Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Good Friday: We move now to the clearest picture in this prophecy of the Servant of the Lord, a picture that surprises and astounds us. The Servant is anguished, oppressed, marred, and despised. But through such a one God will bring his purposes into being.

"See, my servant shall prosper." "Succeed" would provide a better translation. The verb implies having the intelligence, insight, and capability to bring to a successful conclusion what one plans to do. While human beings have only limited success in their activities, God can successfully plan and carry out a course of action. Since the servant is God's Servant, what he plans will come into being as well.

The Servant will be "exalted and lifted up." In the Psalms and Isaiah, these terms are reserved for God. Here they are used to describe the one who is closest to God, God's Servant.

The Servant is to give all of us a wholly new view of life, but the new thing is that the Servant is one whose face and form is inhumanly marred. This is a new thing, beyond all telling of it, and quite unheard of to this time. The Lord's arm is with him ("arm" means the power of God, the arm of God), but it is a power like no other power ever unleashed before. It is the power of a Servant who suffers and therefore a God who suffers.

Look at this servant:

He grew up like a shoot from a dead tree trunk, like a root out of dry ground.

He had neither form nor charm that we would look at him, nor appearance to attract us.

He was despised and avoided by people, a man who suffered pain and was familiar with sickness.

He was like one from whom people hid their faces; he was so despicable that we took no account of him.

What could be less appealing than this picture of a man? He has been disfigured because someone has done this to him. He has been cut off from dealings with his friends and neighbors; he is completely alone. No one wants to look at him. No one wants anything to do with him. He has suffered. He has strange illnesses and diseases. What secret sin brought this on? Surely God is punishing him for we know not what. Who sinned, asked the disciples of Jesus when they saw a man born blind from birth. Who sinned, this man or his parents? The same question is raised about this servant. Surely someone must have done something dastardly for such a person to live!

Here is the shocking news. The Servant did not suffer for his own malignancies. He suffers for ours. Martin Luther was lecturing one year on the Book of Psalms. Psalm 22 disturbed him. "My God, why have you abandoned me?" he heard the psalmist say. Then he heard Jesus say the same thing from the cross. Was it that Jesus, like Luther, felt himself forsaken, deserted, abandoned by God? Luther labored painfully through all possible solutions. He finally came upon a telling suggestion. Was it that Christ was suffering not for his own sins but for ours? Was it that the punishment inflicted upon him brought healing to us? This is what the Servant is learning. He "bore our infirmities, he carried our diseases. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. Upon him was the punishment that made us whole."

The picture of the Servant continues, and with it the picture of ourselves. We are like sheep straying; he bears on his back the guilt of us all. We mishandled and humiliated him; he did not open his mouth in protest. He was wrenched from the land of the living; we did not even miss him. He accepts violence, rude and ruthless; we don't give a thought to what is happening to him.

Yet it was the Lord who planned it. It was God who made him the atonement for us all; the Servant alone was worthy to bear the sin of the world. It was God who determined that through the Servant's suffering he would win salvation for the many. How did the Servant do this? He emptied out his life in death, he bore the sins of many, he identified with the rebellious ones. As a sacrifice of a lamb on the altar in the temple was supposed to bring a worshiper again into God's favor, so the sacrifice of this Servant upon the altar of sinful humanity surely brings us all back to right terms with God.

Christians have identified this Servant with Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus identified himself with this Servant. "He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, and we held him as of no account. He was, we thought, stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. He was oppressed, cut off from the land of the living." That is what the people of Jesus' day, at least, and many in our own, saw of Jesus when they looked at him. But God saw something entirely different. "Christ was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. He bore the sins of many. He poured out himself to death. Upon him was laid the punishment that made us whole."

Psalm 22, Good Friday: This is the psalm to which Jesus turned as he hung upon his cross.

"When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" These are the opening words of the 22nd Psalm, and the 22nd Psalm is a psalm of great faith.

There is no question that the account in Mark's Gospel of Jesus' crucifixion is greatly influenced by the 22nd Psalm. The author of the Psalm says, "Be not far from me, O God, for trouble is near and there is none to help." Mark's Gospel makes the point that not one of those who loved Jesus was near him at the cross, not Peter, not James, not John, not the others of the twelve, not the women who came with him from Galilee, certainly not Judas; there is none to help him. Psalm 22 says: "They divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots." Mark's Gospel says: "The soldiers divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take." Psalm 22 says: "All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads; 'He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!'" Mark's Gospel says, "Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, 'Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!' So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also reviled him." Without doubt what we know of the crucifixion has been seen through the eyes of the 22nd Psalm. Wherever an event took place around the cross that reflected the words of the 22nd Psalm, that event was recalled and placed in Mark's narrative.

But in the midst of the pain, the turmoil, the grief, the pandemonium of the cross, this stands out. Jesus interpreted the event for his followers, and that interpretation still stands today. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Jesus begins, and even if he had the strength to go on and quote more of the psalm, he did not have to do it. Those around the cross, like him, knew the psalm; they too had memorized it. They too would understand the great trust to which Jesus was moving. "In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed. . . . Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God. But thou, O LORD, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid! . . . For God has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. . . . All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations. . . . Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that God has wrought it."

That really is the story of the cross of Jesus Christ, is it not? Jesus has been faithful, faithful unto death, even death on the cross. But God too is faithful. God does not despise the afflicted one. God raises the afflicted one from the dead. In this resurrection, the message of the good news of God in Jesus Christ goes out to the ends of the earth, and all the families of the nations turn to the Lord and worship before him. Men and women tell of the Lord to the coming generations, and through him the deliverance that God has wrought is proclaimed to peoples yet unborn. In this faith Jesus lived, in this faith he died, to this great future God raised him from the dead so that before him every knee shall bow, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of our God.

John 18:1 through 19:42. The Reading for Good Friday:

Scene One: the arrest of Jesus. Jesus led his disciples from the city of Jerusalem where they had met for a meal across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives, to a garden (unnamed in John's Gospel) somewhere on the Mount. Judas, who had already determined to betray him, led a contingent of soldiers to the spot. He knew where it was; it was probably the place where the Twelve slept while they were in Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus immediately stepped forward, asking, "Whom do you seek?" Peter attempted a defense. He had a sword, and he swung it so that he cut off a man's right ear. But Jesus instructed him to put up his sword, and the soldiers seized Jesus.

Scene Two: The Hearing before Annas. The family of Annas was one of the powers in Jerusalem. His family held the high priesthood for years. This year the high priest was his son-in-law Caiaphas. Simon Peter followed Jesus and was admitted to the courtyard of the house. Inside the house, Jesus began a spirited defense of himself; this contrasts sharply with the account in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where Jesus says hardly anything in his own behalf. Outside, Simon Peter was in trouble. First a serving girl, then some bystanders, and finally a servant of the high priest asked him if he was with Jesus? The questions were put in a way that it was easy for Peter to say "No": "You are not one of this man's disciples, are you?" Peter agreed. He said he was not. The betrayal and the denial were both under way, and both played a part in Jesus' death.

Scene Three: The Hearing before Pilate. Pontius Pilate was the Roman appointed governor of the province of Judea. Judea had become so volatile with rumors of rebellion against Rome that Rome had deposed the family of Herod from rulership in Judea and had appointed their own procurators or prefects. The seat of Roman government was in the sea-coast city of Caesarea, but Pilate had come to Jerusalem for the Passover to deal with possible trouble during the feast. Now he had his trouble: Jesus had been brought before him as a potential trouble-maker. He asked the Jewish leadership to make a judgement on him, but they refused.

So Pilate conducted his own hearing, and again Jesus defended himself vigorously. Pilate tried again to shift judgement. He asked the crowd which prisoner he should release to them as a merciful act during the Passover. They called for Barabbas. (The name, by the way, signifies very little. "Bar" means "son of" and "Abbas" means "father." He was called simply, "The son of his father.") Before he passed sentence on Jesus, Pilate took the first steps of crucifixion. He ordered Jesus scourged, struck over the back with a whip of leather thongs that sometimes had nails and pieces of glass embedded in it; in addition, as a taunting gesture against one charged with being a king, the soldiers threw an old purple robe around his shoulders and pressed a crown of thorns on his head. Still Jesus defended himself, this time challenging the authority that Pilate had to make a judgement upon him. Pilate tried once more to release Jesus, but the crowd demanded Jesus' death. So Pilate came to the place of judgement, an open courtroom called "The Pavement," and there this dialogue took place:

Pilate: "Here is your king."

The crowd: "Away with him, crucify him."

Pilate: "Shall I crucify your king?"

The crowd: "We have no king but Caesar."

So Pilate handed him over to be crucified.

Scene Four: The Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. In each gospel, the act of the crucifixion of Jesus is compressed into a subordinate cause. It may be because the people of the Roman Empire knew what crucifixion was. It may also be that it was such a terrible way to die that they did not want to emphasize it. Crucifixion often began with a scourging, as it did with Jesus. Then the person to be crucified had to carry the crossbar to the place of execution; what they carried was not a whole cross but simply the cross beam of the cross. It was heavy, of course, especially for a person who had been weakened by the scourging. When the procession arrived at the place of execution, the beam was laid on the ground, and the prisoner was bound to it by ropes or nailed to it or both. Then the beam was lifted up, with the doomed man on it, and dropped into its place, perhaps into the notch of a tree denuded of leaves and branches or upon some scaffold where prisoners were regularly hanged, perhaps in groups of more than one as was the instance when Jesus was hanged. Jesus was dropped roughly into place, to hang on the cross, until he died. Death came in one of three ways. The shock from loss of blood could kill, as could strangulation, shutting off the flow of air into the lungs as the head fell lower and lower on the chest; or death could come because of the strain on the arms, as the weight of the body grew more and more onerous.

Above the crucified one there was always placed a "titulum," a placard that contained the charge against him. Pilate had inscribed on the titulum the words, "The King of the Jews"; because Jesus was understood by some to have made that claim in his own behalf. The charge was written in three languages: Hebrew, the language of the Jewish religion, Latin, the offical language of government, and Greek, the language of culture. There was great irony in this. The Jewish people were the possessors of the finest religion in the world, the Roman government was considered the most just the world had seen, and the Greek language was the language of the finest philosophers, poets, and playwrights that the world knew. In the crucifixion of Jesus, the world's finest religion joined hands with the world's most just government and the world's most productive culture to kill a single man, Jesus of Nazareth.

Two notable events occurred while Jesus was on the cross. The soldiers divided his garments among themselves as Roman law provided. In Christian eyes, this also fulfilled the words of Psalm 22, "They parted my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots."(22:18) Then Jesus awarded care of his mother to the beloved disciple. Both were standing before the cross, said this Gospel. Jesus said to the mother, "Woman, behold your son," and to the disciple he said, "Behold your mother." These were words of adoption. From this point on the beloved disciple was the mother's son and protector, and the beloved disciple was the son who in his mother's eyes would take Jesus' place. The adoption took place in that moment. "From that hour the disciple took her to his own home."

These were the first of the words Jesus spoke from the cross. Together the four gospels list seven different instances of words Jesus spoke, and John's gospel contains three of these. In addition to the words of adoption Jesus also said, "I thirst," and when vinegar was brought to him, he said, "It is finished." And he died.

That he was truly dead is attested in different ways. The soldiers attested to it. They saw that he was already dead and so did not break his legs, as was the custom if the crucified one was not yet dead when the guard went off duty; breaking the legs would guarantee death. The death was also attested to by his burial. Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, stepped forward to provide a grave. They also provided everything prescribed for burial: a mixture of myrrh and aloes, along with linen clothes. Then he was placed in a grave in which no one had ever been laid. The final irony: every Jewish person wanted to be buried in the graves of the family. Jesus was placed "in a new tomb where no one had ever been laid." (19:41)

Why has this story attracted the attention of persons for generations since it occurred? Martin Luther King, Jr., put his finger on it when he wrote, "Undeserved suffering is redemptive." He was thinking of himself, of course. He accepted suffering that was not his own for sins for which he himself was not personally responsible. He said this also because he had centered his life upon Jesus Christ, whose undeserved suffering has been redemptive for us all.

Hebrews 10:16-25, Good Friday: This passage is especially important to Hebrews because it ends the first section of the letter and begins the second. The first section deals with theological matters, the way the Christian should think. It declares that the Christian Church has one priest only, namely, Jesus who was both priest and sacrifice. Its major emphasis is upon the personal relationship which Christ has with God and which Christians have with Christ. The second deals with ethical matters, the way the Christian should live. We are to stay close to our fellow Christians, and we are to encourage each other to love and to do good deeds, as the Day of the coming of Jesus Christ is drawing near.

The passage begins with a restatement of the announcement of the coming of a new covenant. Jeremiah announced this, 31:31-34. Jesus has brought the new covenant into being.

In this new covenant there is forgiveness of sins. There is no longer any need for a sin offering, because our sins have been forgiven through the death of Christ.

Through Christ we have free access to God; therefore, we should draw near to Christ. "The flesh of Jesus Christ" is the point at which the heavenly and earthly worlds meet. As a human being, Jesus was subject to temptation, suffering and death, but as the only High Priest of the new covenant, his sacrificial death was on behalf of the people of the covenant, the Christian church, and opened the way to God for them.

In verses 22 ff we have our description of what it means to be members of the new covenant. We enter the covenant through baptism, by which the hearts of the people are sprinkled clean, as the people at Sinai were said to have been sprinkled in a ritual bath. We need to note the intimate connection between crucifixion and baptism. The sprinkling of the hearts is identical with the sanctification by the blood of Jesus and is the effect of his sacrifice upon the cross. Because of this, we are freed from an evil conscience and can encourage one another to love and to do good deeds.

We continue in the covenant as we join in the prayers and worship of the Christian fellowship, and especially in the supper of the Lord, where all Christian hope and trust meet. We come together to encourage each other to live in the reflection of Christ's love and to join with each other in the hope that Jesus Christ will soon come.

Hebrews 4:14-16, Good Friday: This short passage appears to be forthright and self-explanatory. When we examine some of its phrases, however, our understanding of it is greatly enriched.

"Great high priest": See the description of the high priest given in Monday's lesson.

"Who has passed through the heavens": This is the necessary prelude to exaltation to "the right hand of God." The author of Hebrews believes in the resurrection of Jesus, to be sure, but much more important to him was the exaltation of Jesus, as he is lifted up into the presence of God. According to the thought of the day, God dwells above the visible firmament, but Christ passed through that firmament in order to sit on God's right hand. Just as the great high priest once a year passed through the veil of the temple to enter into the presence of God, so the great high priest has passed through the veil that separates us from heaven into the immediate presence of God, into the holy of holies of the upper world.

"Son of God" means "to be one with God." It means complete participation in the deity of the Father. The Son of God is God in his self-revelation to us.

"Hold fast to our confession": This idea can hardly be limited to holding fast to a creedal statement. It means to hold fast to the Christian way of life, its beliefs and its actions together.

"We have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses but in every way has been tempted as we are": How could one so exalted as Jesus properly sympathize with human frailties? The weaknesses inherent in humanity not only concern the physical side of human life but also the intellectual, religious, and moral. Jesus sympathizes with these weaknesses in the sense that contemplation of them arouses in him feelings of pity and compassion. He sympathizes because he has, through common experience, a real kinship with those who suffer. His temptations covered the whole range of human experience. In every respect he has been tempted similarly to us, yet without sin. The conviction of Jesus' sinlessness is deeply ingrained in the New Testament. The gospel records portray one who neither sinned nor had consciousness of guilt. No doubt the account of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah influenced this, as did the analogy of an unspotted and flawless sacrificial offering helped to give expression to the doctrine of Jesus' sinlessness.

"Approach the throne of grace with boldness": the word includes courage, confidence, boldness, fearlessness; frankness, plainness of speech, the kind of outspokenness that conceals nothing; the willingness to speak in public, to put one's words to the test of the opinion of others.

"Receive mercy and grace." "Grace" was the hope of the Greek, that we would be treated better than we deserve to be treated but at the same time that we would be grateful people, responding to the source of that grace. "Mercy" was the hope of the Hebrew people, that God would be merciful to us and that we would obtain mercy. So Jesus fulfills the deepest hopes of both the Greek members of the church as well as that of the Jewish members of the congregation. This "the great high priest" did for his people.

Hebrews 5:7-9, Good Friday: "Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears." These constituted Jesus' sacrifice, the sacrifice not of an animal but of prayers themselves. The phrases remind us of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane as he faced the cross.

"He was heard because of his reverent submission." Philo of Alexandria, where "To the Hebrews" was most likely written, had discussed the prayers of Abraham and Moses and said that they were "heard because of their reverence for and submission to God." Jesus' prayers are of the same kind, and they were heard by God in the same spirit. This is a picture of Jesus at prayer. He was a man in deadly earnest, expressing his concern in speech and matching his speech with appealing gestures of his whole body.

Did God hear the prayer and save him? Not from death, of course. It was from disobedience that God saved Jesus, the loss of his sonship and our salvation. "He learned obedience through what he suffered." Suffering and learning obedience through it has been a mark of the people of God from the time of Moses to the present day. What Jesus learned was the cost of obedience to God and the salvation of human kind. It was a high cost indeed. The grace that we have through Christ was not bought cheaply but instead with the suffering and death of the one Hebrews calls "the Son of God."

"Having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek." Melchizedek (the word means "righteous king") appears suddenly in Genesis (14:18-20) to bless Abraham. On that occasion he brought out bread and wine as he offered the blessing. The figure of Melchizedek had fascinated the Israelites ever since: who was he, why did he bless Abraham, what became of him after that? Because he appeared suddenly and disappeared just as quickly, he was said to have no forebears and no progeny; he could be made to mean whatever later people wanted to make of him. Hebrews makes of him a priest different from the priestly lines of Eli and of Zadok, the two leading priestly families of Israel. He comes with bread and wine; he blesses one whom he does not know; his name means righteousness. So Jesus. He comes with bread and wine in his hand. In him the whole world is blessed. He bestows righteousness on his people. Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek.