Much of what counts as Christianity in our culture ceases to make sense on Good Friday. The idea that Christianity is a warm friendly way of responding to people – because, of course, people are fundamentally nice – falls apart in light of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. If we hoped that by our friendliness and coffee hours the world will be so charmed that people will fall over themselves in admiration, then Good Friday comes as a disappointment. Jesus failed. He died.
For all our good intentions, for all our inviting spirit and lovely buildings, the death of Jesus exists like a piece of unfortunate history. We tidy up the cross because it is not a friendly image for potential donors. We tell ourselves and our children that we are free from worrying about crosses and such, because we live at a time when we can have or do what we want. Our needs are endless, our desires insatiable. We are free and enlightened people. However, the cross of Jesus says otherwise. Good Friday stands between us and our inflated sense of self-confidence and declares that the kind of world we have is a crucifying world; a world doomed to reject God’s love; a world that kills those who dare to think that love is a way of life, instead of just a brand to sell Subaru cars.
The recent French movie, “Of Gods and Men” depicts what living love might look like. Nestled in a picturesque town in the North African country of Algeria, a group of Trappist monks lived, supported, and simply loved their Muslim neighbours. When in the mid-1990’s Islamist radicals and the corrupt military threatened the relative peace in Algeria, a decision had to be made by the monks whether to stay or leave. After painful deliberation, they agreed to stay. In light of this decision, their vows to live as Christ with those to whom they were called took on new significance. They were free to love, and this was their downfall. “I’ve lived enough to know that I am complicit in the evil that, alas, prevails over the world and the evil that will smite me blindly”, one of the monks wrote prior to their kidnapping and eventual execution at the hands of the radicals. “I could never desire such a death”, he continued. In this, the monk captured the unsettling character of this night.
Good Friday is not about sentimental appeals to victimization; it isn’t about feeling bad for Jesus or for those who have died like him; it isn’t about a quick passage to the more welcoming celebration of Easter. Good Friday shows us that Jesus of Nazareth came into the world in loving obedience to the Father; he came to be a totally loving, a totally human ‘human being’. With hindsight, we can see that such a life would be a threat. He could not continue to live in such freedom. Consequently, he had to die. And so he was crucified. If the love that Jesus lived was merely his own, then tonight we offer nothing but the memory of a saint. But that is not why we gather. We do so because Jesus was the source of love, the source of our relationship to the Father and with each other. Good Friday is about our freedom, which is the transformation of human living and human dying. Tonight is about a revolution in our flesh by the man, Jesus, who entered the grave as our brother and Lord in order that we may live eternal. Consequently, there is no life within us without this night.
