Sometimes, I don’t like reading facebook. Sure, sometimes my feed contains things I want to know – friends having babies, getting married, going on vacations – but not always. Lately it seems there have been a lot of things crossing my social radar that aren’t nearly so happy. Human trafficking, racial and cultural and societal injustices, murderers and child molesters identified but unpunished – sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. I see things like this, sometimes as terrifying statistics and sometimes as the names and faces of victims, and I think to myself: the system has failed them. Something has gone wrong.
So it’s Good Friday. I’ve sometimes wondered, why exactly do we call it Good? I doubt Jesus had a particularly good day. I mean, you’ve got days where all of Jerusalem turned out to celebrate him, waving palm branches and chanting praises – by comparison, this is not what you’d call a positive note to end on. “Man of sorrows, what a name” – what an accurate name. I mean, look at what happened to the guy.
His support network failed him. I know from personal experience how incredibly important it is to have a support network – especially on the mission field. People back home praying for you, people out on the field with you – we were not created to be individuals, and life is a million times better when you aren’t doing whatever it is you’re doing alone. Jesus experienced, in one day, the complete collapse of his entire support network. His financial support literally walked out on him. Peter, one of the men he’s poured his life into for three years, violently betrayed his teachings and even disowned him practically to his face. Judas’ role in betraying him is so well known that two thousand years later that name is synonymous with treachery. All the rest of his disciples, even those among his chosen twelve, abandoned him. They fell asleep when he was pouring his heart out to God, they scattered and hid when he was betrayed – I know Jesus was the perfect man, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t feel some pretty intense anguish watching all his friends slink off into the shadows.
In I Corinthians, at the end of chapter 10 and on into chapter 11, Paul writes: “For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved. Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” I wonder about that at times – what it really means to follow the example of Christ. I particularly wonder about it when I consider what happened to Jesus on ‘Good’ Friday. Follow that example? Watch your friends desert you, hand you over to your enemies, loudly disown you? Follow through with the mission without any support at all? This is not a fun example.
Of course, the day’s only getting started at this point. Next up for Jesus: the system fails him. Israel is under Roman occupation, which in theory would mean he’d get a fair trial, and since he was innocent he’d be released. In practice, that’s about the opposite of what happened. I mean for starters he’s hauled around the city to a series of illegal vigilante courts to be mocked and beaten. Then his captors have the audacity to send him to the actual government, which is so corrupt that he doesn’t even get a chance to stand trial. He’s admittedly innocent, but the local governor sends him off to be tortured to appease the religious leaders. Held without cause, without legitimate trial, and with the only governmental authority figure he’s encountered declaring him innocent but refusing to release him, Jesus is in a rough spot – and then it gets worse. Not only does Pilate hand Jesus over to the mob outside for political expediency, but he also releases a violent insurrectionist from prison. Every part of both Roman and Jewish law and custom has been thrown out or swept aside for the sake of eliminating Jesus from the picture.
I’m really not excited about this example Jesus is setting here. Maybe it’s petty and human and flawed, but here this guy is, torn up emotionally and physically, undoubtedly still reeling from the pain of betrayal and yet trying to remain true to his mission as he’s interrogated. Throughout all this he refrains from calling on the power that’s his right as God, submitting to indignity and violence “as a lamb before the slaughter.” That just seems… well from a human perspective it seems like a dumb idea. I mean if God told me, “I’ve got this really cool idea for you. You’re going to be tortured, insulted, and killed. Also, don’t complain during any of it,” I think I’d probably flip out a little. This is a seriously not cool plan! I mean at this point, it really is as if the whole world is out to get Jesus, and then comes the harshest blow of all.
His mission fails him. Jesus is quoted as saying he was sent to “the lost sheep of Israel.” The biological descendants of Abraham, children of the promise, the Jews. The ones who should have recognized him, who spent their whole lives studying the scriptures that are full of prophecy about Jesus, are the very ones who mocked him, humiliated him, and sent him to Golgotha to be killed. The crowd that he’d taught, cared for, and loved – now an angry mob calling for a torturous execution. Jesus had earlier expressed his anguish over not being able to gather these people to him even when he was welcomed to the city as a celebrity – imagine now the pain he’s going through to see his beloved chosen people hurling insults and rocks at him. He’s made a spectacle of, insulted, beaten, and hung up to be killed in the same fashion as two thieves. Insult upon insult, mockery and hatred and torture, all from the people that he came to save. Abandoned and alone, he’s literally nailed down for his public execution. As his death approaches – unjust and undeserved death for the perfect man – he takes on all the collective sins of humanity past, present, and future. In the moments before his death he quotes from the Psalms: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The one constant throughout his life has always been his connection to his Father in Heaven, now severed by the weight of sin he’s taken on. Never has a man been more alone than Jesus at that moment.
He.
Died.
THIS IS NOT A GOOD PLAN. THIS IS NOT A GOOD DAY.
This is the day when our role model gets killed. He just sits there and takes it – and I mean everything. The system fails him, his support network fails him, the people he was sent to minister to lynch him – and he still focuses on the mission. Jesus Christ, Son of God, willingly goes through hell, knowing that at the end of it all, he’s going to die. He’s not looking forward to this. He’s sweating blood just thinking about what’s going to happen to him. But he’s doggedly following every single prophecy about becoming as helpless as a sacrificial animal, all for the sake of the very people who are about to kill him. This is an example? “Go die!” “Watch everything you’ve done collapse and turn on you!” THIS IS A STUPID PLAN.
This is not a Good story. This is a story that ends in a tragic death.
