We’ve spent several weeks thinking about Jesus. We’ve talked about things He did, stories He told, people He met. We’ve imagined Him walking the roads of His hometown, winding His way through other villages on His way to Jerusalem.
We’ve been to Jerusalem. We’ve tried to imagine Him sitting under an olive tree or climbing the steps of the Temple. We can almost see Him walking into Bethany for one of His frequent visits to Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s home, or hunkered over a fire on the shore at Tiberius.
But today, as we think about the story at hand, it’s hard to look at Him. We know too much of the story. We know how the day will end — the same way it has ended for nearly 2,000 years now. It is inevitable. It is inescapable. It is the end of the week.
Today Jesus will die.
It’s difficult for squeamish people to watch people who are in pain. Whether on television shows or in stage plays, seeing someone in pain often causes us too much internal angst. We want to turn away, plug our ears, close our eyes, imagine ourselves elsewhere.
Many of us went to see Mel Gibson’s bloodbath, The Passion of the Christ. It was brutal and savage, and — while much of it was historically accurate — it wasn’t very biblical in the way it portrayed the crucifixion. The writers of the Gospels don’t go in for a lengthy meditation on the cruel suffering involved. They don’t dwell on gory details or meticulous depictions. Even Luke, the Gospel writer who is normally given to medical descriptions, shies away from doing so at this point in his narrative. The apostle John was there, he actually witnessed the event, the horror of it, the agony of it. Yet he refuses to pander to our base desire for spectacle. There are no drawn out explanations of the flogging Jesus endured, no gruesome reminders of the sights and sounds of actual crucifixion. The bloodiness has been removed. There is no emotional manipulation in the biblical accounts of that day.
Perhaps they were too close to the actual events to write about them. People were still being killed in this manner when these four men, prompted by God Himself, set down their records of the events. There was no need to describe what was involved, everyone knew. Perhaps it was still too emotionally charged for them to write down the details, the wounds still fresh, talking about it in too much detail may have felt like picking at scabs that hadn’t yet had time to heal.
Regardless of their reasons, the authors chose to edit the content of the storyline somewhat at this point. What actually happened was too awful, too terrible, too horrible to contemplate for very long. Yet it was too necessary, too wonderful, to skip over completely.
There are churches where Good Friday isn’t commemorated. They don’t like to talk about it. They want the rush of Easter, the joy of the Resurrection. But they are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have a resurrection until you have a death. There is no empty tomb unless there is first a figure on a cross.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, by Your love and grace You emptied Yourself by taking the form of a bond-servant and by becoming obedient to Your Father’s will, even to the point of an ignominious and agonising death on a cross. Such love transcends my grasp, but You willingly embraced the redemptive purpose for which You came to the earth. You could endure the shame of the cross because You could see beyond it to the joy that was set before You. Good Friday was the only way that could lead to Easter, because death had to precede resurrection. May I also learn to look beyond the pains of this life to what You are preparing for me. When I lose my life for Your sake, I find it. Nothing I give up for Your Name can compare with the glory that is to be revealed. May I learn the wisdom of humbling myself now, so that I will later be exalted.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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