Good Friday and the Cross
A Word from +Bishop Aitken:
Because of our physical separateness this Good Friday, I think we have a deeper idea this year of Jesus’ separateness, loneliness, and anguish on Good Friday.
We have practiced distancing, and are weary of being isolated from our family, our friends, and with our congregations. We long for closeness now, a closeness that we took for granted just weeks ago.
Jesus’ isolation and anguish must have been unbearable on Good Friday. He, who had gathered followers, so that God’s dream of all, where no one is marginalized, where all are brought together to love one another as God intended, seemed abandoned that day. Jesus experienced, didn’t he, in his own body, in his heart, in his emotions, all the rotten powers that tear people apart? Like parents from children over some hurtful word years ago, neighbors who never once ask your name, cousins who don’t talk to each other, politics that make hate reasonable and soul sucking, and those who kill by word or deed in the name of some ideology.
All of it, and more, he experienced that day.
Good Friday is a holy mystery. Jesus identified with all of us because God "cannot not love all people" as my 101 year old mentor told me recently. All, means those who are oppressed, but also their oppressors, the tortured and the torturer, the refugee, and those who made her a refugee, the homeless and those greedy powers of the privileged that make that family homeless. Jesus came for the poor and the rich, for the haves and the have-nots. For this love and courage he was separated for execution that Friday. He endured insults and degradation, taunting for hours, and led to the cross. Even in his final words he spoke God’s dream of love and forgiveness and togetherness for all.
And yet, we are told in Scripture, his crucifixion and death undid the powers of hell in a holy reversal of some kind that we can only stand in awe of as people have for centuries. Let Good Friday move us to wonder and tears and faith. He died for you. He died for me. He died for us all.
