What's so good about Good Friday?

April 7, 9:08 PMFaith & Culture ExaminerDr. Bob Beltz

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                    Caravaggio's "Doubting Thomas"

This coming Friday is the day on the Christian calendar that is known as Good Friday.  In many ways it seems like a strange way to label the day.  Good Friday is the day we remember the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  When you take a long hard look at what Jesus endured on that day, it might seem inconceivable to call it “good.”

I might also point out that Palm Sunday is the day we remember the beginning of the Passion Week with what is known as the “triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem.  When first pondering the events of Good Friday, there is not much that looks all that triumphant. 

I imagine many of you have seen Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.  It was an attempt by Mr. Gibson to capture something of the horror of what Jesus actually experienced on Good Friday.  I had the chance to read the script before the film was made, and also read the book upon which the script was based.  It is book written by a German mystic at the beginning of the nineteenth century entitled The Dolorous (“sorrowful”) Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The book records the vision Anne Catherine Emerich had concerning the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus.  It so moved Mel Gibson when he read it that for years he wanted to make a movie showing the world what Jesus really suffered.  If you saw the film, but knew nothing about Roman crucifixion and scourging, you probably thought the film was “over the top” violent.  I have heard this opinion expressed on a multitude of occasions.  If you saw the film and have studied Roman history and what was actually was involved in scourging and crucifixion, you might have reached the conclusion (as I did) that the film actually pulled its punches. 

Sometime late Thursday night, after Jesus shared the Passover meal with the disciples in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, he walked out of the city and crossed the Kidron Valley to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.  If you travel to Israel today, you can walk through that garden and see trees that were there the night Jesus prayed.  It was in that garden that Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the guards of the High Priest of Israel.  The next hours were spent in a series of illegal trials, which violated every element of the Jewish rule of Law.  When Jesus told the truth, he was convicted of blasphemy and taken to the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate.  Had the Jews been an independent nation, they would have stoned Jesus.  The Romans occupied the nation and had taken the right of capital punishment away from the Jews.  The only way to get Jesus put to death was by Roman decree, and the way the Romans executed criminals was by nailing them to crosses and allowing them to experience what some scholars believe was the most cruel and inhumane form of torture ever invented.   

Often, prior to the actual act of crucifixion, prisoners were turned over to the Roman guards for scourging.  The details of how this was done are accurately portrayed in the movie.  Many prisoners never made it to the cross.  They died while being scourged.  Jesus was mocked, beaten, and scourged.  A prophetic reference in Isaiah hints that he was beaten beyond recognition.  He was so severely injured that by the time he was forced to carry his cross (probably the crossbeam – one of the few scenes in the film that was probably not historically accurate) he couldn’t do it.  Simon of Cyrene was forced to step in and carry the load.  Of all the biblical characters, I wish I could have been Simon.

It was nine o’clock on Friday morning when Roman soldiers laid Jesus on a cross, and with their knees holding down his forearms and legs, drove iron spikes through his wrists and feet.  The cross was then lifted and dropped into the hole that held it upright.  The pain would have been unimaginable.  For the next three hours Jesus would have alternated between pushing up with his feet in excruciating pain to get a moment’s relief from what was near suffocation as the weight of his body hung from his arms, and the muscles of his chest contracted and cramped, and then dropping again when the pain in his feet became unendurable.   Hour after hour, up and then down, pain increasing and strength decreasing, this was the reality of what it meant to be crucified.  When noon arrived on that first Good Friday, darkness covered the land for three hours.  Most theologians believe this was the time when cosmic business was being transacted and the sins of the world, your sins and my sins, where being paid for by the agony and shed blood of Jesus.  For many Christians, noon to three on Good Friday are sacred hours.  This year, in my hometown of Denver, the Colorado Rockies are playing their season opener during this time.  Go figure!

When you look at all this, how can we call this day Good Friday?  It certainly wasn’t good for Jesus, and I have to think it wasn’t very good for his mother, or friends that watched it happen.  It couldn’t have been very good for the Father who allowed it to happen.  But it was very good for you and me.  God used one of the most hideous and unjust moments in human history to provide forgiveness and salvation for the entire world in Jesus’ act of sacrifice.  That is what makes Good Friday so “good.”  I think we might need to change the name to Great Friday!

Ultimately, what makes Good Friday so good is Easter Sunday.  Tony Campolo is one of the great communicators in the Christian world.  He is a college professor at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.  He sweats and spits a lot when he speaks – and he really communicates!  He is perhaps best known for giving a message that he did not create.  Tony tells the story of attending a Good Friday service at his mostly African-American church in Pennsylvania.  The pastor would make a few observations about what happened on that first Good Friday and then make the remark, “Its Friday…but Sunday’s coming.”  As the pastor went on, every time he made the remark, the intensity of his emotion and the volume of his voice increased.  Here is an excerpt from the message: 

It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a comin’. It was Friday, and my Jesus is dead on a tree. But that’s Friday, and Sunday’s a comin’. Friday, Mary’s crying her eyes out, the disciples are running in every direction like sheep without a shepherd. But that’s Friday, and Sunday’s a comin’. Friday, some are looking at the world and saying, “As things have been, so they shall be. You can’t change nothing in this world! You can’t change nothing in this world!” But they didn’t know that it was only Friday, and Sunday’s a comin’. Friday, them forces that oppress the poor and keep people down, them forces that destroy people, the forces in control now, them forces that are gonna rule, they don’t know it’s only Friday, but Sunday’s a comin’. Friday, people are saying, “Darkness is gonna rule the world, sadness is gonna be everywhere,” but they don’t know it’s only Friday, but Sunday’s a comin’. Even though this world is rotten, as it is right now, we know it’s only Friday. But Sunday’s a comin’. 

I can’t imagine what the original was like, but when Tony gets spitting and sweating, you feel the Spirit move!  “It’s Friday…but Sunday’s coming.”  When Jesus Christ blew the doors off the tomb (OK – stone) and marched out alive, everything he did and said was proven to be true.  Friday suddenly made sense.  That is why Easter is the greatest event in human history.  And Easter means that all that Jesus endured and accomplished on the cross really makes Good Friday – good!