Brief Good Friday Thoughts 2022

 That Jesus of Nazareth was crucified is the most well established fact about his existence. In fact, had he not been executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate, I’m not sure we would know of him at all today. His life and ministry would have been reduced to a few pages of obscure history, like the lives of other zealous Jewish dissidents of the time. 

But he was crucified. And his followers were forced to understand his teachings in light of that unexpected reality. We can hypothesize that writings once existed which detailed the sayings of Jesus disconnected from any foreshadowing of a crucifixion. But all we have of them now is what we assume was quoted from these sources in the 4 canonized Gospels. If Jesus had not been crucified, it is unlikely that we could even hypothesize about these writings. 

I’m not sure how strongly I believe that Jesus was physically resurrected. I oscillate between hoping he did and hoping he didn’t. And those hopes tip me back and forth between faith and doubt. But I firmly believe in this theology: that the primary story of the New Testament is the tension between a horrific act of violence and the truth that not only comes back from the dead after atrocity but resurrects. It is made new, more meaningful than before. 

It is correct that history is written by the victor. But truth is so often preserved most powerfully by the conquered. It is from the lynched, the ostracized and oppressed, the marginalized and maligned that I have gained the most enlightenment. The paradox is that I feel complete and utter shame as a member of a human race that is capable of the cruelty that it is, but what is resurrected from the aftermath of cruelty is so strikingly transformative. 

In a way, I am a participant in a terrible human cruelty when I partake in the fruit born of others’ suffering while I sit in my own palace of privilege. And if I don’t change in response to the body and blood carefully laid out for me on an altar covered with white cloth or printed on white sheets of paper, or painted across white canvas, and work to reduce suffering in the world, then I am complicit in the atrocity. And I don’t know that there will ever be a full resolution of the paradoxical tension. I don’t know if I will ever be able to repay my indebtedness to those who suffer and from whose lives I find such soul-forming meaning. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the gospel is the tension urging us ever closer but never finally to the perfect payment of the debts we owe to the oppressed. 

This Good Friday, I hope you find ways to meaningfully transform your life for the betterment of all who suffer. And may the spirit of a crucified Christ–whatever that means for you–always be with you.