Good Friday: Where Are You in the Story?

On this most solemn day of the Christian year, let us stop for a moment at the foot of the cross and consider the great act of love by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You can read the whole narrative of Jesus’s crucifixion here.

As you think about the story of the crucifixion, where do you see yourself in the story?

Do you see yourself in Judas, the betrayer (the follower who falls away…the follower who turns to things besides Jesus to satisfy…the follower who demands that Jesus sanction what he wants to do anyway and throws Jesus away when Jesus doesn’t oblige)?

Do you see yourself in Pilate, the excuse-maker, the passive one (you would never actively do evil, you think, but all too often you let the crowd around you “force” you to go against what you believe)?

Do you see yourself in Peter, the follower who denies Jesus (when your faith requires something difficult of you, you disappear)?

Do you see yourself in the crowd? If it’s popular to follow Jesus, as it was on Palm Sunday, do you join in celebration? But if everybody is yelling “Crucify Him!” you follow suit as well?

Do you see yourself in the soldiers—making jokes, playing games at the foot of the cross.

Do you see yourself in the women—lingering at the foot of the cross…with Jesus through the hard stuff…sticking with it even when you don’t understand what God is doing? Yet even the women did not have the faith to believe that Jesus would rise again.

In the end, we are all there in the story: we are passive or openly denying, making fun or just not having enough faith. Everybody in the story shows their sinful colors. Everybody disappoints and fails to be a friend to Jesus. Nobody turns out to be the shining hero of the day (except, of course, for Jesus).

I truly believe that if the story of Jesus’ death happened today this would be exactly how it would be. We tend to think, “No, I wouldn’t deny Jesus! I wouldn’t turn away. I would believe!” but how do we act in your day to day life? I look at my own life, and I see ways in which I resonate with each of the people in the story. I imagine you do too. We are the reason He had to come. His cross reveals our true colors. Those of us who call Him our friend are poor friends indeed. We are unfaithful friends. We fail Jesus every day. We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. And yet, He loves us still.

And so the Son of God was taken to the cross and faced suffering beyond belief. He was whipped with a whip made of leather, with small pieces of bone and metal balls embedded into it. This whip dragged across His skin, drawing blood and pulling at the skin like a piece of meat (was He here in solidarity with victims of violence?). He experienced humiliation and nakedness as his clothes were taken away (was He in solidarity here with the shame of sexual abuse victims?). He experienced thirst. He experienced public rejection by the people He had done so much for. He experienced physical exhaustion, having to carry a heavy cross for such a distance after being viciously beaten. Then He was nailed to the cross…imagine the nails piercing His nerves and the pain shooting up His arms and legs and whole body (was He here in solidarity with victims of torture?).

Crucifixion was for the common criminals and the enemies of Rome. When a group would rebel against Rome, the ringleaders would be hung in groups on crosses outside the town for all to see as they entered the town. It was a death designed to be profoundly painful and wretchedly humiliating. It was a death designed to last for days.

And then for Jesus comes the abandonment of God the Father: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Jesus experienced the dark separation from God that sin brings. And at the end, Jesus died of suffocation, his bones out of joint, unable to push Himself up for a breath as He hung on the cross. Even after He died, His body was disfigured when a solider pierced His side with a spear, thus proving He had actually died.

Jesus did this for you and for me. Jesus walked through the greatest torture a human being has ever been asked to endure, for you and for me, those who rejecte, betray, abandon and ignore Him.

Jesus doesn’t want us to remember this each year so that we can treat Him like a pitiful victim or say “poor Jesus…He didn’t get what He deserved at all.” There is a very specific reason our Lord wants us to remember what He suffered. The reason is because the cross reveals that once and for all that we are free. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant He had completed everything that was needed to forever free us.

The verb tense of the Greek word translated “It is finished” is that Jesus had completed something which has continuing and ongoing effects on the present time. It was an event at a static point in time but one which brings compounding effects down through history. Jesus brings new life to us every day over and over again as a result of what He finished and completed on the cross.

In the cross, Jesus takes evil and turns it on its head. He brings new life out of death and brokenness. The power of love triumphs over hate and violence.

In an article in Christianity Today, John Witvliet writes:

And it is all accomplished through what seems like a paradox. “Making peace through the blood of his cross” is like saying that a nuclear missile has become an olive-branch, that Guantanamo has become a garden of healing, that a sword has been turned into a plowshare, that a tank has been turned into a tractor. The very thought of it leaves us weak in the knees with astonishment.

There is absolute hope for the future because of what Jesus did. And even though it was 2000 years ago, it is still just as relevant and fresh and new to your life today as it was then. The death of Jesus for our sake means that God is making all things new now. The shadow that hung over us is taken away and we walk free into the light. Freed because of the tremendous work of Christ on the cross. So let us be solemn in recognition of all that Jesus went through on our behalf but let us also give thanks for wondrous gifts that are now ours. Amen.

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