Good Friday

As you're probably aware, today is Good Friday, the most important day leading up to the Highest Holy Day of the year. The fact that we call this day "good" still sounds so paradoxical to my ears. It reminds me of a song we used to sing in Chapel at Azusa Pacific University entitled, "Beautiful, Scandalous Night."

In the hopes of aiding your worship this day, I'm posting a passage from Tom Wright's book, The Scriptures, the Cross & the Power of God for you to consider:


John's gospel is full of irony at every level, but this is surely the greatest: that when the empire hears the word that there is a God who might call empire to account, the empire does what it always does, mocks and kills - but that very action proves the point, because God the creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, does not fight the battle against evil with the weapons of the world, but with the weapons of love. As St. Paul saw so clearly, Caesar's apparent victory was actually the victory of God.

And that is why, with Jesus going to his cross, God's project to heal creation itself is accomplished. John announced his intention of writing a story with that large theme in his opening words, echoing the opening of Genesis itself. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; now, in the beginning was the Word... and the Word became flesh, joining heaven and earth into one. Great themes from the creation narrative have been woven into his gospel: light and darkness, day and night, the seed which will be fruitful and multiply. Now, on the Friday, the sixth day of the week, the day of creation of humankind in the image of God, Pilate brings Jesus out dressed in purple and wearing a crown of thorns, and declares, 'Behold the man!' And the watching world, in the persons of the chief priests and guards, shout, 'Crucify him!' When the Image of God appears in creation, the point is that the rest of creation will look at the Image and see their creator reflected. Now the son of God appears as the true Image of God, and the world is so corrupt in its rebellion that, rather than recognize the true creator God reflected in this Jesus, it must get rid of him, must blot out the reminder of who God really is, must do anything rather than be confronted by the one whose love will stop at nothing to reconcile creation to himself.

But the scriptures must be fulfilled, and the power of God will triumph. At the end of the sixth day in Genesis, God finished all his work (synetelesen, Genesis 2.2 LXX). At the end of the sixth day in John, Jesus declared, 'It is finished' (tetelestai). It is accomplished. Creation is healed. In the beginning was the Word; and the last word spoken by the living Word was the word which declared, as Jesus had in the Upper Room, 'I have finished (teleiosas) the work you gave me to do' (17.4). That is, of course, how the father, the creator, is glorified. That is how love is perfected, brought to its final completion (13.1).