Good Friday 2009
Hagios ischyros,
Holy Mighty One
It does not make sense to the human mind that God is the mighty one on this day. We can pretty it up and make it more acceptable but we cannot hide from it. What we are celebrating is powerless and total defeat. For all the reasons, many of which are valid, that brought us to this day, we cannot avoid the silence. Today is the day when Jesus Christ died.
Early on, some Christians couldn’t handle this. They began to come up with some strange ideas like the soul of Jesus Christ jumping off the cross before his body died. In our own day, we have replaced the crucifix with a “Resurrection cross.” We do not even like to use normal words for what happened to Jesus - or what happens to us. We say things like “passed away” or “passed on.” We shield ourselves from the reality by avoiding it, even mentioning it and flat out denying it. Or at least we try. But it is not natural to called death – especially this one – a mighty thing. Tragic, yes; profound, yes; but definitely not mighty.
So why do we? Because by faith, we know that is exactly what it is. By faith, we stand in the face of obvious defeat and claim victory. We proclaim that God is mighty at the precise moment when He was powerless. We praise the God who created the world and re-created it in His mercy by the very action that made him the most useless. His greatest work of power happened when His hands and feet were the weakest. He changed the course of history when He Himself couldn’t move at all.
Are we kidding ourselves? Are we faced with this historical and painful death-by-torture and respond with a fiction of an optimistic imagination? Again, from the earliest times this has been the accusation. Some Christians have come to believe that Jesus lives on only in the memory of those who believed in Him. Others just ignore Good Friday and get ready for Easter Sunday.
St. Paul called today “a scandal.” He called the cross “a stumbling block” because it stands in opposition to what normal people believe to be good. The cross is a question mark to the human race. It is a question asked by God of each person in every age. He asks it of us as we celebrate today: Are you weak enough to be a Christian? Are you useless enough to do great things in the Name of God?
These are strange questions. They are even dangerous questions because they stand in opposition to every instinct we have and every concept of perfection we have envisioned. We say, “God is great and God is strong. And those who follow God resemble God making them strong and great themselves.” And the cross standing on Calvary’s hill asks us, “really? Are you sure about that? Is that the way things really are?”
The Christian faith seemingly has begun in weakness, debility, dilapidation, and defeat. Those who embrace the Christian faith often seem to embody those same characteristics. We often find ourselves in a state of moral weakness, physical disability, institutional dilapidation, and social defeat. We are a scandal that demonstrates to the eyes of the world that the Christian message, especially as they want it to be, is impossible. With bold arrogance, we are justifiably accused and condemned for failing to live up to the noblest ideals of human progress. We contradict the aspirations of divinely inspired virtues by the continually simple act of failing to achieve them. The failure of Christianity in so many places is mostly the failure of Christians themselves.
But that same question mark of the cross is not only applied to us who have embrace it. It is a sign of contradiction to those who scoff at the possibility of hope in the exact same manner they once scoffed at the crucified Carpenter from Galilee. The cross asks the world, “really? Are you sure and are you willing to destroy this world to prove it? Are you so fast to judge and sentence this world to hopelessness because you are convinced you are so right?” History proves well that this question is not answered one way or the other; it is simply not answered at all. The silence of mass graves in Auschwitz or the gulags or the killing fields of Cambodia testify to the unanswered question of the cross. The unanswered calls for help of abandoned children in the orphanages of Eastern Europe echo the world that has refused to answer the question of Good Friday. And in every idle moment, when the good of our neighbors (and even our enemies) is legislated away, that question goes unanswered.
The nail-scarred wood atop the hill still calls out. This rickety scaffolding is a monument to the arrogance of human beings who have chosen wrongly. It is offensive to the exultations of man that would rather reign in Hell than serve in heaven. As humanity tries to convince itself that its own might is right, the cross asks this question and answers it with its silent words of, “no. That is wrong. Only my might is right.”
Are we ashamed or convicted or embarrassed by this? Not at all. We, like St. Paul, glory in this. Our strength is the weakness of the Body of Christ. Our hope is found in the moment He experienced our abandonment. Our life is found in His death. Our might is discovered in His helplessness. No, we are not shamed by this at all. God is mighty not only because He is perfect but because He is strong enough to fail. And like Him, or better, because He is like us, Good Friday is celebrated by people who often times are not good.
Jesus bowed his head and died. That is us. That is how the world sees us and how we can often choose to see ourselves. But raise your eyes to the cross. Lift up your head and rejoice. The weakness of our God is the weakness we all experience. The death He suffered is the death each one of us will experience as well. As the cross asks you its question, as you see in it your own defeat, do you see something else? Do you hear in the silence what you never could expect?
There is hope there. There is redemption, forgiveness, restoration, and a promise. Oh yes, there is hope there. And this hope is as strong as death and is as mighty as God Himself.