Good Friday

On pilgrimage we followed the dawn walk along the Via Dolorosa - the way of Jesus to the Cross. However we remember this awful event today, there should be overwhelming sadness. To realize that the best man who has ever lived was so abused and nailed to a cross to face a death which was so much more than physical. It meant a spiritual blackness, never experienced in the cosmos before or since, as Jesus was separated from His Father for the first time because he took upon himself the consequences of our sins. Such abandonment. So utterly undeserved. Indescribable physical and spiritual pain.

Sometimes it seems effortless for God.  Sometimes it is the hardest thing in the world.  Contrast Genesis 1:1-5 with Mark 15:31-34.  In the beginning God spoke - Let there be light. And there was light. God saw that the light was good.  Genesis spells out the timeless truth that God is creator. Out of nothing he creates the universe with awesome power, control and wisdom.  Not one word of sweat, suffering, or agonising.  God commanded and it was so.  He made the world good.

But today we see Jesus, the Son of God, dying on a cross.  Having agonized in the garden with sweat like drops of blood, betrayed and denied by his closest friends who fall away and miss the devastating sight of the Lord who controlled the wind and waves on a lake, who fed 5000, who healed the diseased, now suffering such a cruel death. Everybody had said he was a good man.  Why?

We now know that it took all the love and sacrifice of God's own son to put right a good world that had rebelled against God. Reconciling the world, forgiving sin, overcoming death took the best and costliest sacrifice. God created a world that was good,  On this extraordinary day Jesus recreates the world, makes possible new creation, shows us how the world can become. How we can live and die. We owe everything to him because of this day.

This morning on Radio 4 Today's serious news programme a man was interviewed who had come off a respirator and survived Covid 19.   He said:' When I was at my worst I saw Jesus - it was like when he calmed the storm on the lake and I knew he was with me'.  Nick Robinson the interviewer said, hurriedly, almost dismissively, 'Of course when you are on drugs all sorts of strange things can happen'.  Because of today we know Jesus has gone through the worst for us - he is with us. It's true. And, yes, it's GOOD FRIDAY.