Good Friday

GOOD FRIDAY COMMEMORATION OF THE LORD’S PASSION

9 April 2004

by James Chern

It’s doubtful today that there are many churches where you will not hear someone refer to Mel Gibson’s movie "The Passion of the Christ." It has provided many meaningful things for Christians and particularly for us Catholics throughout the world, one of the greatest being bringing the death of Jesus to the public square. It seems that everyone on TV from 20/20 to 60 minutes wants to talk about "Who Killed Jesus" – or "Who’s guilty of this crime." As media pundits debate and argue, they look to the Gospel – the passion we just heard proclaimed and look at the list of possible defendants: Judas seems the logical first target – after all he delivered Jesus up for thirty silver pieces. But then again, he had to deliver him to someone, so Caiphas and the Jewish Chief Priests are considered – they wanted him dead after all, but then they had no legal way to do it (religious or secular law) and so Pilate comes to mind. Ultimately he was in charge, he could have stopped it. But as the guards lead Jesus off and nail him to the Cross, Pilate is said to be washing his hands of it, so in a sense we’re left with a bunch of roman guards, who like soldiers of other atrocities throughout history are judged guilty of just following orders. And so the bizarre debate unravels. And as we’ve found "reasonable doubt" for each of these individuals, more than one of the moderators of these debates will conclude that God wanted it this way. What they are saying, (even though they don’t realize it) is that no one’s guilty... somehow the madness, the evil occurs – killing so brutally the enfleshment of Love... and as we sit uncomfortably with that notion, the argument that "God wanted it that way" morphes into saying "God the father has done this" "he allowed this to happen" or the conclusion to their question who’s Guilty of killing Jesus "God is guilty."

It’s not as preposterous as it sounds. It’s what humanity has been saying from that day in the Garden of Eden: "You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!" The man replied, "The woman whom you put here with me--she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it." The LORD God then asked the woman, "Why did you do such a thing?" The woman answered, "The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it." It wasn’t Adam’s fault it was Eve’s; It wasn’t Eve’s fault, it was the serpent, it wasn’t the serpent – Why did God put that tree there in the first Place – who’s guilty – God is Guilty.

And thousands of years later, it’s no different Who’s at fault: The guards of Auschwitz, the husband cheating on his wife, Martha Stewart or the CEO of Enron, the physician giving lethal doses of morphine in a nursing home – everyone has excuses: I was following orders, I have uncontrollable needs that must be satisfied; everybody does it, we must relieve the world of useless lives (or put more nicely, to end their suffering). We have made it a sport of sorts to hear how someone will get out of their crime: My parents abused me, I was deprived, I was spoiled, it’s in my genes. We go from that cycle to the philosophical question of "How did Evil come about" and then ask with all presumption: If God is all good and all powerful, then how do these evil things happen, how come he let’s these things occur – YEAH, that’s the question – once again, ultimately the conclusion comes: God is guilty.

Like rebellious teenagers screaming at their parents, IT’S YOUR FAULT, we find ourselves in the Garden of Eden reaching for the fruit. We find ourselves in Jerusalem in the crowd that first Good Friday. We might not have been the ones fastening Jesus to the Cross, but as the madness of that day happens, we find that we were there – we were part of the crowd convicting God. The difficult truth is that Humanity is Guilty and We ourselves are Guilty: of the evils we commit on each other; of the manipulations of one another we masterfully do; of the bad choices we make; of the silence we hold instead of standing up for the truth. And so Jesus hangs on the Cross. And there’s nothing we can do to change that.

What we can change is ourselves. Jesus’ death doesn’t have to be in vain. The ultimate vindication is not simply to listen and talk about, but rather to live Jesus’ message of Love and Forgiveness . That is what has saved us from our Father’s justifiable wrath. That is what Jesus commands us to do. He doesn’t emerge from the tomb with a list of people he needs to "settle a score" with. His last words say it all – Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. Can we Forgive like that? Can we stop the cycle of Hatred and choose to Love? Can we vindicate Jesus’ death by our lives?

(Some thoughts taken from Death on a Friday Afteroon by Richard John Newhaus.)

(Comments to Jim at chernjam@comcast.net.)

OUR LADY OF LOURDES CHURCH. West Orange, NJ