BLACK FRIDAY GOOD EASTER

CRUCIFIXION

BLACK FRIDAY 2022

The use of the term “Good Friday” seems to date way back in time when good represented an obsolete sense of pious or holy, such as “good tidings” for Christmas. I prefer to use the alternative name for that day which occurred over two thousand years ago as Black Friday. The sun stopped shining and darkness came over the whole land for three hours in the middle of the day as all nature mourned the impending death of its Creator. For the first time in all creation, the Father was temporarily separated from relationship with the Son. The temple curtain was torn apart in that hour. The curtain symbolically separated the court of the people and the Most Holy Place where only the high priest could enter once a year to atone for the sins of the people. Now, Jesus’ death removed the barrier between human beings and God so that His sacrifice could pave the way for the atonement of all sins and the promise of eternal life through the grace of God.

But just a cursory sense of how a Roman crucifixion on a wooden cross was executed should give anyone pause to consider how that horrific act could be considered as good.   During scourging, a person was stripped naked, tied to a post, and then flogged across the back, buttocks and legs by Roman soldiers.  This excessive whipping would weaken the victim, causing deep wounding, severe pain and bleeding.  Some didn’t even survive the flogging.
Once Jesus was nailed to the cross,” In order to breathe out, Jesus had to push down on the nails in His feet to raise His body, and allow His rib cage to move downwards and inwards to expire air from His lungs...  His movements up and down the Cross to breathe caused excruciating pain in His wrist, His feet, and His dislocated elbows and shoulders...  Jesus was in Heart Failure and Respiratory Failure.”  --Dr. C. Truman Davis

Given the pain and suffering entailed, it's no wonder that crucifixion spawned the word “excruciating” meaning "out of the cross."

Some folks justify the term Good Friday because it was good for humanity that the Son of God sacrificed his life in our place.  It was good for the Son of God to do God’s will which was to motivate humanity to follow him.  If humanity had carefully listened to his message of loving God and our neighbors, the cross may not have entered into history.  But there were men of power who considered him as a threat to their control of the masses and interfered to kill him.  They succeeded, but as Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written, “The resurrection tells us that the worst thing is never the last thing.”

I’m good with Good Easter Sunday.