Good Friday...

Good Friday…

I’m sure it didn’t seem very good to the disciples as they lived it. Their leader, the One whom they believed was the King, the Messiah, the answer to their deepest needs, was arrested in the wee small hours of the morning. Those disciples who sneaked back and watched from a distance, saw their Master and friend mistreated, scorned, mocked, and then, as the sun came up on the scene in front of Pilate’s court, they heard the worst thing imaginable: “Crucify Him!” How could they? Jesus was the Son of God! And why wasn’t He stopping them?!

Then, beatings, more mocking, pain and agony… Their Savior, struggling to carry a heavy cross, the tool of His own execution, up the “Hill of the Skull”… Cries of pain as He was nailed to the cross… And after all the intensity of the crucifixion, the comparative silence for the next hours as Jesus hung above the crowd. Just the occasional mocker, amid the quiet, muffled tears…

No, I don’t think that story sounds very “good…”

That is the story we commemorate at our Good Friday Services. It is a sober time, an emotional time, but necessary. Without the grief and pain and loss and death on Good Friday, Easter Sunday would have no meaning.

And yet it’s also true that without an empty tomb on Easter Sunday, Good Friday would be anything but good. It is only because we know that Christ conquered the grave that we can have hope in the midst of the grief of the crucifixion!

Was Christ’s crucifixion “good?” At the time it sure didn’t seem to be. Yet for you and I it was the best thing that could have ever happened! Because of Jesus’ death, we can be forgiven and have the hope of heaven!