Good Friday
Christianity is an interesting and even strange religion when you think about it. It seems to hinge upon a lot of contradictions. Take today for example. We call it Good Friday. Good. A day when we remember the founder of our faith dying a gruesome death as a common criminal two thousand years ago, and we call it a victory. Or consider the fact that we have services and sing songs that focus on and celebrate his blood, the blood of Jesus. In communion we say things like we are eating his flesh and drinking his blood. On top of that Jesus himself and many of the early church leaders repeatedly talked about how in order to live we had to die. We all had to take up the cross like him and suffer and die. Somehow this resulted in life. And we call of this “Good.” Seems like a contradiction, right? I mean brutal execution, blood, death and we call it all good and celebrate it and sing about it. It’s the core of the Christian faith.
It’s confusing really. And it was to many observers of Christians in the early years of the faith’s existence, and it actually still is in our time. People would hear what Christians talked about and heard about what they said in their worship services and rumors began to spread that these so-called followers of Jesus, these Christians are cannibals. They always talk about eating flesh and drinking blood and not just of anyone, but the person they believe is God himself. Today we might say that Christians sound a lot like vampires or zombies. The walking dead.
So what is going here? How does this all fit together? How does one make sense of what Good Friday, and therefore Christianity, is all about? How could Jesus’ death be a good thing? Why did he have to die at all?
The long and the short of it is sin, but sin can seem somewhat removed or foreign to us as a concept. Maybe it carries too much baggage with it…it would of course, wouldn’t it? What it basically is is imperfection, brokenness. The fact that we humans are not perfect. We are broken. We are hurt and we hurt others. But why does that require death? Why does that require blood? Wouldn’t it have been more reasonable to just get some help on being better people? Wouldn’t it be better if we just worked on improving and not hurting one another? The question remains, why death? Why did Jesus have to die?
The plain truth is that we can never improve enough. We can never work hard enough. No matter what amount of effort we put into to it we still always end up hurting one another and/or ourselves. Our situation is really that dire. And God is not satisfied with things being a little better. He is not satisfied with even considerable improvement in many areas of life because that still leaves other areas where pain and brokenness win out. God is not a half ass God. He is not interested in half measures and admirable efforts. He is interested in absolute freedom. He is interested in complete healing. Perfection is the standard, not because he is some kind of tyrant, but because anything short of it means brokenness wins; death wins. The fact that He is a loving God means that he cannot stand to have brokenness and pain win in the end. And if perfection is the standard, “you therefore must be perfect, like your heavenly Father is perfect,” whatever is imperfect must die (Matt. 5:48). The imperfection and brokenness of our lives and this world must be brought to an end, so that there can be something else: new life, freedom.
If we are talking about being truly free, if we’re talking about actual healing, if we’re talking about justice, real justice, then we need something way more drastic than a little help to improve. We need something more than just “getting by with a little help from our friends.” We’re not talking about just getting by, we’re talking about liberation, we’re talking about being saved! Jesus came for that purpose. He came to save.
Perfection is the standard, and we can never achieve it. Under that standard no one gets out alive. Our brokenness will always win out and death will be the final result. But Jesus did something miraculous for us all on Good Friday. He said, “I’m going to stand in for them. I’m going to take their place. I’ll be perfect for them.” He stood for us in our place, and where the standard of perfection wanted to accuse us in our brokenness and condemn us to death for it, Jesus said, “Accuse me. Condemn me. I’ll take it.” That’s what the cross was all about. He was perfect for us. He died for us. He bled for us. And by doing so he broke the whole system. He set us free from having to be perfect by doing it for us. He took the standard away and gave us himself. Instead of living by the standard of perfection, which is the way a lot of the world around us wants to live, we now live by grace. We live by forgiveness that was won for us through his cross. We still struggle with imperfection and brokenness and pain right now, but it does not win out in the end any more. Because of Jesus dying on the cross for us there’s a new end to our story. Life wins out in the end because he conquered death for us. There is life after death.
That’s why we celebrate today. That’s why we call it good. That’s why we talk about his body and blood all of the time because it was broken and his blood was shed for us. It counts for us so that we could actually be free. This is what he finished on the cross. He finished the work of saving us.
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