Good Friday

Isaiah 53

It’s not popular to talk about this Jesus. We like our Jesus to be neat and tidy, like he was in his senior picture, wearing that clean white robe. We like to see him happy, playing with children, healing people, feeding thousands, walking on water and turning water into wine.

It’s another story to look at Jesus suffering. I have a theory as to why we often don’t look at this side of Jesus. My theory is this: if we think about a happy, smiling Jesus, we can ignore the cross. We can bump him straight from earth to heaven without a struggle. Without suffering.

Why would we want to do that?

Recognizing Jesus as the suffering servant from Isaiah, the one who was despised and rejected, leads to the realization that: Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

We caused Him to suffer. It was your sins and mine that nailed him to the cross. We may consider him stricken by God, and it certainly felt like that to Him on the cross, as He cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

It can be easy to point fingers at other people, especially horrible people like Hitler and Stalin, because my sins are just little things; they don’t hurt anybody. Do you see the problem with that? Besides putting ourselves in the judgment seat, supplanting Jesus Himself, in essence, declaring ourselves to be gods, we end up playing the blame game. Everyone else is to blame, certainly not me. It’s not my sins. I didn’t crucify anyone. It must be those Romans. Or those Jews. Not me.

Oh really? You didn’t crucify anyone? It was because of your sins, because of my sins, that Jesus hung upon the cross.

There is a telling moment in Luke’s account of the Last Supper, where Jesus has just dropped the bombshell: The hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table (Luke 22:21). Listen to what happened next: They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this. Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest (Luke 22:23-24).

On the surface, this is hard to fathom; Jesus has just told them that one of them would betray Him, and already they’re arguing about who’s the greatest. But that’s what naturally happens when we stratify ourselves. Even the very thought of “surely not I, Lord” is a stratification of a kind. “Because I’m so great, I would never betray the LORD.” Yet, in every one of our sins, we do exactly that.

Remember that our sins nailed Jesus to the cross.

The other reason to focus on Jesus, the man of sorrows is this: If we can ignore Jesus’ suffering, we can also spiritualize some of his statements away. We can pretend that he was talking in allegory when he said, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it (Mark 8:34-35).

That must pertain to someone else. He couldn’t have really meant it literally. Because I’m supposed to live a nice life. Being like Jesus means “getting along with others” doesn’t it? Everyone is supposed to like me and be happy with me, and as a Christian, I will be able to please everybody.

The unfortunate thing is that once we skip over the very real suffering that Jesus went through, and we delude ourselves into thinking that the Christian life is supposed to be sunshine and roses. And when it’s not, we lash out at God for “not holding his end of the bargain” – when that wasn’t His end at all or we ditch our faith. The truth is, it is hard to be a Christian. We are called to fully enter into life, not just ours, but the lives of others, too. It isn’t easy.

But when we really know Jesus, the real Jesus, when we know the Jesus who had no beauty or majesty to attract us, when we know the Jesus who was despised and rejected, when we know the Jesus who suffered, we know a Jesus who fully entered into our existence and experienced the worst this world has to offer. So then when trouble comes our way, we can turn to Jesus, because we know he understands, because we know that he has experienced it… and that He has something in store for us.