Good Friday, they call it. Good Friday. Except about a third of the world’s population is living under some form of lockdown, millions have lost their jobs as the economy has shut down, hundreds of thousands have contracted a brutal virus, and tens of thousand are mourning.
So how can the events of that Friday, almost two thousand years ago, help us now? What does it really mean that the Romans tortured and killed a Rabbi, called Jesus, in the province of Judea? And if the whole God thing is true, then why has everything went so crazy? What relevance is Jesus in a world that feels more like a dystopian movie than the one we knew and loved?
At the centre of the Christian faith is the scandalous idea that instead of staying distant, God would become human and suffer alongside us, even to the extent of dying for us. That seeing the mess and horror that his creation lived in, he’d roll up his sleeves and join them. That he would fully live the human experience.
In Jesus we see all of the ups and downs of human life. Not shielded from suffering we see him both rage and weep at the tomb of his friend, we see him wrestle with pain and anguish in the garden, and ultimately choose to submit to brutal execution.
As Paul, one of the leaders of the early church, wrote to the church in Philippi:
Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
-Philippians 2:6-11
So why would we follow a God who suffers and dies? If Jesus was the hero that his followers make out, how come he ends up being executed? Because on Good Friday we learn the most counter-cultural thing about God – that in his desire to be in loving relationship with us he’d rather suffer violence than have his way by force. And that somehow by doing that, by choosing to suffer what seems the ultimate defeat, he wins the ultimate victory.
In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel tells a terrible story. Arriving back as the concentration camp where he was held, Wiesel’s work party were faced with three gallows. Two men and a boy were led out and sentenced to death in front of the whole camp. Nooses were tied and chairs kicked out from under them. The two men died right away but the boy, not weighing enough, suffered for half an hour. Wiesel continues:
Behind me, I heard… a man asking: “For God’s sake, where is God?” And from within me, I heard a voice answer: “Where is He? This is where — hanging here from this gallows…”
-Night, Elie Wiesel
Where is God in all of this suffering? He’s on the Coronavirus ward, he’s with the grieving in their pain, he’s walking the aisles of the food bank and weeping in the corner with the domestic violence victim. Where is God? He’s with us in our suffering.
I’ve heard some, mainly American, commentators repeating the strange idea that Coronavirus is punishment from God. But here’s the thing – if we fully understand the Easter narrative we see God willing to suffer alongside us, be punished for us. The God revealed in Jesus isn’t coming to the world armed to the teeth to wreak havoc, but in love and mercy to invite us into relationship with him.
He’s not a remote figure, inflicting suffering on his creation, but a close figure suffering alongside us and showing us through his story that there is new life ahead – but more of that on Sunday.