Good Friday

John 19

We call it “good” because it is the day God took evil into God’s own being, but otherwise, this Friday has nothing good within its story. It is the day of rebellion, blasphemy, and arrogance that has never been matched, before or after--humanity sought to be rid of God, once and for all. In that light, then, the cross is not Jesus’ cross, but it belongs to each and every one of us, for we earned it. Our rejection of God can end nowhere else. 

But this Friday is also the great day of atonement. Christ dies because of us and for us.

Let’s start with the hard part--Christ died BECAUSE OF us. 

Any time we act or speak in a way contrary to self-sacrificial, other-centered love we reject God. That is what separates us from God in the moral, ethical arena. You can see that such a definition of the rejection of God is broad and wide--a veritable ocean of possible transgressions. Communal as we are by nature--human beings are herd creatures, after all (just visit the mall)--we have an amazing propensity for self-centeredness. Our first question before joining a group is more often than not, “What do I get out of this?” We assert ourselves in even the most banal of situations--choosing a parking space at the grocery store, e.g. We turn faith into a cult of self--I want God to deal with MY problems as I want them dealt with, and don’t ask me to do anything but occupy a pew--this is MY time. We want faith to lead to bliss--a highly individualistic form of happiness that really cares not a whit for anyone else. 

Hence, 2000 years ago, the crowd strung Jesus up because he refused to recant his basic sermon--”Love one another.” He stuck with his message that what God wants from us is to go and sell all that we have and give it to the poor; to lose our lives to find them; and to touch the lepers of the world because they need to be touched--WITHOUT THOUGHT OF OUR OWN SECURITY.  

Christ did not resist us. Christ went to his death. He did so because we forfeited our right to exist before God. Life is a gift from God. To live contrary to God’s parameters for life is to forfeit the gift. To live only to self is to reject God’s parameters. End of game. But Christ takes our place and pays the penalty for our rejection of God’s rule. His death is our death. He suffers what is rightfully ours. He dies because that is the only way to regain the just balance of gratitude for life revealed in obedience to God’s expectations. We lived to self, lost God, but Christ regains our place.

Which leads to the good part--Christ died FOR us.

Christ takes our alienation, our sin, our isolation, our suffering, and our death into himself. He does so in love divine. In that love divine, Christ liberates us from all that would break us, destroy us, or ruin us. 

Christ dies so we can enter an Intensive Care ward with hope that all shall be well. Christ dies so we can tend to children the world would just as soon forget because they shall be well. Christ dies so we can risk loving someone unknown, unpredictable, and unreliable, for he proves that love cannot die. Christ dies so we can stand at the edge of a grave and know that all is not lost, nor ended, nor beyond all hope, for Christ is present even there. 

So, now it is our turn. In light of so great a love, we are called to love one another--i.e., any other human being we meet anywhere in the world at any time. That is the only real course of action open to us, for it alone allows us to embody the thankfulness that shows we understand the depth of love revealed in Christ. 

Or, more simply, it is the only way to make the history of this day good.