“A bad Friday”
Why do we call it “Good Friday”? Not in any way was it good for Jesus. It was a cruel, agonizing, vicious death that Jesus suffered. Nothing good about it. Yet we insist on calling it “Good Friday.” Is it because we’ve made his bloody death all about us? All about getting some mansion in the sky, a crown of jewels, escaping some imagined hell? Pretty sick thinking … a mansion, a crown of jewels paid for with a crown of thorns, a spear in the side, the agonizing hell of the pulling apart of the bones as Jesus’ body hung on the cross. Let’s be honest about it. It has become all about us— about me … the big “I”!
Good Friday will never be good.
It is not about the big “I.” It is about the world, the earth … “For God so loved the WORLD,” the scriptures say. Where in the bible does it say that God loves me — the big “I” — above all else?
The Apostle Paul pulls no punches. In his oft quoted passage in Roman 8 about “our salvation — the salvation of the big “I” — “our salvation” really isn’t the point. Jesus’ agonizing death is for Creation— All of Creation. A Creation that longs for healing. A Creation that agonizes under the bondage of corruption. A bondage, a corruption, that we humans — each one of us — have put it under. Paul writes, “(C)reation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. The “sons of God”? That’s us who profess to be God-Followers! What’s Creation waiting for? To be “set free from its bondage to corruption.” Creation is waiting for us to accept our guilt for, and to fulfill our role in the remedying of, that corruption as children of God. Paul says as “children of God,” we are joint heirs with God — that means, co-creators.
The crucifixion is not about getting us saved, it is about making us co-creators with God in the active present tense.
“And God saw all that he had made, and it was blessed (Gen. 1:31).” We see all that God has made and greedily think, “It’s mine!” And on this so-called “Good Friday,” we will continue greedily on, just as we were yesterday.
And Jesus’ continues anguishing on the cross.