Good Friday 2006
By Sylvia Crouter.
During Holy Week and certainly on Good Friday and continuing into Holy Saturday
the question, “Why?” troubles our hearts. Why should such a good and loving man be made to suffer, be mocked and humiliated, be trapped into undergoing the
Each of us, I suspect, has asked him or herself: what if Jesus had lived into old age, beloved and honored by a growing Christian movement, a central figure in a church he may never have envisioned? What if he had been able to build on the first years’ beginnings and lived to see the
And then we come back to the reality of what happened and why.
Jesus was on a collision course with the political and
First, the State:
Second, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish power elite, that carefully maintained what power it could
by accommodating
Third, the wealthy landowners who exploited poor farmers much as plantation owners exploited tenant farmers in years past here in the
And, fourth, the
The scribes interpreted Mosaic Law and the Chief Priest ran the sacrificial system that enmeshed the poor in tithes, and extorted inflated prices for the animals they sold to be used for sacrifice.
In speaking for God Jesus ignored the politics of these power structures, sometimes confronting them, sometimes rendering Caesar his due. It was the Jewish power elites he most usually stood over and against, especially the rich exploiters of the poor, and also the religious leaders who held the people in sway to judgments of sinfulness and unworthiness.
Jesus challenged the rules of purity and all beliefs that tended to separate people from God.
When Jesus challenged he did so in words that claimed authority, words that his critics called blasphemous. You recognize these statements and their context, I’m sure:
-Your faith has made you well.
-Give up your wealth and prosperity and give to the poor.
-Nothing that goes into you defiles you, only that which comes out of your heart is sinful.
And towards the end of his ministry he began to hint that he might be God’s anointed One , the messiah long awaited in Judaism.
So Jesus by just “being” threatened all those in his time who benefited from the domination system: the state , the religious establishment and Jewish tradition and culture.
It was God’s purpose through Jesus to show another way, a vision for humankind that Jesus called the kingdom. It was fear that this kingdom would bring down the domination system
that made the final verdict by
In our Lenten eucharistic services we have sometimes used Eucharistic Prayer D. I have been struck by the words, “…to fulfill your purpose he gave himself up to death.” To fulfill God’s purpose…
It would not have served God’s purpose for Jesus to have lived to a peaceful old age with all the mechanisms of power and domination still in place, unchallenged, not shown for what they were.
If it took the death of the Son to show up the powers for the evil they were, then God-in-Jesus would endure what the powers dealt him.
God, who so filled Jesus with the Spirit, was showing a different way. The “way” was both gentle and confrontive. The way stood against coercive power. The way stood for freeing people from a sense of sinfulness and shame. The way stood for shouldering one’s cross and facing the consequences with courage.
Faithfulness to the way was then God’s purpose, a purpose Jesus in his spiritual strength was able to embrace. “Not my will but yours,” Jesus was able to say at the end. And as he hung on the cross he was already triumphant over the powers.
In humility and obedience he was able to say, “Into your hands I commend my spirit”.
Amen