What Is Good About Good Friday?

Why is Good Friday called "good"? It never seemed to me to be very good at all. This sermon ponders where we can find the good news of the gospel on the day when evil has its way.

A Good Friday sermon is the hardest one for me to preach in the whole Christian year. It’s not because of a lack of material. All four gospels tell the story of Jesus’ crucifixion; and each one puts its own spin on that story. I could focus on Jesus’ suffering on the cross; or on Pontius Pilate, who tried his best to wiggle out of crucifying Jesus; or on the Roman soldiers who did Pilate’s dirty work for him. The gospels give us seven things that Jesus said from the cross; so I could concentrate on one of those. And if I’d rather preach from the Old Testament, I could use Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant (53:1-6), or the first half of the 22^nd Psalm (Jesus quoted it from the cross). No, lack of material isn’t the problem. Here’s the problem. My job as a Christian preacher is to preach the good news of the gospel; and, quite frankly, there is precious little good news to preach on Good Friday. On the contrary, Good Friday is the day that evil runs rampant. All the kinds of evil that bedevil our world get to do what they want to do on Good Friday. The evil of political power that runs roughshod over whatever gets in its way is front and center. The evil of religious authority that only cares about its own power has a box seat. And the evil of moral cowardice that runs away instead of taking a stand is there in force. Everyone who was there on that first Good Friday saw the evil. Everybody knew what was happening. Creation itself mourned the overwhelming evil that took the life of Jesus. The gospels tell us that for three hours, the whole land was in darkness.

But let’s think for just a moment about what might have happened on Good Friday. God’s own son came to live among us as a human being. He came to reveal God’s character to us, to interpret God’s law for us, and to show us by his life how we should live. But we didn’t like it very much. In fact, we didn’t like it at all! Oh, some people liked Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness; and the assurance that the last will be first and the first will be last. But the people who were in power didn’t like it at all. The people in power never like that kind of message. In fact, Jesus told a parable about what God expected of us, and about what we actually did.

“There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants. They beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. “They will respect my son,” he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (Matthew 21:33-40)

The question hangs in the air. What will the owner of the vineyard do to his tenants? How will God respond to people who ignored the law, mistreated the prophets, and killed his son? What would you do? I know what I would do if I were in God’s place! With all the power of the universe at my disposal, I’d nuke ‘em. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah would pale in comparison with what I’d do to these bums whose lust for greed and power was more important than justice and mercy. The darkness wouldn’t last for just three hours; it would last forever! Heck, I’d crush the whole world in my fist like an eggshell and start all over again!

And that, my friends, is what is good about Good Friday. God doesn’t behave like I would. I respond to evil with more evil. We all do! That’s why the world is in the dreadful state that it’s in today. If somebody whumps us, we whump them back even harder! We allow evil to dictate how we behave. But thank God – yes, thank God! – God doesn’t do that. God’s character dictates his behavior; and God’s character is love; even love for the people who nailed his son to a cross. God didn’t nuke us, even when he had every right to do that. Instead, God used the greatest evil to bring about the greatest good in human history. We can see that good even before Jesus is taken down from the cross. Mark tells us that the centurion who crucified Jesus believed in him when he saw how Jesus died, even as many of us come to believe in Jesus later in life. Luke tells us that Jesus welcomed the repentant thief who was crucified with him into Paradise, just as he welcomes all of us. And John tells us that when Jesus’ side was pierced, blood and water flowed out. Perhaps John is showing us the beginnings of the Christian church, built as it is on the water of baptism and the blood of the New Covenant in Christ.

All of these are the results of God’s mercy that doesn’t return evil for evil, but transforms evil into blessings. And, of course, the greatest blessing is yet to come. On Easter morning, God will raise Jesus from the tomb in resurrection power, the power that defeats evil not by fighting it, but by accepting it and smothering it with love. We see that power wherever love is the response to the evil that is all around us. Oh, it’s difficult to see; and we have to really look to find it; but it’s there! We see it in war-torn countries where doctors treat anyone who is wounded, regardless of whether they are innocent victims or enemy combatants. We see it in the inner cities of our own country, when families of victims of drive-by shootings involve themselves in organizations that help the same troubled youth who killed their children. We see it in the words of Malala Yousafzai, the woman who was shot by the Taliban for advocating for women’s education in her native Pakistan, who said, “If you hit a [member of the Taliban] with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and [the Taliban]. You must not treat others with cruelty… You must fight others through peace and through dialogue and through education.”

Yes, God looked at the fragile eggshell that is our broken world and decided not to crush it by returning evil for evil. Instead, God brought new life out of that egg on Easter morning and defeated evil through the power of love. That, my friends, is what is good about Good Friday. And it is the best news that anyone could ever preach! Love is supreme! Thanks be to God!