Good Friday...Bad Friday

                                   

     I don’t know where the term “Good Friday” originally came from. I could Google it, and then write something pithy, and appear to be a scholar, but I’m not writing about the naming of the day today. At least not from a literal position.

     It certainly wasn’t a good day for Jesus. Not from a human standpoint at least. We know what happened and there is no need for me to recount the terrible, inhuman, demonic butchery that the Romans undertook on the Son of God. Adding to the physical torture, was the fact that His own Father had to turn His back and abandon Him as he was nailed to a cross, like a poster to a telephone poll. It wasn’t good for Jesus.

     It wasn’t good for Mary, His mother. To watch Him die slowly, after having watched him being beaten and battered and nearly skinned alive. To see His blood spill and spatter and to feel the helpless devastation that a parent must surely feel when their child –no matter what age- precedes them in death. There is no Biblical evidence that, by this time, Mary understood His mission or even His personage, fully. No biblical record tells us that Jesus took her aside and said, “Listen Mom, some very terrible things are going to happen to me and I am going to be killed. Don’t worry, though, because I’ll rise from the grave in three days.” No. Nothing like that at all.

     It wasn’t a good day for his friends, especially Peter, who had so vehemently denied Him in such a base manner. Or for John, who stayed nearby and maybe had some of the blood and pieces of His flesh splattered on his own garments.

     It wasn’t a good day for Judas, who sold Him for thirty pieces of silver and then killed himself because of the guilt.

     It wasn’t a good day for Pilate, who tried to extricate himself from the responsibility of his actions by a symbolic washing of his hands.

     It couldn’t have been a good day for God, the Father, who had planned this day from Creation, and who had to look away when the sin of all mankind fastened itself to His Son as He writhed in unspeakable agony on a vicious cross, in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

     Jerusalem. The “City of Peace.” It wasn’t very peaceful for Jesus.

     It wasn’t good for the Jews, who thought, only five days before, that this was their Messiah. Now he was just another criminal, taken out with the rest of the trash, baking in the sun as his wounds festered and his heart beat itself to it’s end.

     It wasn’t, above all else, a good day for me, or for you, unless you view this moment in time from the right perspective, and make the right decision about it.

     This day wasn’t about Love. Not the way it’s been repackaged and sold to the world by neo-evangelicals and emergents and seeker-friendlies. Jesus didn’t endure this so that, in the name of love, we could take a quick look, feel a twinge of sadness, reduce the moment to just another event in the pantheon of world religion, and then mold it into some sort of hall pass that gives us the right to be the same as we were before we first stood here, watching this man die. The Cross isn’t where you spend two minutes in the penalty box and then go back out to play.

     This wasn’t a good day for humanity, as the Universalists portray it. Not in the least. This was a day for deciding. This was a day for falling on one side or the other –with no middle ground- in the eternal struggle for the souls of men.

This was, as I have said many times before, a Head-On Collision moment.

     The Cross of Christ is not good. Not if you don’t understand it, don’t grasp it, don’t accept it, and especially if you don’t  fall on it and die. Period. No exceptions. This is where your world breaks in two like a saltine cracker. This is where you stare God in the face and either say “Yes, you did this for me, you bought my soul here, I will die eternally without you, I accept you for who you are, leaving all other gods and forms of religion behind. In return for this I give you my life. And I expect that life to be broken, reshaped and made over.” Period.

     This is not Good Friday for Bell, McLaren, Tickle and Osteen. Because contrary to their views, you must STILL BE BORN AGAIN. Jesus didn’t just randomly spill His blood so that the entire world could sing and dance and drink and party and face no consequences, eternal or temporal. The Cross didn’t open God’s checkbook, his airplane hangar, or His architecture. And it didn’t reduce His Presence to a carnival ride, where anyone can jump aboard.

     When you come to the Cross you decide. You decide right then and right there whether you will fall on this “Rock of offense,” and be broken and reshaped, or whether this Rock will fall on you and crush you into a useless dust, suitable only for destruction.

There is no playing around. The Cross will brook no compromise. The Cross stands smack dab in the middle of the road to eternity and there is no room to squeeze by the sides. To proceed beyond the Cross, you must climb on it yourself, die there, and be raised in Christ as a new man. The only other option is to turn away and go in the opposite direction. There are no detours or exit ramps.

     Matthew 21:44 lays it out unmistakably... “Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”  There is no room for compromise in that verse. This is Jesus speaking about Himself.

     John 14:6, again Jesus tells us without any room for debate: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Nobody comes to God unless they go through Me.” (emphasis mine) Nobody. Not Oprah, not Mohammad, not Gandhi, not, the Pope, and not me. Nobody. That’s Good if you believe Jesus’ words. It’s not if you don’t.

     Good Friday is good only for those who see Calvary for what it really is, see themselves for who they really are, see Jesus for who He really is, and surrender to the reason for the event. For everyone else, Good Friday is not Good.

     If you reject this day, that man, His Cross...you have no hope in the Sunday that followed. If you turn away from this horrifying scene of butchery, or if you hesitate and stand in the shadows waiting for a more convenient day to decide, or if you try to reason a way around the call to join Him in his death so that you can live...this is a very bad day indeed.

     As it always has been, the choice is yours. If you stand here at this dividing line in history and you do anything but surrender to it, accept it’s means and method, fall to your knees in confession that you needed this terrible day in order to secure your eternity, and finally grasp it’s purpose and relinquish your life to the Savior...then you’ve missed it by a mile.

     This day is the day you decide, if you haven’t already.

     Make it a Good day.