[Read John 18:1 to 19:16]
Imagine you are going on a giant roller coaster. How might you feel? You may be excited and scared stiff all at the same time! Once it starts, there is no stopping. The feeling in your stomach can’t get worse as you swoop down, but suddenly it starts over again as you ascend to the heights only to plummet again.
That may have been how the disciples felt on Palm Sunday? Jesus talks of his death, is arrested, put on trial! Could it get worse? Surely he would do something to stop it all! What was going to happen next? They couldn’t get off, just as you can’t get out of the roller coaster once you’re strapped in! They would have to go through with it. How would you have felt if you had been the disciples – desperate, disappointed, scared, humiliated and confused.
‘Goals’, ‘objectives’ and ‘vision’ are key words in contemporary management jargon. Many of the most productive businesses are driven by these. It is important for us to see that Jesus had a clear vision of the purpose of the events that unfolded on Good Friday. He was not a victim of the mob, who clamoured for his blood, nor was he a pawn in the hands of the religious leaders of the day. Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12, when applied to Jesus as the servant, makes it clear that Jesus’ death is no accident. Similarly, parallels to Jesus’ crucifixion are clear in Psalm 22. His death was planned from the beginning of time. As Isaiah presented it, this death was essential to take away the sin of the world.
Things did get worse. Jesus was hung on a cross. So why did this have to happen? How could it have all gone so wrong?
From the beginning of John 18, Jesus sets the events in motion. Jews observing the Passover had to stay within a certain distance of the city. Judas would have known this. All four Gospels record that Jesus knew what was going to happen, for example John 18:5,9. John emphasises that Jesus was voluntarily giving up his life in obedience. When Peter raised his sword, Jesus stopped him. Throughout the trial Jesus answered without attempting to escape the inevitable outcome. Crucifixion was a horrendous form of capital punishment. Already weakened by the beating, Jesus’ pain would have been intense. His final words are best rendered: ‘It is accomplished.’
[Read Isaiah 53:10a.] This was no mistake. The prophet Isaiah had prophesied this hundreds of years before.
Good Friday is a sad day and a day for reflection. Christ died a real and brutal death and real people who knew him and were close to him were affected by this. We need to appreciate the reality of what happened but at the same time to appreciate that, unlike the disciples, we know that the best was yet to come. Many people know what it means to be full of despair and asking what there is to be hopeful about. Where is God?
We know the end of the story. The best was yet to come. Jesus did indeed die and the disciples thought this was the end. But it wasn’t. And on Easter Day we celebrate the fact that he came alive again. But on Good Friday we leave the disciples confused and sad and wondering where God is in all this. They were learning what it means to trust that God knows best! And that is a hard, hard lesson for anyone to learn.
Psalm 22:5 is a good verse to learn and remember. This is what the disciples needed to discover about God at this time of despair.