We live in a market-driven, entertainment-fixated world. Shallow, entertaining sound-bites have replaced deep reflection. And in such a world, Good Friday is not merely a misstep but a different dance altogether: God’s dance of death to give us life.
Nothing is entertaining about the cross. Drawing a smiley face on the cross does not change the character of a crucifixion. So, no matter how you slice it, it’s tough to sell the cross. There’s nothing entertaining about Good Friday. But then, that’s the way it should be, for we do not call this day “Happy Friday” or “Entertaining Friday,” but “Good Friday.”
Jesus didn’t come down from heaven to entertain us. He didn’t become human by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary to make us happy. He didn’t allow Pontius Pilate to crucify Him to entertain the darker, twisted nature within us. It wasn’t to make us happy that He suffered, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead as the Scriptures testify.
Your mere happiness doesn’t interest Jesus, for His burning intent is nothing less than your eternal joy! For the joy set before Him, our Lord Jesus endured the cross, ignoring its shame (Hebrews 12:2). That was so, that, in His death, He would swallow up death forever. And He did that, even though it meant that He had to set aside His glory and embrace your shame, my shame, and the shame of the entire world. All that and more is what put the good of God into Good Friday.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who bore our shame. That’s what was taking place on that first Good Friday. Although He is in Himself pure and holy, Jesus was carrying all our shame in that pure and holy body of His. That’s why He was such a horrible sight to see on that day we call “good.”
You probably know the events of Good Friday. Nails went through our Lord’s hands and feet, pinning Him to the cross around 9 in the morning. There He hung in bitter agony for six hours. Complete darkness descended from noon until He died with a loud cry around 3 p.m.
That was not a happy scene. The holy prophet Isaiah records:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by people, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. As someone from whom people hid their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. [Isaiah 53:2-3]
That sums up the way the events unfolded on that first Good Friday. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, took into Himself the sin of the world and died a sinner’s death, under the wrath and judgment of God, His righteous Father.
To the world, it looked that Jesus was the worst sinner who had ever, or would ever, live. Isaiah records: “yet we considered him stricken, and struck down by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4). Oh, it looked as if Jesus deserved to die; otherwise, why would God be punishing Him?
So we learn an important truth this night: we learn to look for God, not in what our bodily senses tell us, but in what God hides underneath our perceptions. For God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 58:9). And when we act as if the kingdom of God behaves like the kingdom of this world, we are walking by sight and not by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7).
For example, on Good Friday, God revealed His glory, not by revealing His glory, but in the shame of Christ’s death. He wrapped the eternal joys He gives us within the sorrow of the cross. God hides the comfort that He provides for our sin behind Jesus’ suffering and pain. Indeed, Good Friday is the greatest example of God taking the bad that happens in this world and working it for our eternal good (Romans 8:28)!
Now, if we were to gauge Good Friday with our physical eyes, we would think that God had struck Jesus because of His sin. But seeing with the eyes of faith, we see the true reality: it was our sins that hurt Him. Only faith will get you to believe this.
The prophet Isaiah underscores that truth. He wrote: “We considered him stricken, and struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed because of our sins. He bore the punishment that made us whole, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5).
At the cross, amid intense agony of body and soul, the Son of God opened the heart of God for the entire world to see. For behind the crucifixion events, and what they appeared to be, hidden under Christ’s agony and unbearable suffering, we see the Father’s love in action.
Who would give up his son to save another? Not me. But at the cross, God the Father sacrificed His Son, His only Son, the Son whom He loved, to remove the curse of your sin. At the cross, Jesus, the Lamb of God, stripped, mocked, and beaten, was carrying in Himself the full burden of all your sins, the sins of the world, and the sins of all time.
It’s no wonder, then, that our sins pierced and crushed Him. For, on the cross, Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, got what we deserved. At the cross, justice was done–but not as it seemed. Of course, God had stricken and afflicted Jesus, but not because of anything He did. Instead, it was our sins, yours and mine, that He was carrying on His sinless back. And there He bore our shame, as well.
Sin is rebellion, idolatry, and even open hostility against the God who, in love, created us and gave us all we have. He bought and won us by the blood of His Son. He called us by His Spirit through the Gospel. Violations of His will, then, don’t only bring guilt on us, but also shame. For acting such a way against God is, indeed, shameful.
Each of us has known the ravages of shame. It’s that sense of being dirty and filthy, contaminated by what fills you with remorse and regret. It’s saying, doing, and thinking that which leaves you broken, humiliated, and ashamed, alone and isolated from God.
But on the cross, where the Salvation of the world suffered shame, there He removed all that eternally shames us. “He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed because of our sins. He bore the punishment that made us whole, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
This day, that healing is yours. The wounds of Jesus are strength for the weary, comfort for the sorrowing, and a healing balm for the walking wounded. Thank God that He made room at the cross for all of your sins.
So, Jesus took all your sins. But what does that mean? It means that He even took those sins that have left a bitter taste in your mouth from the angry words that you have spoken. It means that Jesus took the sins that have made a wreck and brought ruin to your life. It means that He took the sins that, still today, twist your guts in a painful knot. He took your wretched refuse of foul and polluted thoughts. He took the suffocating shame and guilt that comes from your sins of thought, word, and deed.
But it’s more than that. Jesus even took the sins you thought so little of that you forget them the moment you had committed them, if not sooner. Does not your lack of remorse over such sin make you feel red-faced with shame? And yet, even that is no more in the cross of death!
But we still live in a fallen world, and so your life might not always be a happy one. But it does remain a good life in Jesus, the Lamb who died to save you, and the one who bore your shame. For that is all done now, thanks be to God.
After all, notice the punch of each power-packed phrase in our Old-Testament text: He was pierced, He was crushed, and our punishment was on Him. All of that is now long past. Gone are the bitter agony, the bloody sweat, the suffering soul, and the dying breath. All of that lies in the past, forever over and done. But the last and best part continues now and lasts forever. And that is what is yours this night, for, by His wounds, you are healed.
Every wounded heart and hurting soul can find its health restored tonight in the Savior once given into death, all so you might have true life. A cure does exist for all that ails your sin-sick soul in the words of Jesus, for they are Spirit and they are life for you today. Jesus says, “It is finished.”
And you can take Jesus at His Word. He has defeated sin, death, and hell. He has set aside the ugly record of your sin and all its shame. For Jesus did away with that in His death. And He gives you the benefits of what He did on His cross through Word and Sacrament. He has defeated the power of darkness and silenced the fury of God’s wrath. He has even dissolved the cause of your fears, even if you still happen to let them haunt you. Now, even the grave itself cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ, His Son.
For Jesus is the Lamb of God who took away your shame. In awestruck wonder, we then, as His Church, pray: “Have mercy on us, Jesus. Grant us Your peace. Amen.”
