What’s ‘good’ about Good Friday?

What’s ‘good’ about Good Friday?
By Editor
Fri 02 Apr. 2010, 04:00 CAT

Today, on Good Friday, Christians commemorate the passion, or the suffering, and death by crucifixion of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Many believers spend this day in fasting, prayer, repentance and meditation on the sacrifice and agony of Christ on the cross.

So, you might wonder then, why is Good Friday referred to as “good”? What the Jewish authorities and Romans did to Jesus was definitely not good (Matthew chapters 26 – 27). However, the results of Christ’s death are very good (Romans 5 : 8), “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring to you God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the spirit.” Many Christian churches celebrate Good Friday with a subdued service, usually in the evening, in which Christ’s death is remembered with solemn hymns, prayers of thanks giving, a message centered on Christ suffering for our sakes, and observance of the Lords Supper. Whether or not Christians choose to “celebrate” Good Friday, the events of that day should be ever on our minds because the death of Christ on the cross is the paramount event of the Christian faith.

In Romans 14 : 9 we are told: “For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so He might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.” It is “Good Friday” because it is the day God accepted Jesus Christ as the perfect sacrifice for our sin. And in Acts 10 : 14 we are also told: “…everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.”

Why did Christ have to suffer? It is because he lived for certain values, the values of the kingdom. Vested interests who found these values troublesome wanted to put him to death. Christ seems to say that unless we live our lives courageously and lovingly, accepting all the pain involved in it, even to the extent of accepting a death by crucifixion, we will not be able to do God’s will our lives.

It is significant that in his teaching on self-denial, he asks each one to take up his cross, implying the crosses of daily life. Those who have exploited the weak for centuries, and who wish to keep doing this, use de facto violence against them. This violence is often veiled under the guise of a fallacious order and a fallacious legality, but it is violence and injustice nonetheless.

It is not human, and hence, it is not Christian.

But the diagnosis is not enough. By his example, Christ taught us to live what we preached. Christ preached human solidarity and proclaimed that love should configure all our social structures. Even more importantly, he lived out his message of liberation to its ultimate consequences. He was condemned to death.

The power brokers in his nation saw his message of liberation, and the real-life love to which he bore witness, as a serious threat to their economic, social, religious and political interests. Today, as always, the spirit of Christ is actively giving impetus to history. It shows up in solidarity, in the unselfish commitment of those who struggle for liberty and evince authentic love for their oppressed brothers and sisters.

The structures of our society must be transformed from the roots up. The task is more necessary today than ever before because those who benefit from the unjust order in which we live are defending their interests in an aggressive way. They use all the means at their disposal – the police, the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Drug Enforcement Commission, the Zambia Revenue Authority, the entire judicial process and other state agencies, lies, propaganda, repression and dictatorship if necessary – to prevent a just, fair and humane transformation in which everyone will have the same possibilities for human fulfillment from taking place.

Authentic charity cannot gross over the struggle unleashed by those who exploit the people and seek to defend or increase their own privileges.

Fidelity to the gospel of Jesus Christ today requires Christians to commit themselves to thoroughgoing and urgently needed social transformations. Any and every effort to fashion a more just, fair and humane society, to eliminate poverty by promoting the common good over selfish interest and greedy, demands the support of those who are committed to human liberation as Christians are.

This support can and should be offered through serious minded criticism with a genuine concern for the common good.

The problem of injustice is one of the most central issues in our country today. To work justice is to know, that is, to love God (1 John 2 : 29). When justice does not exist among humans, God is ignored. Where unjust social, political and economic inequalities are found, there is a rejection of the Lord’s gift of peace, and even more, a rejection of the Lord himself. Justice, understood as holiness, a gift of the Lord, is the basic foundation of social justice.

Situations of grave injustice require the courage to make far-reaching reforms and to suppress unjustifiable privileges. The fight against injustice is meaningless unless it is waged with a view to establishing a new social and political order in conformity with the demands of justice. Justice must be ready to mark each stage of the establishment of this new order.

We need to reform our unjust structures in order to replace those which have been corrupted. This demands a readiness to accept the sacrifices necessary for the common good. This is what is demanded by the present moment and above all by the very dignity of the human person, the indestructible image of God the creator, which is identical in each one of us.

Lets us not forget that the kingdom of God, the heart of Christ’s message, is at the same time a requirement for social commitment which incorporates a critical judgment of history and refuses to deny change. It is open to human creativity and to the outpouring of the Lord’s grace.

The situation in our country today offers an exceptional opportunity for announcing and for bearing witness to God’s kingdom. If, through fear and mistrust, or through the insecurity of some in the face of any radical change, or through the desire to defend personal interests, we neglect this crucial opportunity to commit ourselves to the poor we would be in serious violation of the gospel’s teachings.

This commitment implies the renunciation of old ways of thinking and behaving.

Indeed, the day when we, as Christians, fail to present the appearance of poverty and to act as natural allies of the poor, will be the day we have betrayed our divine creator and the coming of God’s kingdom. Never before has Zambia been faced with such an urgent need to persuasively confirm this commitment to the poor.

The poor to whom Jesus speaks and who surround him are the truly poor, the hungry, the afflicted, the oppressed and all those for whom society has failed to provide a place. Through this solidarity with the poor, Jesus proclaimed his father’s love for all human kind, was persecuted, crucified and died on this Good Friday that we today celebrate. Let’s meditate deeply over Christ’s death, its meaning and purpose and live it.