Good Friday
God's unfailing "Yes" to humanity
The accounts of Jesus’ passion and death all have their own similarities and differences. While the basic contours of the story are the same across all four Gospels, there are some striking differences.
John’s own peculiarities are rather poignant, but there are also some lines that are rather chilling when read in the context of the day. One of those lines is, “We have no King but Caesar.”
Caesar, of course, is the Roman emperor, but he also represents a certain type of power that exists in the world. It is a power of domination, of brute force, and of fear. It is a power which believes itself to be the rightful ruler of all it surveys without any care for those who live under its reign.
For the men in John’s Gospel who said that line, today is day before the Passover. This is a festival of liberation of God’s people from bondage in Egypt, of being brought over the Red Sea. How can this festival be celebrated and it also be said, “We have no King but Caesar?”
As it is, these words are exactly the thing that Pilate needs to hear to give the order to crucify the One who is perceived as a threat to that power. And for what?
To be perfectly clear, in no way do I wish to suggest the descendants of the ancient Hebrews are to blame for what happened on this day.1
As it is, Christians have more than our own fair share of tragic history that we can claim. The number of times Christians have proclaimed “We have no King but Ceasar” is really too numerous to count, and sadly, we can still point to some examples that are happening this very day.
Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified, tells us that the forces of sin and death and destruction will have their day. It shows us what happens when humanity says, “NO!” to God. But Good Friday also is a days that ends. It tells us Cesar’s day will end and a new one will dawn.
Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus says, “No one takes my life away from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again.” When the solider and police come to take Jesus away, he is not seized, but rather Jesus says to them, “I am he! I am the one you are looking for!” and gives himself up. He allows himself to be arrested and carried away.
The power that Jesus demonstrates is the complete antithesis of Caesar. It is a power of love, mutuality, and self-giving. It is most clearly shown as he hangs tortured and dying on the cross. It is this power and Jesus’ unfailing “yes” to God in the middle of humanity’s “No” that leads one Roman soldier to say, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”
One of the first Christian statements of faith was “Jesus is Lord.”
It is a claim which does not make much sense on Good Friday, but a claim whose full punch is only known on the other side of the empty tomb. For it was a claim that said that the love for humanity which led Jesus to the cross is stronger than the forces of Caesar. It is a confession that Jesus is sovereign over the entire Creation … a confession that there is a God who once again goes to bat for their children against the forces of sin and death and oppression … a God who suffers and dies for us. It is a claim that the Son of God who laid down his life will take up his life once again not even forty-eight hours from now. It shows while Caesar may look like he has won the day … Caesar’s days are most surely numbered.
All through the year, we hear about the great wisdom of Jesus’ teachings and the miracles of healing that he worked. But something happened here on this day which is greater than anything that he has ever done. It is because of the Cross that we know God is a God whose forgiveness is without limits and is unconditional. It is there even before we ask, even before we repent, and even before we know that we have taken the wrong track.
The shadow of the Cross is the one place where we can lay aside all the cares and suffering of this life and find relief, because the Son of God has taken all these things away from us and taken them into and upon himself. It is because of the Cross that we are able to understand what the Scripture means when it says “God is love.”
Because Jesus loves us, we can trust there is a God whose love for us is stronger than death itself. In our prayer book, it says that by Jesus’ death, he has destroyed death. And because we believe and trust that he has destroyed death, we can also believe and trust that has also destroyed any reason for us to ever live in fear, or to be anxious, or to know shame.
Through the suffering and death of Jesus, we know that God stands in solidarity with us in the middle of all our suffering.
Today on the Cross, Jesus is showing us that God has claimed us for his very own and we are pulled into a life fueled and nourished by a love so powerful, that we can know and find true rest and true peace in the face of everything the world can throw at us.
The Cross is God’s unfailing and never-ending “YES” to humanity even when we say “No.”
And that is why we call this Friday “Good.”
The relationship between Christians and Jews are largely Not Good at All and complicated at the best of times. Jews would dread Good Friday because there were acts of violence against them on this day in retribution for Jesus’ crucifixion. In 2024, Antisemitism remains very much a thing. I personally know of several synagogues where there is security present during services.