Today's Scripture:
Jesus went out with His disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which He and His disciples entered. Judas, His betrayer, also knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with His disciples. So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards from the chief priests and the Pharisees and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons.?
Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to Him, went out and said to them, ¡°Whom are you looking for?¡± They answered Him, ¡°Jesus the Nazorean.¡± He said to them, ¡°I AM.¡± Judas, His betrayer, was also with them. When He said to them, ¡°I AM, ¡° they turned away and fell to the ground. So He again asked them, ¡°Whom are you looking for?¡± They said, ¡°Jesus the Nazorean.¡± Jesus answered, ¡°I told you that I AM. So if you are looking for Me, let these men go.¡± This was to fulfill what He had said, ¡°I have not lost any of those You gave Me.¡±?
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest¡¯s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave¡¯s name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, ¡°Put your sword into its scabbard. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave Me?¡±
So the band of soldiers, the tribune, and the Jewish guards seized Jesus, bound Him, and brought Him to Annas first. He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews that it was better that one man should die rather than the people.
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Now the other disciple was known to the high priest, and he entered the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus. But Peter stood at the gate outside. So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest, went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in. Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter, ¡°You are not one of This Man¡¯s disciples, are you?¡± He said, ¡°I am not.¡± Now the slaves and the guards were standing around a charcoal fire that they had made, because it was cold, and were warming themselves. Peter was also standing there keeping warm.
The high priest questioned Jesus about His disciples and about His doctrine. Jesus answered him, ¡°I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing. ?Why ask Me? Ask those who heard Me what I said to them. They know what I said.¡± When He had said this, one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said, ¡°Is this the way You answer the high priest?¡± Jesus answered him, ¡°If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike Me?¡± Then Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm. And they said to him, ¡°You are not one of His disciples, are you?¡± He denied it and said, ¡°I am not.¡± One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said, ¡°Didn¡¯t I see you in the garden with Him?¡± Again Peter denied it. And immediately the cock crowed.
Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was morning. And they themselves did not enter the praetorium, in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and said, ¡°What charge do you bring against this man?¡± They answered and said to him, ¡°If He were not a criminal, we would not have handed Him over to you.¡± At this, Pilate said to them, ¡°Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law.¡± The Jews answered him, ¡°We do not have the right to execute anyone, ¡° in order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled that He said indicating the kind of death He would die.?
So Pilate went back into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to Him, ¡°Are You the King of the Jews?¡± Jesus answered, ¡°Do you say this on your own or have others told you about Me?¡± Pilate answered, ¡°I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed You over to me. What have You done?¡± Jesus answered, ¡°My kingdom does not belong to this world. If My kingdom did belong to this world, My attendants would be fighting to keep Me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, My kingdom is not here.¡± So Pilate said to Him, ¡°Then You are a king?¡± Jesus answered, ¡°You say I Am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.¡± Pilate said to Him, ¡°What is truth?¡±
When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, ¡°I find no guilt in Him. But you have a custom that I release one prisoner to you at Passover. Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?¡± They cried out again, ¡°Not this one but Barabbas!¡± Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.
Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him scourged. And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed Him in a purple cloak, and they came to Him and said, ¡°Hail, King of the Jews!¡± And they struck Him repeatedly. Once more Pilate went out and said to them, ¡°Look, I am bringing Him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in Him.¡± So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And he said to them, ¡°Behold, the man!¡±?
When the chief priests and the guards saw Him they cried out, ¡°Crucify Him, crucify Him!¡± Pilate said to them, ¡°Take Him yourselves and crucify Him. I find no guilt in Him.¡± The Jews answered, ¡°We have a law, and according to that law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.¡± Now when Pilate heard this statement, he became even more afraid, and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus, ¡°Where are You from?¡± Jesus did not answer him. So Pilate said to Him, ¡°Do You not speak to me? Do You not know that I have power to release You and I have power to crucify You?¡± Jesus answered him, ¡°You would have no power over Me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed Me over to you has the greater sin.¡± Consequently, Pilate tried to release Him; but the Jews cried out, ¡°If you release Him, you are not a Friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.¡±
When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out and seated Him on the judge¡¯s bench in the place called Stone Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha. It was preparation day for Passover, and it was about noon. And he said to the Jews, ¡°Behold, your king!¡± They cried out, ¡°Take Him away, take Him away! ?Crucify Him!¡± Pilate said to them, ¡°Shall I crucify your king?¡± The chief priests answered, ¡°We have no king but Caesar.¡± Then he handed Him over to them to be crucified.
So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross Himself, He went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two others, one on either side, with Jesus in the middle. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, ¡°Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.¡± Now many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, ¡°Do not write ¡®The King of the Jews,¡¯ but that He said, ¡®I Am the King of the Jews¡¯.¡± Pilate answered, ¡°What I have written, I have written.¡±
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took His clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier. They also took His tunic, but the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down. So they said to one another, ¡°Let¡¯s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, ¡° in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says: They divided My garments among them, and for My vesture they cast lots. This is what the soldiers did.?
Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother¡¯s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple there whom He loved He said to His mother, ¡°Woman, behold, your son.¡± Then He said to the disciple, ¡°Behold, your mother.¡± And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, ¡°I thirst.¡± There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to His mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, He said, ¡°It is finished.¡± And bowing His head, He handed over the spirit.
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Now since it was preparation day, in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath, for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken and that they be taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs, but one soldier thrust His lance into His side, and immediately blood and water flowed out. An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may come to believe. For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled: Not a bone of it will be broken. And again another passage says: They will look upon Him whom they have pierced.
After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took his body. Nicodemus, the one who had first come to Him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom. Now in the place where He had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried. So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; for the tomb was close by.
--John 18:1-19:42
In the reflection below, I concentrate my focus on the themes of John's Gospel, that being the focus of today's Scripture pericope. Most of what is in today's reflection is a somewhat?updated version of some previous Good Friday postings, and it still holds true for me. That said, I encourage you to compare and contrast today's Gospel selection with Luke's account in my Palm Sunday posting a few days ago, and/or the other Gospel accounts of such as well, and see what additional?insights might emerge for you in doing so.
God's blessings to you all,
Greg
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He was arrested, tied up, interrogated, tortured, and executed. After that His executioners took and divided His clothes among themselves. The cross is always a story of suffering and death. There¡¯s just no way around it.
How is it that something as brutal as this has become the centerpiece of our faith?
There is something about this story that is both attractive and repulsive, compelling and embarrassing. We glory in the cross and we denounce such violence when it happens in the world today. So why is this story of suffering and death at the heart of our faith?
Who among us has not known suffering, loss, sorrow? Who has not wept and felt powerless at the suffering and loss of another? Who has not in some way been touched and affected by death?
The cross is not exclusive to Jesus. It¡¯s your story and my story. It¡¯s the story of Syria, America, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, Gaza, Israel and anywhere death and violence reign. It¡¯s the story of everyone--of those we've loved and those we've hated. It¡¯s the story of those we've known and those we will never meet. It¡¯s the human story and the cross stands in the middle of that story.
How do you make sense of the cross? What do you do with the world¡¯s suffering? How do you understand your suffering? What explanations do you have for the tragedies of life? What do you say when someone asks you about her or his suffering?
This is the universality of Jesus's suffering and death on the cross. Jesus is one with us in our suffering. Suffering is real and death is real. We live in a fallen, imperfect world, and as long as that is the case, suffering and death will never go away. ?
Jesus is never more real, more human, more embodied, more identified with us, than He is on the cross. It¡¯s not at His birth, or in His teaching and preaching, or the miracles He performs, or even at His resurrection. It¡¯s on the cross. It¡¯s in His suffering and dying. It¡¯s in our suffering and dying.
Almost everyone ran away from Jesus¡¯s cross on that first Good Friday. They betrayed their Lord--even denied Him--and one sold Him out completely. It was a horrible betrayal--but would we act any differently? Perhaps--perhaps not. However we are all reluctant to face our crosses because the cross of our life is just too painful. We want to get away from it. We want to find something good in the horrific. We want to explain away the suffering. We want to make sense of that which makes no sense to us. We want to flower the cross before its time and jump from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.
We cannot, however, get around the cross of suffering and death. We can only go through it. Today does not offer answers to or escape from our sufferings. More than any other day in the church year, today holds our sufferings before us. It¡¯s a hard day. I don¡¯t like it and I don¡¯t want to face my sufferings. I suspect you don¡¯t either. But there in the middle of our lives stands the cross.
What is your story of suffering and loss? When was a time you thought your heart couldn¡¯t break anymore than it already had? Who are the loved ones you¡¯ve lost? What is the pain that never goes away? When has your world come to an end? When have you cried in the daytime, but had no answer from God, or by night as well but found no rest (Psalm 22:2)? What suffering do you bring today?
I wish I could make it all better for you. We can, to a certain extent, ameliorate the pain of those whom we try to support in their tragedies and losses. We can be there for them and make their burden a little easier. We can help carry their cross. But in the end, we cannot take away the cause of their hurt. We cannot bring back lost loved ones or cure terminal illnesses or whatever else the source of their pain might entail.
Jesus likewise does not take us down from our cross. Instead, He gets up on the cross with us. I'll state that again: Jesus does not take us down from our cross. Instead, He gets up on the cross with us.
Today is not called Easy Friday. It is not called Happy Friday. And it¡¯s not called Painless Friday. What is today called?
"Good" Friday.
We cannot avoid sorrow, loss or suffering in our lives. ?Good Friday is what carries us through our sufferings and deaths. It did yesterday. It is today. And it will tomorrow.
The good news is that Good Friday is not the end. The good news is that, unlike those who were grief-stricken beyond imagining by the crucifixion of their Lord, we know what follows, and the good news and the glory that awaits in Jesus's triumph over sin and death which we celebrate on Easter.
The bad news is that there is still plenty of suffering and death in this world--and likely in our own lives--where we don't know the end of the story. We might possibly feel abandoned by God or not feel His presence. We might join with Jesus in crying out, "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?" Such is our experience in and on our own crosses. The pain is real and the suffering is real. It certainly was real for Jesus as well.
What Jesus knew--through faith, trust and hope beyond His suffering--were that those words were the preface to Psalm 22 which parallels the suffering that Jesus underwent and ends with the glory of what is to result from His doing so.
The way through victory is through the cross. The way to triumph over sin and death is through the cross. That is what awaits those who bear their crosses for His sake and who place their faith in Him. Let us stand with others in their suffering--to lend what support we can--to help them bear their burdens as best they can--and to remember the triumph and glory which is to come!
Thanks be to God!
AMEN!!?
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