It’s Good Friday. Good… Friday. But it was a hard day. It was the most difficult day in Jesus’ short life as a human on this earth. To understand the full impact of Good Friday I think it’s helpful to know that, for Jesus, it started on what we would call Thursday night. To the 1st Century Jews a day was sunset to sunset. We see this in Genesis in the creation story, “…and there was evening and there was morning the first day.” Why do I mention it? Because we usually think of the early morning flogging and the late morning crucifixion. But we often miss one the most important pieces of Jesus’ suffering. He didn’t want to do it. He wanted a way out. But there was one caveat, He wanted a way out if God would grant it.
The suffering of Good Friday would start soon after the passover meal He shared with His disciples. I believe His suffering really kicked in when He addressed His impending betrayal. It’s amped to intolerable by the time He reaches the garden. He then has the moment that sets the tone for our own suffering.
But Jesus had already been suffering. He was the suffering servant Isaiah referenced in his messianic prophecy in chapter 53 about the one who would take on all of our sins. He would suffer and be crushed under the weight of our wrongdoing. But His suffering wasn’t just some divine dispensing of supernatural pain. Jesus would face this like a human. With all of the limitations of a human. The pain would be real, concrete, felt in all of its terrible human context: the mind, the body and the soul.
He suffered as He witnessed the injustice in His culture. He had to bear mistreatment of the law and the prophets by what were supposed to be God’s shepherds. It pained Him to see God’s people floundering and directionless under the oppression of Rome, Herod and the Sanhedrin. He was angry with their hardened hearts. He was distressed by their lack of faith. He was alone in so many ways humanly. Even His own family had misjudged Him.
But on Good Friday we usually focus on the point at which Jesus is mocked, flogged and then hung on a cross. It’s an understandable focus. In most of our soteriologies, It’s the point of our redemption from our sins. It’s where Christ ransoms us from our tendencies towards evil, rescues us from hell and gives us the reward of heaven upon our passing from this life to the next. Finally, we can be saved! It makes sense to most Christians by what we’ve been taught and what we’ve accepted about Jesus’ appointed purpose here on earth. But what if there’s more to salvation than just getting our ticket punched on the Sweet-by-and-by Express?
Pain Avoidant
In our unique time in history, I want to highlight Jesus’ suffering in the garden, before His betrayal, before His best friends would abandon Him to face hell alone, before the false accusations of a kangaroo court, before the mocking of the priest’s guard, before being unjustly handed over by the powers that could set him free, before the beat down by cruel foreign soldiers and before He ascends to a cross.
I want to focus here for a moment because our society is filled with anxiety. Fear is everywhere. Worse, fear is labeled, justified, medicated and embraced. People are defining themselves by their fears and confusions. They take action not to face them but to understand them as incurable. It’s considered mean in culture to make someone face their fears. The thought of overcoming fear or going through something fearful to get through the other side is treated as a cruelty. But there must be a way through. To speak with high achievers, elite athletes and ultimate warriors fear is a part of their routine. But they refuse to let fear be the driver. You hear those folks talk about fear riding along with them, being in the passenger seat or being like a pack on their back. They acknowledge its presence, but they don’t let it decide for them. This is crucial to understand. And Jesus, no surprise, shows us what to do with fear like that.
The Human Experience of Jesus
After His final commentary to His disciples about who they were to be in a cruel and fearful world, Jesus went to pray. He leaves His disciples in stages. First He leaves behind the majority. He then takes His inner circle a little further, out of earshot of the others and confesses His distress. He urges them to pray. Lastly, He leaves them to spend time with His heavenly Father about a stone’s throw away. That’s where He lets loose. Everything He’s concerned about, every bit of anxiety and trepidation pours out of His mouth and His body as He allows Himself to feel what’s happening now and what’s about to happen.
Jesus is not fleeing from, fighting against or rising above His experience of distress. That’s what the flesh does. The flesh is the part of us that avoids the important areas of life that we find uncomfortable, uneasy, filled with sorrow, and painful anticipation. Jesus isn’t doing any of that. He’s facing it head on. He’s confessing it. He’s engaging it. It’s meaningful. His only negotiation is with His Father. Once He’s prayed, negotiations have ceased. He doesn’t try to reason with Annas or Caiaphas. He doesn’t try to convince Pilate and Herod of a greater reality or discuss options for release.
I’ll argue that this is the second most intense moment in Jesus’ life. The anxiety was so acute, the gravity was so heavy, it was not just an emotional state manifested in a set of extreme physical responses. He sweat blood. You can’t know how bad this is unless you’ve been through something like this.
It’s after the angel appears in order to strengthen Jesus that He really falls apart. Did you catch that? Go find it. Read the words yourself. It’s after the angel. That’s real. That’s important. Jesus is not being a tough guy in the popular sense.
False Christs
There’s a notion out there about a tough guy Jesus. This Jesus didn’t fear the cross or what was about to happen to Him. He just needed the strength from God to make it to the cross before dying. That he was praying that He could finish the job. That’s just not in the text. It’s not even in the context or subtext.
Over the years I’ve witnessed this particular false Christ emerge. I call him MMA Jesus. In an attempt to make Christianity less wimpy some folks have created a Christ that is a strong, tough manly man. An undefeated champ in the Octagon. While stuck in traffic one day, a truck pulled in front of me. Covering the entire tailgate was a muscle bound Jesus looking back at me through a tough guy stare down. Neck bulging, biceps enormous, six pack abs in full relief, he was ready for a fight. Jesus was shredded. It was comical. He was a cartoon. I laughed out loud. “There he is!” I thought. “MMA Jesus!”
I don’t know the guy in the truck. I’m not trying to make fun of him. And that’s not my point. It’s just my messed up sense of humor. I couldn’t help myself. As you might imagine, I get myself in trouble with that sort of thing a lot.
My point is that the real human Jesus wasn’t a prize fighter or a warrior. He wasn’t trying to push the limits of human endurance. Jesus hadn’t prepared Himself physically for this contest. He hadn’t hardened His mind and body like a Navy Seal or an Ultra runner. He hadn’t been pumping iron or spending time in the Octagon to get Himself ready for the title fight. He had been doing what the Father had shown Him to do, heal the sick, cast out evil spirits, raise the dead, and preach the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven to a lost, weary and shepherd-less crowd.
For all you MMA Jesus fans, the real strength is in this kind of trust and vulnerability Jesus displays in this moment. He brings His disciples with Him to this extraordinary event. He trusts His closest friends with it even though He knows they will flee the scene. He tells His Father what He’s going through and offers it to Him with everything He’s feeling.
There’s another anti-christ I call Sweet Jesus. That’s the Jesus that accepts you and loves you where you’re at. But his love doesn’t come with transformation. It doesn’t dose you with power for self-control or a sound mind. That guy just lets you drown in your own melancholy stew whilst giving you whatever you want and shielding you from any notions of change that might help break you free from the cauldron you’re cooking in.
But don’t get the impression I’m delivering up that Sweet Jesus either. Sweet Jesus couldn’t face his fear. He’d have to run from it, justify it and just bail on the mission because his father would never ask him to do something so terrible. I heard a preacher once say, “Jesus died on a cross so you wouldn’t have to.” Try telling that to Peter, who died upside down on one. Or Paul who’s back was hamburger after multiple 39-lashes and other beatings, who was eventually beheaded because of his love for God and His children. Or the apostle John who was boiled alive and when that didn’t kill him was exiled and abandoned on a forsaken island. No. Sweet Jesus couldn’t do this.
The Jesus of the Gospels asks God to take the cup from Him. Which cup? In John He hints at it when Peter strikes the Priest’s servant. “…shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” The cup is the cross. It’s the wrath unleashed as He takes on our dysfunction. He knows it’s God’s will for Him to go there. To bear it alone. To experience what no other human could possibly imagine.
A Mindset
Christ’s moment in the garden isn’t about preparation or mental toughness, at least not in the way it’s currently talked about. But it is about a mindset. A mindset of dependence. A mind set on the Kingdom of Heaven. A mind set on our Father versus our fear. It’s about preparing our hearts, minds, and spirits to do the hardest things in the name of love. Believing to the point of knowing our Father is with us and we’ll see us through. Jesus shows us how to get through the most unjust and inhumane of circumstances while staying present in the moment.
So present He can resist calling down Angels when He has the power to do so, but instead graciously heals one of His assailants. He offers Himself to His betrayer, accusers and torturers for their sake because of His trust in the Father. He doesn’t check out or negotiate. He doesn’t take off or fight back. He is with them. He is somehow even for them, proving His love for His Father and His Father’s children by looking down from the cross He was thrust upon and interceding for them, (to paraphrase) “Father forgive them because they’re clueless, they have no idea what they’re doing.” The Kingdom of Heaven mindset is to love at all times even in the darkest, loneliest, hungriest, weariest places found on the earth. The Kingdom of Heaven mindset is to be a part of transforming this world by that same love. “…your will on earth as it is in heaven.” That mindset has the power to show you how to be and act while going through hell on earth.
Who hasn’t had an event they didn’t want to deal with? A confrontation we knew wouldn’t go our way? Perhaps a literal battlefield where corpses become statistics. Maybe a court appearance or a sentencing? Or admitting something that we’re profoundly ashamed of, steeling ourselves for the judgment we sense is coming? Even Jesus asked for it to pass.
Conclusion
We all have a cross to bear. You have a cross to bear, but you likely don’t want to look at it much less bear it. But you must face it. It’s already there, it’s already been weighing you down. You’ve tried to run from it, negotiate with it, hide from it, ignore it, burn it down, disguise it, fight with it, decorate it, maybe even put yourself on it. That’s human. But have you taken it to the Father? Have you told someone about it? Someone really close to you that you could trust? Did they flee from you? That’s human too. But now it’s time to pour yourself out to your Father. The story’s not in there to show you how tough Jesus is. It’s there because Jesus is the Way. He’s the example of what to do with crosses. What cross are you bearing? Best give it to the one who knows how to handle crosses.
