Holy Week: The 'Good' in Good Friday

From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.”

Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.”

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph,and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

--Matthew 27:45-56

My freshman year of college I was the co-programming chair of our school’s Residence Hall Association.  I remember planning an event to help keep residents on campus and kicking around dates.  The other chairman asked about a date and I quickly said, “We can’t it’s Good Friday.”  He laughed and replied, “I heard we got off because that’s the day Jesus died.  How can that be ‘good?’”

I sometimes confuse “Good” Friday and “Black” Friday for this same reason.  I associate death with blackness, darkness, pain.  And I think this passage relays that message too.

Jesus cries out to His Father to help Him.  Actually the night before He asks God to let this event not happen, and here He is again on the cross.  But I think we all can hear God reminding Him what is to come.

Easter is understandably “good,” but Good Friday...still baffles me.  But as I prayed over this passage God showed me 3 “good” things:

1. New Covenant||Let’s hone in on verses 50 and 51 of that passage:

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

As I talked about before, Jesus came to reform Judaism.  The veil represented the separation, because of sin, between God and His people.  You had to be “holy enough” (the high priest) to enter into God’s presence behind the curtain (no, God wasn’t the Wizard of Oz back there) once a year.  But at the exact moment Christ died, the veil was torn.  Not just a little, from top to bottom.  Before He died, Jesus talked about leaving the Holy Spirit as a Counselor.  The veil was torn and the Holy Spirit took over. The New Covenant is about freedom from sin found in Jesus.  The only terms and conditions is that Christ must die for your sins, and you have to believe that with your whole heart (obviously if you do, your actions and words will follow that wholehearted belief).  It’s an eternal covenant with no fine print.  This is where the ritualistic religion becomes a metamorphic relationship.

2. Repentance||Verse 54 just captures the power of the moment for me.  After the veil was torn and the earthquake shook everyone around a little bit, the guards - the very people inflicting pain, encouraging torture, and escalating the crowd’s actions - repented.  They did a complete 180 and realized the Truth.  The proclaim Him as the Son of God.  I think that Good Friday’s story is so overdone when you hear it constantly, that we forget about the details and just the utter power Jesus’ death (and later resurrection) had.
3. Setting the scene||During Advent and Lent we love to talk about the prophets.  God lead them to write His story before the events even happened.  A lot of “religions,” like Judaism and Islam, acknowledge Jesus as a human.  His death on the cross was just another death.  But what sets our faith apart.  His death set the scene for the prophets to be fulfilled.  His death set the scene for death to lose its sting.  His death set the scene for the greatest victory of all time (yes, even better than the Miracle on Ice).