it was good

Where do we see power?  Governments?  Armed forces?  Wealth? Sheer numbers of people?  In the mind of the individual?   

St Patricks cathedral in New York is directly across from Rockefeller center and at the entrance to Rockefeller center is the great sculpture of Atlas holding up the world. ON Good Friday, the doors of the cathedral are opened, and you can see the great cross from the street.  Turn in one direction and there is the mythical atlas holding up the world, turn in the other, and there is the one broken by the world.  Which image speaks the truth?  Is the world upheld by our godlike strength or by the crucified love of God?  Upon that decision everything, simply everything must turn.” Father Richard Neuhaus, Death on a Friday afternoon.

Christians announce or propose to the world that the cross is the power of God to rid the world of sin, death, the devil, evil, violence, hatred, etc…clearly the eradication of these things is incomplete.  We needn’t look beyond ourselves to see these things at work still. For many that fact itself is enough to cause doubt about Jesus, the cross, and the meaning of his death.   But those doubts are embedded in the death story.  The evangelists are not afraid to express them or unwilling to cover them up.  They could have spent less time recording the passion and more time focused on the resurrection.  They could have painted a kinder picture of the people in the story.  The abandonment of the disciples, the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter mustn’t be judged too harshly; just as the apparent collusion between the powers of the temple religious and the Romans must not to blamed for the death of the Messiah.  Even the crowds who shouted to have him crucified cannot be held responsible for the cross. So, Why did he die?  We could say that God the Father required it to be so.  But that might alienate us from God, who is supposed to love his son, not condemn him to die.  We could say that Jesus himself created the circumstances of his own death---setting the stage by taunting the authorities with his triumphal donkey ride and prophetic act of temple cleansing. We could say that his public ministry itself exposed him to the possibility of accusation.  We could say that violence killed Jesus.  Violence as a mechanism to maintain balance, stasis, peace.  In fear that Jesus’ announcement about the coming Kingdom of God and his demonstration of its presence through healing and teaching, was undermining and subverting the structures of power and control—the religious and the Romans had no choice but to do what they do to him.  Peter feared his own untimely death.  Judas lost faith in the mission because he saw that it was a mission of justice that elevated the weak, the woman, the child, the poor. It was a mission that collapsed our house of cards, that suggested another way, that reduced the powerful and the wealthy to weaklings and beggars.  The cross was a symbol of roman power over any threat, great or small.  By crucifying Jesus, any messianic hopes that Jesus would lead a revolution, restoring the temple, removing the romans, and reviving the nation of Israel came to an end.  By draining Jesus of his life, they terminated his powers.  He saved others, let him save himself.  His powers were emptied by the cross.  And everyone was going to benefit from the world returning to normal. Some will grieve, others will not.  But things would return to normal—to fishing and governing and sacrificing animals and buying and selling and eating and drinking.  Eliminate Jesus and all our human systems remain intact.  Kill Jesus and God is dead.  And we run the show.  We see who is in charge. And it is us.  We choose and decide and call the shots and by our strength the world is held up a little longer.  The salvation of the world is all up to us.  But Jesus was not powerless, even on the cross.  It is the power of love, not the love of power that will have the final word.  As Frederick Buechner wrote,” To participate in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ is to live already in his kingdom.  This is the essence of the Christian message, the heart of the good news, and it is why the cross has become the chief Christian symbol.  A cross of all things—a guillotine, a gallows—but the cross at the same time as the crossroads of eternity and time, as the place where such a mighty heart was broken that the healing power of God himself could flow through it into a sick and broken world. It was for this reason that all the possible words they could have used to describe the day of his death, the word they settled on was “good”.  Good friday.