Good Friday

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24).

In a cemetery in 19th-century Denmark, an old grandfather speaks tenderly but forcefully to his grandson, just a little boy. They talk over the fresh grave of the boy’s father. The man had died a godless death. The world had gotten to him.

The old man speaks with quiet passion about Jesus, forgiveness, and glory unending. He knows he won’t live long enough to steer the child around all the traps and lures in this world that the father succumbed to. So he puts the child on oath to remain in Christ for his whole life.

The boy falls to his knees. “I swear it, Grandpa.”

The old man scoops the child up in his arm, holds him to his chest, unashamed of the tears, just letting them roll.

In the next row of the cemetery, hidden from sight, is a calloused former believer (who would become the most provocative Lutheran writer of his day). He listens rapt, breathless. The world had gotten to him as well. He had the brilliance to fend off the frontal assault of any Christian who tried.

But this? He would spend the rest of his life trying to understand the power of that moment, the strange influence of overhearing, of being left alone and unaddressed. He experienced in that cemetery an encounter with words that asked nothing of him, words that did not call up his practiced argument. No one was speaking to him at all. No one waited on his answer.

He found himself drawn deeper and deeper inside the talk, gripped by the immensity of the cross as never before in his life. He was undone.

I think of Good Friday this way. This is the day to be appropriately hushed at our safe distance away. We are let in on the most holy and mysterious of things as they pass between the Father and Son.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

This is not addressed to the soldier holding the hammer. He is flatly ignored. Nor is it addressed to the sort of world that would crucify its truest and best. Nor is it addressed to you. You have nothing to contribute. You are not consulted. It is a matter between the Father and the Son.

In this “Father, forgive” hides a power to pierce every illusion humanity holds about itself, its self-satisfaction, and every illusion it clings to about God. Lord, show me the real me. Then show me the real you. So catastrophic a remedy as God on a cross exposes humanity’s true predicament. We must see it for what it is: history’s longest running tragedy, the bondage of sin and the death it brought in.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is for our benefit that he shouts and screams to the blank sky. He knows we are listening somewhere out there in our cemetery, this world, hidden in the shadows we ourselves have cast. Here you may measure the weight of humanity’s fault as you sit and stare at the absolute degradation and utter God-forsakenness of the Son of God. He suffers because of his total solidarity with us and our race.

This is true religion. No other can heal deeply enough because no other wounds deeply enough. He would have us see every law that ever condemned us nailed to that cross. See the absurdity of the ledger you keep, weighing the bad against the so-called good. See the lie in every system of merit. See it and be free. See it all buried with him in his grave while the cry echoes off every mountain and hill.

He gets the last word: “It is finished.”

So goes the eavesdropping of another sacred Good Friday. What to do with us? What is to become of us? How will it be with us forever? What we have overheard is simply a decision being taken out of our hands and decided in our favor. The trial is over. The verdict is fixed.

So don’t you dare feel sorry for Jesus on Good Friday and miss the royal dignity of your brother, the holy Lamb of God. He willed this. The centurion saw the sun go dark. He felt the ground itself begin to shake. But mostly what he saw was a man acting in the character of Divinity itself.

“Surely, this was the Son of God.”

Someone has said, “Allow one mystery too bright to look into—allow one sun in your sky—and see everything else lit up by this light.” To think that this is God. To think that this is the love that waits at the center of all things, that holds all things together, that prepares a place for you. Don’t miss the solemn joy of this day.

Indeed, if the whole world—angry, dying, terrified and in the dark—could only hide itself in a particular cemetery, with the old Danish Lutheran nearby, a finger to his lips, what it would overhear next is better still. The woman had lost the whole world. Through her tears, she mistook him for a gardener, until he turned her around with a tender, forceful word.

He said, “Mary.”

Here the true Paschal Lamb we see, whom God so freely gave
us; he died on the accursèd tree—so strong his love—to save
us. See, his blood now marks our door; faith points to it;
death passes o’er, and Satan cannot harm us. Alleluia!

(CW 439:5)

TO THINK ABOUT

How does Good Friday affect you? What do you associate with this day? As you ponder these questions, reach for that deep, solemn gladness on the other side of contrition.

PRAYER

Dear Jesus, you know. Amen.

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