We Are Not Ok
Sorrow as Hope
Jelly Roll’s Song, I Am Not OK, has been playing in my mind lately. It is a song that enters into sorrow, struggle, and hope. I also believe it is incredibly relevant on Good Friday. The reason for Good Friday is that God knows we are not OK. Rather than allow that to control us, God entered into our sorrow as creation and redeemed our own violence in reconciliation. But we keep wanting to avoid the sorrow. Whole industries exist to help us avoid sorrow. Then there are those ways that humanity has avoided sorrow for our entire history. We’ve used chemicals, herbs, other human beings, and violence to avoid sorrow. But sorrow is a part of living. When we remove sorrow, we remove a piece of who we are. When we try to avoid sorrow, we avoid the very place we can meet one another in hope. That’s what Jelly Roll is expressing in his song. In fact, here’s a link to listen to the song to give a point of reference.
When I read the stories of the aftermath of the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, I think of I Am Not OK. The disciples were anything but OK leading up to the crucifixion. Peter denied Jesus, the others had scattered minus the women who stuck around, and Judas was descending into a depression of sorrow at the consequences of his actions. None of them were OK. They were all afraid. We know that the sorrow was so deep for Judas that he repented, but was unable to see the light that was possible. Alone in his sorrow, Judas suffered more than the other disciples and saw no way out. I wonder if things would have been different had Judas understood that he was not alone in sorrow? Peter worked through his, but even he suffered long term for his actions.
Andrew Root writes about sorrow in his book Evangelism in An Age of Despair. Rather than seeing it as a stumbling block, Root imagines sorrow as that place we enter into with one another and connect. It is Root’s words that echo when I consider the pain of Good Friday. “Evangelism in these sad times is ultimately the confession that God meets us in our human sorrow and, through our sorrow, takes our person into Jesus’s own person. This is good news! Through the art of shared sorrow, we participate in the being of God and bring the good news to the world.” (Andrew Root, Evangelism in an Age of Despair) God did not come to make us happy, healthy, and wise. God came to reconcile relationship and to make life more full. The absence of sorrow makes life shallow. Avoiding sorrow separates us from living.
I wonder, could the disciples look back on Good Friday as the hope of sorrow? Jelly Roll nails that idea near the end of the song.
"I know one day
We’ll see the other side
The pain’ll wash away
In a holy water tide
And we all gonna be alright"
Let those words wash over you as you meditate on Good Friday. The horror, the violence, the pain, and the anxiety of Good Friday is also the holy tide that washes out from the Cross and whips back to drag creation to the cross in reconciling truth.
Ultimately “we’re all gonna be alright” - because of sorrow.