Good Friday: A Call to Contemplation

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What exactly happened on Good Friday?

Good Friday is a strange term, especially for anyone who was there to witness its events. There was suffering for Christ and those who loved Him. There was betrayal. The day ends in natural disasters, omens, tears, and torture.

Following the Last Supper, which we celebrate on Maundy Thursday as well as in Communion/Eucharist, Jesus and His Disciples went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus asked for them to stay awake and pray for Him, but they fell asleep as Jesus prayed, “Abba, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.” Jesus anticipated His own suffering as the atoning sacrifice for us all. In this vulnerable moment, we see the fully-human nature of Christ speaking as one of us, asking God to allow Him not to suffer. Jesus being the incarnation of the Divine, it is perplexing for us to try to understand this conversation.

At some point late Thursday night or early Friday morning, Judas made a deal to hand Jesus over to the religious authorities for thirty pieces of silver, showing up with others who come to arrest Jesus. Peter becomes enraged and comes at one of the men with his sword. Jesus heals the man and rebukes Peter’s actions: “If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.”

The disciples disperse, fleeing the scene, not wanting to be captured and tried as accomplices.

Jesus is tried, and, with the custom, Pontius Pilate asks whether they want Jesus or a murderer named Barabbas released. They absolve the murderer and tell Pilate to crucify Jesus. Pilate says that his hands are clean of this man’s execution because this was not his choice, and the people respond, “His blood be on us and our children!”

Jesus is mocked by the Roman soldiers: “Hail, the King of the Jews!” He is tortured, whipped, and has a crown of thorns pushed into his scalp in ridicule. He is stripped, and the soldiers cast lots for His clothing. Jesus is forced to carry His cross to Calvary, or Golgotha, translated as “the place of the skull.”

Rock formation in the side of the hill at Golgotha, which gives it its name

Jesus is nailed to the cross, and the cross is raised. Jesus speaks to another man crucified next to Him, who expresses repentance and accepts Jesus as Divine. Jesus tells the man, “Surely I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Jesus cries out what is referred to as the “Cry of Dereliction”: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” or, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The soldiers who have mocked him with a sign reading, “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum,” or, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (abbreviated on Catholic crucifixes as INRI) , now offer him soured wine on a sponge attached to a stick. At around three in the afternoon, Jesus cries out, breathes His last breath, saying, “Abba, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” and dies on the cross.

As Jesus dies, the curtain of the Temple tore in two from top to bottom, and the skies become dark.

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Religious Significance

Jesus fulfills several ancient prophecies in His final days: the dipping of the betrayer into the cup simultaneously with Him, the silence being led to sacrifice, but the greatest significance is the way that the iniquities of the world—all sins which had been committed or would be committed, were all laid upon Him:

Isaiah 53 says, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the punishment that made us whole, and by His bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

The significance of the Temple curtain being torn was that Christ showed us that we do not need to go through a priest to commune with God. We do not need the religious elders to pray on our behalf, but we need to have relationship with God directly. The tearing of the curtain from top to bottom tells us that God reaches out to us in a way which no man can divide.

This next part is just a theory of an interested pastor, but I encourage you to consider it: Remember when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and the Pharisees told him, “Stop your followers from praising you this way,” and Jesus responded, “Truly I tell you, if they stopped, the rocks themselves would cry out”? In the same way in which Jesus had to hold back Peter from violence, it is like Jesus held back the Earth from raging against Jesus’ injustice, and the skies became dark, the Earth quaked, and the Temple veil was torn when Jesus was not alive to stop them. We use language in some worship songs of, “Even the rocks cry out your glory,” and that day, creation itself, with God’s fingerprint on every cell and particle, became enraged with the injustice against the Son.

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Why “Good”?

This all seems brutal, heartbreaking. Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome watch Jesus die. Why is this a Good Friday? Why not call Sunday “Good” and call Friday "cursed"? The women who followed Him, the Earth itself, and even Pilate, see Jesus die an agonizing, torturous death, and are overwhelmed with the violent injustice.

This, however, is the day when all your sins were placed on an innocent man and erased from history. Yes, God makes the rules, and could easily have just said, “Okay, it’s all forgiven now,” without coming to Earth, without suffering. But Jesus told us, “Greater love knows none than this: that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

God delivered on that proclamation.

God set the example for us that we don’t just fix things with a declaration or a rule, but by being in relationship with those who are held back by sin and death—by showing love in all ways, not just saying it. God spoke creation into existence, and easily could have spoken sin out of existence. God could have stayed away from suffering and just forgiven, but God wanted us to know and to see and to experience that we are loved by the Creator of all things who is love.

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Charge to You:

 

I encourage you to read through the scriptures for this holy day: Read Isaiah 53, written long before Christ and predicting much of His life and death. Read Matthew 26-27; read Luke 23; read Mark 14-15; read John 18-19.

I encourage you to reflect on what might go through Jesus’ mind as each thing happens to Him. Think about how much Jesus must love every one of us to endure this voluntarily. Think about how God, who is transcendent of all things material, physical, observable, came into a lower existence, humbling Godself to be among us, and showed us how to live in love, all because God loved you.

Also as you read, I want you to think about what it must have been like for each person in the story. What was it like to realize, as Pilate, that you were an instrument for the death of the real, actual King of the Jews? What was it like for Judas to realize the deed of betraying the Messiah for money? What was it like for Peter to realize that you have denied knowing the one who led you for years and who loved you? What was it like for Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome, witnessing a naked, pierced, tortured, mocked, and suffering Christ dying for false accusations?

But besides all this, think about how God had this planned out. All the pain, betrayal, suffering, emotion, it was all to fulfill God’s promise to deliver you from sin and death. God triumphs. No matter what obstacles humankind tried to put in front of Jesus, God used everything to save you, because God loves you. That is why this Friday is Good.