LAFAYETTE, La. — On its surface, Good Friday is anything but. It marks the human death of Jesus Christ. But going past that layer, Christians around the world believe Good Friday set some really good things in motion for humanity.
“’Good’ and ‘Friday’,” offers Asbury United Methodist Senior Pastor John Cannon, “are words that shouldn’t go together on a day like today because the crucifixion was anything but good.
It was violence, put upon the Son of God. That shouldn’t be good.”
Some theologians say Good Friday marked the ultimate humanization of Jesus Christ.
As a man, he’d been riding high; but from the Last Supper to Good Friday, he fell, he failed… done in by betrayal and cowardice.
“Popular ministry, crowds following him,” explains Father Bryce Sibley of Our Lady of Wisdom Catholic Church, “but he ends up dying outside of the city, on a cross as a criminal.
But it’s in that failure--- that apparent failure-- his resurrection comes. There’s hope for all of us.”
Good Friday in the Covid Era is, in many ways, even more special. Suffering? Helping? Then giving back? That’s Good Friday, 2021.
“He was judged, he fell, he had people assist him, Simon of Cyrene,” wonders National Catholic Speaker Mike Patin.
“A day like today, I'm trying to remember: who are the people who have helped me through Covid?"
“And when we witness God who goes to the Cross, on our behalf, goes to the Cross for us, we are seeing God turn the worst that humanity can do, into a great statement of love for all of God's people,” adds Cannon.
This life of ours does have suffering, does have pain. But the ultimate sacrifice those many years ago by Jesus?
That selfless effort turns so much of the world's pain into hope,
"It's the living, the dying and the resurrected Jesus,” says Patin. “That's where I hold on. It gives me some comfort to know that no matter what I face, he has been there."
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