Before Easter, feeling the pain of Good Friday

Today begins Holy Week, a week that shifts from year to year because the date of Easter -- since the time of the 4th century Roman Emperor Constantine, a Christian convert -- floats depending on the arrival of a full moon.

The explanation is a little more complicated than the foregoing but it's close enough to accurate that we'll leave it there. Easter is quite late in 2014, almost as late as it ever can be. I'm grateful for the extra time. A lot has happened.

The refrain of Holy Week is familiar and unchanging. Jesus of Nazareth enters Jerusalem on this day, Palm Sunday, in humble fashion and is welcomed with shouts normally accorded a returning hero: "Hosanna!"

On Thursday, he holds a final meal with his original disciples, the last time the original 12 would be together -- and as Thursday leeched into Friday, he would be betrayed by one of them -- Judas Iscariot.

On Friday, he is tried in perfunctory fashion, taken before Roman governor Pilate and the titular Jewish king, Herod. Pilate has final say in the matter and bowing to Passover custom, offers the crowd the release of a Jewish prisoner. He offers them Jesus or Barabbas. They choose Barabbas, who is freed. Jesus goes to the cross, dies by 3 p.m. and is placed in a borrowed tomb by sundown.

On Sunday morning, the day known as Easter, women arriving to anoint his body for burial (the first opportunity to do so since the end of the Jewish Sabbath), find his body gone. The resurrection story has been told ever since.

It's impossible to talk about the resurrection of Jesus without talking about his death -- although we Protestants seem to make only halfhearted efforts to discuss Golgotha.

Our collective attention to Good Friday is pretty pathetic as we leap from high point to high point (Palm Sunday to Easter) without going into the valley to feel our Good Friday pain. Our Roman Catholic friends have something to teach us here -- for they "get" Good Friday.

Doubt this? The Catholic cross is a crucifix -- Jesus is still there being crucified. Protestant crosses are bare; we revel in the resurrection and we should. Jesus defeats death and opens the door to eternal life by his rising. But we of Martin Luther's lineage too often fail to do our Good Friday work. The small attendance in Protestant churches on the traditional day of crucifixion and the huge crowds on resurrection Sunday attest to this glossing over of Friday.

This year is different for me. This year, for the first time, I've lost an immediate family member. As a former pastor, I've walked alongside many people at a time of death. Very often, they are seniors who have lost a spouse. I've also been there when parents have lost a baby or a teenager or perhaps an adult son who predeceased them. I've been there at suicides -- and once, at a murder. I've been there for the deaths of my wife's parents and for brothers-in-law.

But on Feb. 28, it was different. It was a whole new level of pain. That's the day we buried my dad. Let me tell you, walking in pain is different from walking alongside pain. It just is.

The scene of my father's agonal breathing while in hospice care on the last day of his life -- gasping, laboring, near-death respiration -- is seared into my memory now. I can more clearly imagine Jesus' agonal breathing on that particular Friday long ago as crucifixion slowly robbed him of the ability to breathe.

Oh, yes, Good Friday has much more meaning for me now.

Dr. Jeff Long, of Jackson, is executive director of the Chateau Girardeau Foundation, a teacher of religious studies at SEMO, and a former pastor.