Good Friday has always felt like a strange way to describe the bleakest day in human history to me. I remember the first time that the weight of this event parked itself on my heart: sitting on an old, white couch in our dank basement, an elementary-aged version of me had just been shown the movie The Passion of the Christ. Although I did not comprehend how Jesus’ death was intended as an atoning substitute for my own or what I was supposed to do with this information, I cannot help but again feel the tears that welled up in that little boy's eyes. On a slow April evening in the early 2000s, the reality of this catastrophic calamity stirred up profound compassion in my heart.
This memory sparks a hint of guilt in my conscience, and maybe you can relate. I am unconvinced that this event sparked repentance or was the moment where I received salvation, but I know that I was moved more by the cross then than I often am. Let’s be honest, most of us have heard the story of Good Friday ad nauseam, but have all but abandoned the shocking conditions that existed in those horrifying hours. It is almost as if our proximity to our bloodied Savior has caused us to dehumanize what Jesus suffered for our sake.
Let me plainly and regrettably confess that I frequently find myself forgetting those graphic and upsetting descriptions of Jesus. Either because I have heard them repeatedly, or because it is more uncomfortable to sit at the feet of the physical cross than to hide behind the spelling of the word “propitiation”, I tend to forget (or avoid) the gravity of what we are remembering.
How about you? Has Good Friday become a holiday that you stomach in order to play the religious zealot? Have you chosen to stray from the vivid Biblical descriptions of Jesus sweating blood, abandoned, and besmirched because it puts a pit in your stomach? Has Friday become an easily avoided day because it is easier for you to remember that Sunday is surely coming?
As I slow down, picturing the bleak darkness of the night where Jesus sat laboring in prayer, sweating blood in anxious desperation, I want to challenge you to join me. Do you realize that the same King that reigns at the right hand of the Father cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”, having been totally separated from Him? (Matt. 27:36) Do you remember that His best pupil denied and cursed Him three times at the threatening questions of a teenage girl? Remember that as this innocent Man hung with dislocated shoulders and ribboned skin, the sun hid its face; darkness sunk over all the earth and God’s wrath fell upon Him. Treated as a murderer or a thief, Jesus died excruciatingly and stole your guilt, bankrupting hell of its rightful claim on you.
Remember the physical, historical, and real events that happened two centuries ago. Read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ final day in Matt. 26:36-27:61, Mark 14:32-15:47, Luke 22:39-23:56, and John 18:1-19:42. Read the ghastly prediction of Jesus’ death 500 years in advance in Psalm 22. Turn off your lights, sit in the dark, and imagine the utter blackness of the total rejection that Jesus received from the Father on your behalf.
Abide in the reality that this is what your sin necessitated. Stop and consider the spiritual implications that it took the everlasting, eternal God to live a human life and die in order to offer you a new life. Consider the absolute spiritual death that you were born into. Reflect on your unseen sin that piled upon Jesus’ account, so that He might spill His blood and break His body for you. Leave your phone inside and stick your head outdoors after the sun goes down, glancing into the heavens, realizing that the same God that was physically broken in Jerusalem two thousand years ago has the same face on His mind as He did that cursed day: yours.