Sometimes Easter weekend passes and I don't really notice it much, except I get an extra Friday off. This year, however, I did a little more reflecting. And if you're reading my blog, I assume to some degree you want to hear my reflections, so here it goes.

I think Peter kind of gets a bad rap. I mean sure, he said he'd die before denying Jesus, and then a few hours later he denied Him three times. But, if I were Peter (and obviously I'm not, so this is speculation), I would feel like Jesus abandoned me first. I think Peter was genuine, but he had different ideas of what Jesus' revolution was really going to look like. And when he takes out his sword and cuts off the guards ear, he is demonstrating what he had in mind. He's ready to fight with Jesus to the end. The problem is, Jesus isn't fighting. Instead, He voluntarily lets Himself be captured, tried, and ultimately killed. I think Peter was really ready to follow Jesus, it's just that following Jesus took a shocking and dramatic shift in a few hours. If it were me, on that "good" Friday, I would feel like Jesus denied me. My point is that I don't think we should demonize Peter for what happened, because I think almost all of us would have done the same. And in the end, Jesus seemed to move past it pretty quickly. Maybe so should we.

This led me to think about "good" Friday, and how utterly awful the disciples must have felt. I mean, I cannot imagine the despair they must have experienced, as they must have gone from incredible excitement to complete hopelessness so quickly. I really think it's important to remember that time, between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Now, we know the end of the story and all, but there is something profound about the fact that this suffering and despair is part of the process of our faith. Of the "founding fathers" of our faith, you can say two simple things: Jesus suffered, and the disciples felt hopeless.

Someone once mentioned to me that perhaps the Catholic faith is overly fixated on the dying Jesus. Not that they don't believe in the resurrection or celebrate it or anything like that, but just that Jesus is often depicted and worshipped in his suffering state. I'm not really in a position to judge for certain whether or not that is a bad thing or even whether or not it is true. I did get to go to a small mass in my neighborhood on Friday, and I do feel like the suffering Jesus is more prominent in the Catholic tradition. Perhaps it goes to the simple fact that Jesus suffered at the hands of powerful people, and people in the third world find solidarity in that. In any case, I felt like the service was appropriate, and I enjoyed it.

With these thoughts in mind, I left for the campo Saturday night with the local Mennonite church. We met up with another Mennonite church out there, and together we had a late night service (until 1:00 a.m.), and then had another sunrise service (at 5:00 a.m.). On the Saturday night service, I was expecting more "setting the tone" for the service in the morning. But really, there was almost no mention of the tone of "good" Friday. They talked about the crucifixion, but only in the context of the two thieves, and what Jesus has to offer us. It was like we just rushed past the suffering and went right to the end, instead of recognizing that suffering and despair are integral parts of our faith experience. In the end, I was left with this question: it may be that the Catholic faith is fixated on Jesus' suffering, but are we so fixated on his resurrection that we forget or are unable to contemplate the dark period before it?