and others still crying out to crucify Christ? Pontius Pilate was not that different from our leaders of today. His question of Jesus, "what is truth?" (Jn. 18:38) certainly resonates today. We do not want to believe there is an objective infallible truth anymore than the people in Palestine 2000 years ago. The problem is Jesus said, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me." (Jn. 14:6). His claim to give life, be truth, and provide the only way to heaven, landed him on a cross. It seems to me that our school system and society would want to embrace the death of absolute truth and that doing so would be a Good Friday indeed!

Holiday. Then again maybe we are better off recognizing Good Friday is a religious holiday. After all we really don't want to play the kind of games society has played in excluding religion from the schools. It took an Act of Congress (Equal Access Act) and the United States Supreme Court (Westside Community Bd. Of Ed. v. Mergens (1990) to allow religious groups to meet on school grounds. In the Mergens case, the school was arguing they could exclude religious clubs because they did not relate to the school curriculum. With that logic the chess clubs were ok because they related to the math curriculum and ski clubs were ok because they related to the physical education curriculum. Were we to apply that logic we could argue that Good Friday relates to the spelling curriculum. After all, the Friday was originally known as "God’s Friday" and it was only through a spelling error (later derivations of the language) that we now have the term "Good Friday". Aren’t we jumping through equally silly hoops to call the day a "Spring Holiday" instead of what everyone knows is "Good Friday". We truly live in a blind world.

Holy day. The one thing I do know is that this really is a Good Friday whatever name you want to give it. God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows who willingly laid aside his rights so that he could be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Because of his death we have hope. If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we can be saved (Rom. 10:9). That is very good news to me and because of that good news I will celebrate Good Friday! I pray you have a Good Friday and a blessed Easter! He is risen!