Oh yes, the Dixie Chicks. This is from their first album, and "Wide Open Spaces" notwithstanding it is probably the best of the collection. Some of those songs don't hold up sixteen years later. However, this one I still rock out to; it has a permanent place on my "Angry Apple Cider" playlist.
When I listen to this song I feel anger, desperation, loneliness, sadness - the emotions of Good Friday. I will grant you this song is definitely about lost romantic love, but no matter what the reasons for our heartbreak haven't we all looked in the mirror and said, "one more smile's all I can fake?" If you draw a line from Gethsemane to Golgotha, Jesus holds all those emotions inside as each step he takes leads to destruction.
Going back to the parish mission, Johnson's words about Good Friday were to help us recognize our own Good Fridays and to see why we would call them "Good." The reason why songs about heartbreak are so loved is because it's an emotion everyone has experienced. People have let us down, have lied, have done physical or emotional violence to us. Loved ones have died. We've received news of the worst kind. We've sat on the floor of our kitchen crying at 2 a.m. because that's the only logical option... maybe that last one's just me, but I doubt it.
Jesus had plenty of these moments; sweating blood in the garden, falling the first, second and third times, killed by people he would have loved had he been given the chance. We all isolate ourselves in our misery. While Jesus trusted God he still felt alone, abandoned by his dearest friends. It's always when we feel most alone that we most need someone there, right?
Thank goodness for Jesus and country music, or that loneliness would never go away. Jesus has walked that terrifying, lonely, grasping path and walks all our terrifying, lonely, grasping paths with us. There is no good in suffering but when it draws us together. We can trust Jesus with our pain because he's been there. One of the great things about music is the communal aspect. We love certain songs because they express emotions we can't on our own - and that means that the composer felt those things. Everyone who buys that song on iTunes feels them, too. I won't lie to y'all, my Good Friday song is probably always going to be a country song. In the words of Xander Harris, "I'm going to listen to country music. The music of pain."
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