This post is an annual event (#14) that I usually post on Maundy Thursday to raise awareness of events 2,000-plus years ago that took place that night, and of the torture into early morning that became Good Friday. The original posting was also a Maundy Thursday fourteen years ago. I reflect on this version of Good Friday morning from within the current chaos of a world more confused and divided than ever. This story never changes despite the worldly confusion and chaos that only seems to deepen.
I may edit a bit this year, as writers do, and I appreciate remembering the message; I feel it more deeply every year. Good Friday can slip by too easily amidst preparations for celebrating Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. His ultimate return is even more significant this year than ever before. We see signs of the Last Days, wars and rumors of wars, nation against nation, and the lingering hangover of hatred running at an all-time high. What better time to be prepared for His return than by remembering?
If we had not been gifted by the path He took for us as He prayed Maundy Thursday and the tortures that followed Him into Good Friday morning and crucifixion over 2,000 years ago. The baskets with chocolate bunnies, plastic grass, and colored eggs would be all that mattered on Easter Sunday. I hope those of you reading this for the first time (or again) feel a greater appreciation for the events leading up to what Christ gave up for all of us, as I have, and I welcome all of you reading these words. Happy Easter!
Peace! G.
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It was the night before His crucifixion. Jesus had just broken the bread and given it to his disciples to represent His body, and the wine, His blood. Later that evening, they left the upper room and walked to the olive grove called Gethsemane, where Jesus sat three of His disciples down and urged them to keep watch as he went deeper into the grove to pray. He took Peter, John, and James with him for a short distance before asking them to sit and wait while he walked deeper and fell down to pray.
In Matthew 26:37, Jesus is described as “sorrowful and deeply distressed.” Who wouldn’t be? He had the foreknowledge of everything that would happen to him and the suffering he would have no choice but to endure. All that suffering yet to come seemed obvious, but I never considered His greatest agony to come, and I missed it entirely for many years.
Seriously, why would he not ask His Father to stop this craziness and avoid all the suffering to come? In verse 39 of Matthew 26, He prays, “Oh my Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” And he prayed in that manner three separate times. “Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”[Luke 22:43] What kind of stress did He experience to cause bleeding? Indeed, it had to be a stressful form of agony, but not the ultimate misery, not the greatest, unavoidable agony we easily miss in the chaos of the physical suffering he experienced.
I had always believed that when He was in the garden, He was agonizing over the suffering to come, of impending torture, public humiliation, and painful death by crucifixion. With His prayers asking not to drink from the bitter cup, I never considered “the bitter cup” as anything other than the agony of the crucifixion.
There was something else troubling him – Fear. Not fear of dying, because that is why He came to the earth in the first place. Not the fear of the pain of torture and crucifixion, either. His greatest fear was that His mission would fail – His earthly mission – to die as the Son of Man…instead of the Son of God.
To be successful, He could only die as the Son of Man because it was the Sin of man he was destined to take on and overcome. The Son of God had resources to deal with what would happen, and blow up this whole event with legions of angels on standby, but only the Son of Man could make a difference…to take on the sin of man.
Oswald Chambers writes of this fear, which I had never considered. True, Jesus was God, but He was also a man, and He had to take on all mankind’s sins and die as the Son of Man, or His earthly mission would fail. Opting out of that role and into the heavenly protections afforded as the Son of God would represent a mission failure, and fighting the temptation to go there caused great fear. But still, there was yet another agony that haunted Him, and there was no escape.
And then they showed up to seize him, and in John 18:4…”Therefore, Jesus, knowing all things that would come upon Him, said to them, “Whom are you seeking?” He was talking to the mob armed with clubs and soldiers with swords that had come to arrest Him. He already knew who they were and why they were there. He had been betrayed by one of His own. He knew it would all happen like that and expected it.
Something else I missed was Judas’s motivation. He did not hate Jesus; he loved Him, but His love was based on Jesus being a warrior, not a pacifist. He fully intended for Jesus to rise and call on God to crush the Roman occupation, and when that never materialized, Judas tried to force it by turning Him over to the authorities, knowing He had the power to derail the murder if only he would fight back. Surely, that level of threat would trigger His power and launch a military campaign as a warrior. Judas was an integral part of the plan, not someone to hate. His intentions were good, but misguided.
Okay, back to the garden… so an angel had strengthened Him, and now He boldly walks up to the mob, knowing who they were and why they were there. If you saw the “Passion of the Christ,” you know what happens next: absolute agony of countless tortures until He gives up the Spirit on the cross at 3 PM on Good Friday.
But that is the agony we all know about. There was another much more intense and personal agony to Jesus that gets glossed over by the distraction of the gruesome details and the graphic accounting of torture and death by crucifixion. We do not witness it until the moment He dies on the cross.
This Friday morning, I will have my routine breakfast and too much coffee, review a story outline, and research for a new book underway. My watch will go off at 9:00 AM Friday, and I’ll wonder if the hammering has stopped by then. Over two thousand years ago, my Lord Jesus…“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” [Isaiah 53:5]
He walked right into it. He had choices. He could have defended himself in the garden. He could have played the role of the Son of God and called legions of angels to rescue Him. By telling the mob, “I am he,” they fell to the ground. They knew who they were confronting, but He did not defend Himself; instead, He found strength in His Father, God, and embraced His Father’s will rather than His own.
And yet, He was not a servant to God; He was God, is God, and yet He was also a servant to us. He was the Son of Man. “There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.” [Isaiah 53:2-3]
So many turned away. The multitudes that pleaded for help, “Hosanna!” earlier in the week when He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt. They were the same ones who loudly called out, “Give us Barabbas!” and “Crucify him!” a few days later. They turned away when He did not behave as the warrior they hoped He would be. It is so easy to turn away and be part of the crowd. We perpetuate the turning away even today.
Jesus did not fight back. He did not defend himself. He kept quiet when confronted by the high priest Caiaphas: “He plied Him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer.” [Luke 23:9] and displayed what was seen as constant weakness. “Yet it was our weakness he carried; our sorrows weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!” [Isaiah 53:4] How could so many have been so wrong?
He ensured agony through His actions and His ultimate choices. Again, I’m not talking about the physical torture and the excruciating pain of being crucified; I am talking about that moment of separation from His Father to be the Son of Man.
That separation was not caused by Jesus turning away from His Father; it was separation from His Father when He took on the sin of mankind, an essential part of the deal. To accept the burden of sin for all humankind was not the finish line; it was the moment His Father, our God, turned away, separating from His Son when He drank from the bitter cup to bear our sin.
That was the agony he suffered that I missed when Christ cried out in a loud voice around three in the afternoon, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[Matthew 27:46]. That was the moment of agony we can easily miss, that moment God the Father had to turn away from His Son, who became Sin for us.
The entire event had been prophesied, even His last words, when Christ quoted the first verse of the 22nd Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” [Psalms 22:1]
I could never understand why Jesus would question His Father like that. His cry came from a moment of agony none of us will ever know…because of what He did for us. The weight of the sin of every one of us was borne upon Him at that moment, and His Father turned away in His hatred of sin. Could there be a more significant moment of agony than complete separation from His Father God than that?
Could there be a greater agony for a man who lived a perfect life only to experience the crushing weight of all the world’s sins while nailed to a cross? He took that on for all of us, and then He died taking all of it with Him. Yes, He died for me…for all of us.
I doubt the sun will darken around noon this Friday for three hours as it did then. I doubt the earth will shake, and we will miss the significance of the temple veil ripping down the middle at 3 PM, when His suffering finally ended. What will show up in our lives and remind us that our sins have just died with Him? I wonder where I will be and what things in this world will be distracting me then. I will set the alarm on my phone for 3 PM to remind me to remember when He sealed the deal when He spoke, “It is finished.” [John 19:30]
Life these days is busy. It is frightening. Wars everywhere, crazy inflation, and so much hatred terrorize our lives. Even remembering the murder of our Lord Jesus that went down over two thousand years ago can be frightening. The sharp edges of those memories that pained the hearts of those who witnessed His suffering back then are blunted by time for us.
Who among us could ever imagine that shocking emptiness that must have filled the hearts of His followers back then? Who could blame the Apostles for scattering, running in fear for their lives? Jesus dying on that cross had to have been seen as an epic failure in their eyes. Life had to be frightening for them as accomplices, and go into hiding.
There will be no shock factor of that magnitude disrupting our weekend festivities. Why spoil a holiday by remembering that He suffered tortures for the better part of an entire day before dying for us? It is so easy to become distracted, but we must remember. We cannot allow ourselves to forget, or we will turn away and let that memory slip away. There can be no more turning away.
We all have the free will to choose to remember…or not. We all have the free will to turn away. I turn. I am broken. I turn every day. The world and the enemy pursue me and welcome my turning. Turning away is the easiest way to fit in with this world. But… methinks the time has come to stop turning away. It is time to choose differently. It is time to remember Who I owe…Who we all owe.
Welcome Christ into your heart and your life on this Good Friday, and remember that He did not turn away from you… me… or any of us. We were the ones to turn away, but we can turn back in His mercy and grace. It’s time to turn.
Join me in thanking God it’s Good Friday (T.G.I.G.F), and through the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of His Son…for us…We have something to turn toward – something to remember.
In Christ,
Gary G. Wise
Writer of Things, Storyteller, Grief Coach
gdogwise@gmail.com
(317) 437-2555