Good Friday morning. It never seemed “Good” to me. Jesus death was always heinous and callous, demonic even. We can wait until Sunday to use the word “good”. No, today is Uncomfortable Friday.
Then one day, one year, it was “good”. The Good Friday Agreement was for celebration. The Resurrection of Northern Ireland, through a peace agreement, after decades of black Fridays and Bloody Sundays had a new start.
Today, both Jesus passion and that political agreement have been rumbling and tumbling around my head as my heart breaks for Lyra McKee a brilliant young Belfast born journalist and author who was senselessly shot dead on the streets of Derry/Londonderry, late on Thursday night.
That is the very worst of Good Friday news headlines. I have sat, a little stunned, incredibly sad, surmising, praying, wrestling a little with God.
We have had no Local Assembly at Stormont for over two years, the leaders of our leading parties seem so lost in their outdated ideologies that they refuse to get off their high horses to deliver health, education, economic development and most important of all peace.
Brexit has thrown the islands of Britain and Ireland into chaos bringing with it more uncertainty, some fear and more polarisation. The media interviews about up and coming Council Elections are haranguing matches about blaming and demonising the other without ever getting to any of the issues that would be dealt with in Councils!
Jesus is about to get killed, the hopes of the Good Friday Agreement are teetering and now one of our finest young talents is murdered on our streets. Lyra’s death exposes the futility of such acts.
Dissident Republicans living in outdated ideologies need to understand that neither will softer Unionists who might be eventually convinced of a United Ireland be bullied into one nor will the Republic Of Ireland ever agree to take on a Northern Ireland that is at war and out of control. Lyra’s murder further thwarts the Dissidents ambitions.
So, I have sat looking for hope in all of this. It took some time. Then the old faithful started singing.
In November 2015, days after the mass shooting during the Eagles Of Death Metal concert at Paris’s Bataclan U2 were playing in Belfast. Bono tweaked a line from the song Song For Someone that would re appear in a slightly different guise on their next record Songs Of Experience:
"I know there's so many reasons to doubt
But there is a light
Don't let it go out”
Whether it is my way of life in trying to follow Jesus or the peace process in Northern Ireland there are those who would seek to snuff out all of our light.
Today’s sadness at Lyra McKee’s death will neither disappear or be denied by my hope in the light. Indeed, Lyra's partner Sara will not find that resurrection light of Easter Sunday heal their deeper sounds of heart and soul so quickly. I will naively believe that the events might eventually connect and pray for Sara and Lyra's family that Jesus would be proven right when he called the Holy Spirit ‘a comforter’.
BUT… in the pain and despair and fear and uncertainty I will Bono… with so many reasons this morning to doubt… I will not let that light go out.