Good Friday
MATERIAL FOR GOOD FRIDAY
First Lesson for Years A, B, and C: Isaiah 52: 13 – 53: 12
Isaiah’s poem about ‘the servant of the Lord’ was not a prediction about the sufferings of the man Jesus about six hundred years later, but an expression of the deep sense that, as the people of Israel, they had been called to be God’s servant. Having suffered defeat, humiliation and despair in exile in Babylon this faithful remnant still retained hope that God would use their service for good. The execution of Jesus forced his followers then and now to struggle to find meaning even in suffering. Today we have picked up these old words and associations from Jewish scripture as a vehicle of hope.
Psalm for Years A, B, and C: Psalm 22
Mark simply mentioned a final “cry” from the cross, but Matthew adds the suggestion that Jesus felt abandoned by God by quoting from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Though the psalm was written for a totally different context, it clearly influenced the way Matthew described the crucifixion. Also, various gospel references to the soldiers dividing up the clothes of Jesus are borrowed from this psalm.
Second Lesson for Years A, B, and C: Hebrews 10: 16 – 25
In our world of bullets, bombs and brutality, peace eludes us. Long ago, the Jewish prophet Jeremiah envisioned God ushering in a covenant with all humanity, actually written in our hearts and embedded in our minds so that the ways of peace would be second nature to us. Is it too much to hope that Jews, Muslims, Christians and people of all religions may embrace Jeremiah’s vision? The writer to the Hebrews quoted from Jeremiah with approval, and affirmed the way of Jesus as a sign of hope.
Gospel Lesson for Years A, B, and C: John 18:1 – 19:42
Our reading from John needs to be set in its historical context. Roman peace in first century Palestine was not based on Jewish assent, but imposed and maintained by the sword. Though Rome had relatively compliant support from Jews who enjoyed delegated privileges and power, such as the Chief Priests at the Temple, at the other extreme troublesome bands of dissenters saw armed rebellion as the only realistic response. Jesus was executed for sedition in the Roman way by the Governor, Pontius Pilate, historically notorious for his sadistic brutality.
About forty years after the crucifixion, Emperor Titus’s army squashed a Jewish rebellion in Jerusalem, leaving the city and temple a smouldering ruin with over one million rotting corpses. It is therefore no surprise that the gospel accounts, produced in the succeeding three decades, chose not to blame Rome for the crucifixion of Jesus, but rather commended the tyrant Pilate as a fair-minded judge goaded to action by the “high priests”, or the cries of “the crowd”, or in John’s gospel, “the Jews”.
John’s gospel was the last to be written and appeared at about the turn of the century when relations between followers of the Jesus way and other Jewish sects were breaking down. By then many Gentiles had swelled the ranks of the Jesus movement without becoming familiar with its Jewish roots. Also, some conservative Jews proclaimed that the sacking of Jerusalem was God’s judgement for tolerating the messianic Jesus apostasy. Embittered name-calling was the outcome, and John unjustly chose to blame “the Jews” for the crucifixion.