Good Friday

 

April 18, 2025. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y. Partially reprised from an earlier post.

Nothing displayed Roman power like crucifixion, an act designed
to publicly execute revolutionaries and slaves with utmost shame
and disgrace as a means of punishment, cruel amusement, and
deterrence for revolutionaries present and future.

In 71 BCE, when Spartacus was defeated by Pompey, six
thousand survivors of the revolt were crucified, lining the Appian
Way from Rome to Capua, a distance of more than 100 miles.
Josephus describes the crucifixion of thousands of Jews during
the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) in the first war with Rome. “So the
soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed
those they caught, one after one way, and another after another,
to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great
that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for
the bodies.”

For the readers of John, written in the traumatic aftermath of this
war and hurtling toward the cataclysmic second war (132–135
CE), the crucifixion of Jesus would be understood as a prophetic
foreshadowing and in profound solidarity with all those noncombatants
hungry for peace and life in the face of overwhelming
death. John takes Jesus’ crucifixion, intended by Rome as a
triumphant display of Roman power and glory over a humiliated
enemy, and narrates it as the victory of God over the forces of
death and dominion, a victory achieved by the self-controlled and
unflappable martyrdom of Jesus. Today, in yet another time of
war, famine, immense suffering, and death in Judea and
Palestine (and elsewhere), we do well to return to John’s Passion
for a renewed vision of peace, resilient agency, and life.

The lectionary passage begins under the cover of darkness with
the arrest of Jesus at the hands of soldiers from both Rome and
the chief priests and Pharisees highlighting the alliance of
powerful elites arrayed against Jesus.

Rejecting apprehension, Jesus offers himself in place of his
accompanying disciples, and he affirms the anti-violent path of
liberation given to him by God, rebuking Peter for his attack on
the high priest’s slave Malchus. We see clearly here John’s
insight that the power to overcome violence comes not from
violence, but rather from sacrificial love and from light that
eschews both flight and fight.

From there, Jesus (bound and beaten, yet ever unbowed) is
paraded before both high priests and Pilate, where his innocence
is interrogated and repeatedly pronounced.

Jesus’ confrontation with Pilate, the face of empire in Judea and
emissary of the imperial “ruler of this world”, displays most clearly
Jesus’ distinct path of liberation apart from violent revolution.
Jesus insists to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my
kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to
keep me from being handed over”. Rather, Jesus’ mission and
power is his testimony to the truth , a revelation that unmasks the
myth of violence and domination.

Jesus’ distinct path of liberation stands apart from the other
postures toward Rome displayed as foils in this passage. Though
united in their opposition to Jesus, we see starkly different
sentiments displayed by the various Jewish groups depicted. On
the one hand, we see the powerful chief priests aligned with
Roman rule, who go beyond sending officers to join the Roman
cohort at Jesus’ arrest to ultimately proclaiming, “We have no king
but the emperor”, an existential inversion of the zealous
revolutionary cry “No King but God!”

Conversely, the Judeans clamor for the release of Barabbas, the
anti-Roman insurrectionist. Though divided in causes, all three
parties (Pilate, the chief priests, and Judeans) are united in the
perception of the threat Jesus’ path to liberation and life poses to
them, a union begun in the raising of Lazarus that set in motion
their resolve to kill Jesus, and they join in sending him off to his
wrongful execution. Jesus, however, remains in control until the
end, pronouncing, “It is finished,” then bowing his head and
handing over his spirit.

Notably, though Jesus’ anti-violent resistance to the forces of
death is ultimately endorsed by God in the resurrection of Jesus
as the true way of faithfulness, his betrayal and crucifixion are
both condemned as sin, making clear that God neither requires
nor desires the death of Jesus to bring salvation. In addition to the
multiple metaphors of salvation in John (including spiritual union
with God and spiritual rebirth) John takes the death that Rome
intended for shame and dominion and transforms it into a sacred
sacrifice of liberation, evoking the Passover liberation by placing
Jesus’ crucifixion at the same time as the sacrifice of the lambs
for Passover.

The transformation of death into life is completed by the birth
imagery evoked in the eruption of blood and water when Jesus’
side is pierced. For all who struggle and die in pursuit of peace,
truth, and justice—especially peacemakers in Palestine, Israel,
and throughout the world—John’s portrait of Jesus’ martyrdom
shows the life, love, freedom, and rebirth that are possible in
active resistance.

Chrtistina Rosetti, a 19th century poet, places these words on our
hearts amid the darkness of Good Friday:

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock