Remembering Good Friday

Posted by Christian St John in Faithblogs, Sermons | 2 comments

The message below was spoken at a Good Friday service on 2nd April, 2010. About 60-70 people came to the service and the chairs had been arranged in a large circle – a large cross had been placed right in the center of that circle. After sharing communion, all in attendance worshiped the Lamb and then I spoke this message encouraging people to keep their focus on the cross at the center of the circle. As we tried to keep this service simple we didn’t record this message – below is a transcript of that message.

Remembering the Cross
Christian St John
2nd April 2010

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Many people in our culture today don’t know what the cross means, or what Christians believe about it. A study was conducted about five years ago of people in Australia, Germany, India, Japan, England and the U.S. to find how much they recognized certain symbols. Ninety-two percent could identify the interlinking circles as the symbol for the Olympics. Eighty-eight percent could identify the golden arches as the symbol for MacDonalds. But only half of the people could identify the cross as symbolic of the Christian faith.

The cross should always be at the center of the Christian faith; the cross at the center. It is the reason why you and I can be saved and know God. I want to begin by saying that life is unfair. We’ve all had times in life when we’ve experienced this first hand. Maybe it’s the way we’ve been treated. Maybe we’ve been let down. Maybe we’ve been lied to. Or maybe we feel that life is unfair because we’ve suffered loss.

2,000 years ago there was a group of people who had suffered great loss; they lost a good friend. This friend had been with many of them for three years and for three years they had laughed, cried, and shared together, and now He was gone. To make things worse they had abandoned their friend when they should have stood by Him. They had been with him in the good times and yet, when trouble came their way they ran away like scared children leaving their friend to face the most difficult time of His life… alone.

Most of them had watched from a distance as their friend, who had done no wrong, was tried as nothing more than a criminal, many times wanting to speak up but fearing that they would also end up facing the same kind of judgment. They breathed a sigh of relief when Pilate found Him not guilty, but then in a mockery of justice handed Him over to be beaten and scourged. Although they weren’t the ones receiving the bruises of fists and the bloody lashes of the whips they felt every blow. Courage was gone, replaced instead by cowardice. And as they watched their friend, all broken and bloodied from His terrible beating, begin to carry a heavy wooden cross they knew that He would soon be dead.

The crowds parted as this bloodied man stumbled along surrounded by Roman soldiers, many of them shouting insults, some even throwing stones at this hurting, dying man. The men who had abandoned their friend watched in horror as this all unfolded before them, helpless to do anything about it. “People are so cruel,” they think to themselves as they watch people reach out and hit their friend. And then they remember, “I’m no better. I’m not willing to stand up for my friend. Maybe I’m even worse than these people.”

Their friend falls to the ground, pinned down by the wooden cross. They want to act to help Him but fear that they will be singled out as a follower of this man, meeting with the same end as He. The Roman soldiers choose a man from the crowd, a big man, and tell him to help their dying friend with the cross. He tells them he wants nothing to do with this, but the guards can be very persuasive, and so he reluctantly lifts the wooden cross of their friend.

The man urges, bile rising in his throat, when he sees the state of the man that is pinned under the cross, but he readies himself and reaches down to help the man to his feet. This man, this big man, picks up the cross and takes most of the weight; he knows that this bloody, weak man hasn’t long for this world, and resolves to help any way he can to ease this man’s suffering.

So together they carry the cross up a small hill. As they near the top they hear the pounding of metal mixed with screaming and the big man looks up to see that two criminals were having nails driven through their hands and feet pinning them to wooden crosses like the one he is helping this man to carry.

By the time they reach the top of the hill the other two crosses have been lifted up and the two criminals are now hanging for all to see. The big man takes the full weight of the cross he is helping to carry allowing the other man to fall to the ground, completely exhausted.

The execution team comes over and takes the cross from him and the soldiers push him away. Then turning to the man at their feet they move to place him upon the cross that is now lying on the ground next to him. They stretch out his arms and hold him in place by placing their feet upon him. One of the executioners holds in one hand a hammer; with his other hand he reaches into a leather bag and pulls out three large nails. He places the first nail over one of the man’s outstretched hands and then hits it with the hammer. BANG! BANG! The man’s body writhes in pain and he lets out a faint groan; the man obviously doesn’t even have the strength to scream. The executioner quickly moves to hammer the other two nails through the man’s other hand and then his feet.

Once the executioner rechecks his work the rest of the execution team lift up the remaining cross and drop the bottom end into a hole that holds it up. The man’s friends watch from afar, too afraid to get any closer; only one of this man’s followers is right there, at the foot of the cross holding their friends mother. Tears roll down John’s cheeks and in between his own sobs he tries to comfort his friend’s mother who is herself sobbing uncontrollably. There are priests nearby as well as soldiers and a great crowd of people.

The man upon the cross begins to speak… “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
“There He goes again talking about forgiveness,” the priests call out mockingly. “What right does he have to forgive anyone? All this talk of forgiveness and yet, He can’t even save himself.” The people begin to laugh and mock this man upon the cross. And for three hours the insults fly at the man hanging upon the cross in the scorching, blistering sun. His breathing is labored and every moment brings him pain and agony. Mary looks up at John and asks, “How much longer will this continue?”

Then suddenly the sky becomes as black at the darkest night. It’s so dark in fact, that the people cannot see their hands in front of their faces. Everyone begins to talk among themselves. “What is happening?” “What is going on?” The Roman soldiers shout out for torches to be bought and for the people to be quiet. The people’s eyes do not adjust to the darkness as it is a thick darkness. After a few minutes burning torches have been bought to the crucifixion site placed in the ground around the three crosses.

Expecting the light to return soon the people begin to fear the oppressive darkness. Their eyes are wide as they begin to hear the one upon the cross moan and see Him writhe in agony. And for three hours the people are silent just watching… and waiting. Then at around three in the afternoon the one upon the cross cries out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Then as suddenly as it had started, the light appears again. Everyone is temporarily blinded by the light of the sun. But they hear the one upon the cross say “It is finished” followed by “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.”
As the people’s eyes begin to adjust to the light they begin to see that the one who was squirming and moaning on the cross was now silent… and still.

For moment everyone is silent just looking upon the body of the one they had mockingly called King of the Jews. “He’s dead” someone shouts. “Finally it’s over.” The disciples watching from afar are feeling utter despair and hopelessness… and they run.

And for the next three days they begin to question everything… “Was this man the Promised One?” “Did we put our faith in the wrong person?” “Why did he allow himself to die like that?” And maybe they began to fear that everything they knew was a lie.

The cross. Everything had ended at the cross. Even the one upon the cross had said that it was finished.
Just imagine, if you can, what the first believers were thinking… how they were feeling. Were they feeling betrayed, hurt, lost, confused, fearful, puzzled? Did they begin to think that everything the one had said was a lie?
Three years… some of them had spent the last three years with this man, following Him everywhere, learning from him, doing whatever he told them to. They had loved him, more than they had loved anyone they had loved him. He had become as close as a brother. He was their friend, and now he was dead.

How would you have felt if you were in their place? Would you doubt or would you feel shame? Jesus was dead. He had been beaten and nailed to a cross and no one stood up for him, an innocent man. And now he was dead.
We all know how the story ends, but the first believers didn’t. As they lived out the next few days they must have run the entire gamut of bad feelings. And as they ran from the cross that day knowing that their friend had breathed his last, not only had their friend died, but so had all of their plans, all of their dreams, and all of their hopes.

I want to leave the story there today and over the next couple of days I want us all to think about what Jesus’ death meant for the first believers, and what it still means for us today.

John Stott wrote these beautiful words about the cross, “I could never believe in God, if it were not for the cross… In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.”