John 19: 30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
Mt 27:51 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
Good Friday must be a very confusing day for people. We call it Good Friday, but all of the observances are very somber. There are some very common practices that I grew up with, such as stripping the altar and leaving church in silence, that we observe here as well.
If we look at the Scripture readings, there’s no real cause for celebration. Jesus is being put to death as a criminal, he is being mocked by others, which was part of the unpleasantness of being crucified. Crucifixion itself was one of the most awful tortures that people have come up with, but that wasn’t even the worst of what Jesus suffered.
Things didn’t look too good for Jesus – he was nailed to a cross, under Roman guard, sentenced to an ugly and degrading death between a pair of armed robbers and murderers. His disciples (except for John) had fled, Of his family, only his mother was actually there. The Jews mocked him; his fellow condemned criminals mocked him. Jesus himself testified that even God the Father had forsaken him.
Any of these things would ruin one of our days. Why, then, do we call it Good Friday?
In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded by the latest and the greatest. TV commercials claim that everything is bigger and better than all of the competing brands. Even within my lifetime, I’ve seen the rise and disappearance of the cassette tape, and the rise and disappearance of the music CD, both of which were “better” and “more convenient” than vinyl records.
So something that is not “better” and “faster” and not “the best,” or the “latest and greatest,” but merely “good” seems almost beneath our recognition.
Let’s look at how the term “good” is used in the Bible.
When God is creating the world, he looks at his work and he calls it “good.” Which means that it was as good as it could be – there wasn’t a better way he could have made it.
When Jesus talks about himself as the shepherd, he is the a “better” shepherd, but the “good” shepherd – because the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A shepherd doesn’t have anything more to offer than his own life.
So when we call it “Good Friday,” we are using the term “good” in that specific, religious sense – that there is something absolute about what happened on that particular Friday that really can’t be compared with anything else that ever has happened, could happen or will happen.
The ultimate meaning of what happened on Good Friday is summed up by two connected events. In the Gospel of Matthew, we read that Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and gave up his ghost, or died. In the Gospel of John, we learn what he said with that last great cry – “It is finished.”
What, exactly, was finished? Was Jesus finished? In a sense, he was about to die. But the significance is shown by what happened immediately afterwards: “And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”
The veil of the temple was not like a house curtain – it was a huge piece of cloth; I’ve seen suggestions that it was as much as a hand’s breadth thick – about 4 inches; also that it was 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, and that it took 300 priests to move around to clean. This is from the rabbinical traditions that we still have about Herod’s temple and the practices in it. It is possible that some of those figures are exaggerations, but it is clear that this temple veil was much, much larger than one of our liturgical banners or any of the curtains I’ve ever seen.
What was this thing? What did the veil mean, and why was it there? According to the book of Exodus (26:31ff), the veil was designed to divide the holy place in the tabernacle (and later temple) from the most holy place – only priests could enter the holy place, and only the high priest could enter the most holy place, and then only once a year, the day of atonement. The ark of the covenant stayed in the most holy place, with the mercy seat, where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled.
The veil was what kept everyone else out of the most holy place. And this was the veil that was torn in half, top to bottom, 60 feet long and four inches thick.
Why was it that Jesus had to suffer and die? Why did he have to endure being forsaken by his Father, and all the beating, mocking, and torture of the cross?
We know. We don’t like to talk about it or admit it, but we know. It was our sins that put him there. We have rebelled against God in so many ways, we can’t even list them all. Even so, Jesus certainly did not have to suffer and die for us, but he chose to anyway. It is on Good Friday that we see the injustice more clearly than at any other time during the church year, if justice means getting what you really deserve. Jesus did not deserve to suffer and die for what he had done, but each one of us does deserve it. It is that sin that cuts us off from God, that requires the veil to keep us out of the most holy place – because we cannot stand in God’s presence.
When Jesus said, “it is finished,” he was talking about his work of redemption on our behalf. We can be sure now that all of the punishment for every sin that was ever committed was punished on the cross on that day. That is why we call this Good Friday – because like creation, and like Jesus the Good Shepherd, this day represents an absolute – the punishment for all sin happened on this day. There can be no comparison; there is not, and cannot be a “better” Friday or a “best” Friday.
And so now and forevermore, the temple veil has been torn. Jesus has paid for our sins, and we do not need a priest to offer sacrifices for us. Jesus, our great High Priest, has sacrificed himself for us. So we rejoice that our sins are forgiven, but we regret the terrible price that Jesus paid to do it, even though we know it was of his own free will. It had to be the way it was – how many times have we heard this Lenten season as we’ve looked at the Gospel of Matthew, “This was done to fulfill Scripture.” “It was written…” “The Son of Man must be lifted up.”
We can see both Law and Gospel in that image of Jesus on the cross. We see the Law, because we know what put Jesus there – our sin. He would not have gone to the cross except for our sins. We see the Gospel, because of what he was doing on the cross – paying for all of our sins, asking nothing of us.
We tend not to focus on the Law message of the cross, and that is a good thing. That is actually one of the more common criticisms of the traditional crucifix – the cross with Jesus’ body on it. It can be too easy to focus on the blood and pain and what put him there. Our hymn “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” is much more graphic in German – “O head full of blood and wounds.”
At the same time, we have to remember that as horrifying as the picture is, Scripture has recorded it for us, and God deemed it important enough to record for the rest of time, the details of the beatings, the flogging, the crown of thorns.
One aspect we love to look forward to about the resurrection is that our bodies will be perfect, free from disease and illness. We know that our bodies will be like Jesus’ body. Well, Jesus’ body still had the marks of the nails and the spear wound that guaranteed he was actually dead – those are the wounds he would show to Thomas on the first Sunday after Easter.
Jesus is proud of those wounds – he wouldn’t have had it any other way. As he said in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest, he could have called for legions of angels – literally, thousands of angels – to prevent him from being arrested and tortured. When the men asked him if he was Jesus, he said, “I Am”, and it knocked the men down. He allowed himself to be taken, he allowed himself to suffer, because of his love for us, his fallen creation. He cared for each one of us enough to suffer all of that, and to die, so that we would not have to suffer the eternal pains of hell.
So that is why Good Friday is Good – because this is the day when Jesus paid for our sins. Not because he had to, but because he loved us and because he wanted to. We acknowledge the bitter pains he suffered because of this, and we will walk out of here quietly tonight, but this somberness is temporary. Like the kernel of wheat, the death of Jesus means life for us all – starting with Jesus, on Easter Sunday.
Thanks be to him, that he was willing to do all of this for us, and to make this day Good. In his name, Amen.
Posted by Martin Jackson