+ As an old friend of mine used to say: “What’s so good about Good Friday?” How, he often pondered, could we call it a good thing when we reflect upon and even celebrate the awful and terrible death of JesusChrist?
Well the first and second readings explain it well enough. On some levels it is a strange concept to think of “offering up” even an animal, let alone a human being, for other people’s sins and offenses. But coming from a time of animal sacrifices — offered to God for mercy and to be saved — this concept was a holy and noble thing.
Imagine we could, by our life, save others. We certainly think of this when we talk about a person jumping in front of a car to save a child’s life. What a sacrifice! How noble and loving! And kind of like this: We recognize the good here, and we even call it Good Friday. Yes!
And so in this last of the SufferingServant poems we can talk about this “one” — this servant — in words like —
“See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.”
Everything kind of gets put into divine language by seeing it all as, in some way, fulfilling God’s call of that servant; and even God’s affliction of that servant as a high, mighty, and noble thing that servant does in “obedience’ to God’s invitation to do a noble and divine act —
“Giving his life for others.”
This is a language that is deep, religious, mythical, and so much more. But as we listen to both the deep theological language and reflection from Hebrews, as well as the Passion of John itself, that the deep mystery and power of love here is not just that Jesus died on the cross, but how he died on the Cross.
First of all — in obedience.
His obedience to God was how he suffered and died. He accepted that cross. He, in spite of all of the hatred and rejection he suffered, gave himself to that cross.
His haters couldn’t make him a hater. His love was greater than all. He didn’t throw himself in front of a car to save a child; although, I believe he would have done that, too.
No! He went through indescribable pain and suffering, which we go to a whole lot of trouble to describe not in one Passion, but four.
And as each one of Passions tells it a little differently (and each one is, of course, my favorite) John’s is unique, as are all of the others.
But in Luke, Jesus gets to say that line that, for me, best describes the divine, and how that makes Jesus’ cross uniquely different. How could he say it? It mystifies. But Luke’s Gospel quotes Jesus —
“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
Take that one in! The Suffering Servant on steroids! And for all of these and many more reasons, we gather this day in a most solemn way to celebrate once again this Good Friday.
