We are coming to a close of what is known as Holy Week…it started last Sunday with Palm Sunday…the day Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem …yesterday was Maundy Thursday…when Jesus instituted The Lord’s Supper…today is Good Friday.
SO…what’s so good about Good Friday…guess it all depends on who you’re talking to…it’s a day of extremes…good for us…not so good for Jesus.
A day of overwhelming sadness and a day of hope and joy….a day of evil… and a day of far greater love…a day of death and a day of life.
Good Friday is the day Jesus traded places with you and me…it’s a good day because it was the day Jesus conquered sin and death so that we will never be apart from God again because of what Jesus did when He died on the cross.
In two days comes Resurrection Sunday…the day death was defeated and Jesus rose to life.
Good Friday was an awful day for Jesus. He was tried, declared innocent, but condemned anyway…was almost whipped to death and then led to his crucifixion.
At Gethsemane we see the human side of Jesus…Mark’s Gospel (14:32-36) records…’They went to a place called Gethsemane where Scripture says His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death…Mark records that Jesus fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from Him.
Jesus repeats this prayer two more times…in Luke’s account we read of an ‘agony’ so great that ‘His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground’, and that an angel (had to come) to strengthen him (Luke 22:39-46).
Everything in his human flesh wanted to flee the impending physical torture of crucifixion…He explicitly asked God… for whom anything is possible…to ‘take this cup from me’…the cup for Jesus was the cross, and He doesn’t want it.
One reason His Spirit groaned…even more than His impending physical death…was the spiritual torture of being forsaken by His Father …for the first time in the history of eternity He is being separated from the Father.
Agony is an appropriate description of that moment…this is not a scene of serenity…of Christ peacefully coming to terms with his death…at this point He’s not even willing to accept that it’s part of God’s plan for salvation.
We believe that Christ was fully human and fully divine…in the garden we see His human side …struggling with mortality and the reality of pain and suffering…the crucifixion will be of great cost to Him.
So, was the Son of God doubting the mission for which he was sent …the plan to save humanity? …was he seeking to avoid it if he could? …for the Gospel writers, these are scandalous words to put in the mouth of your Savior. Yet three of them did just that.
Giovanni Bellini’s painting Agony in the Garden is a stunning portrayal of the Gethsemane event…we see the three disciples fast asleep as Christ prays.
Off to His right there’s an open gate that offers an easy escape from Judas and the Roman guards who are approaching in the background. Will he stay, or will he go? Christ had a choice.
He is surrounded by numerous winding pathways…He has a choice of which path to take…will he stay, or will he go? Christ had a choice.
Jesus tells God His Father ‘everything is possible for you’, but in a sense, everything was possible for Jesus too. 1) He could have run away. 2) He could have summoned the angel in front of Him to wipe out all his opponents…He could have simply walked through them untouched.
We know what ultimately happened, but our understanding is amplified when we recognize it was a free choice…a choice which was not the imposition of His will, but the relinquishing of it to a divine purpose.
At Gethsemane there was a paradox human words can’t explain…it runs the danger of suggesting an anti-trinitarian heresy by breaking up the will of the Father and Son…that somehow, they were at odds with each other…as though they had conflicting goals.
Here we see a deeply emotional encounter, Jesus embracing his Father with an honesty that we might share with our own human father.
Humanity is thus offered a glimpse into the life of the godhead…a situation that could have gone desperately wrong…a conflict between divine love and divine will that centered around human fear and agony.
Gethsemane could have gone another way, and yet for our sake, it didn’t.
Jesus then offers up nine unfathomable words…Yet not what I will, but what you will.
Jesus prays a radical prayer that everyone who has ever followed Jesus is invited to make their own.
The decision of Jesus to voluntarily complete the purpose for which He came to earth…to die for us…and His subsequent bodily resurrection demonstrates that the ultimate power of this world, death, does not have the last word.
The last word belongs to God whose Spirit continues to persuade and convict every person who has ever lived…of their need for salvation.
God’s desire is that we would all join in praying to God…not what I will, but what you will…that “Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10).
No one understands better than God how difficult it can be for us to embrace the will of God…BUT…we have satisfaction in knowing that when Jesus calls us to follow Him, He is not calling us to do something He is either unwilling to do or has never done Himself.
So Good Friday is Good because it was on this day that through His death on the cross, we might life eternal…when sin and death were defeated.
- On the cross, Jesus suffered so that we would not have to suffer.
- On the cross, we were reconciled to God.
- On the cross we have the hope of a resurrection and a hope for the future.