Thinking of Good Friday
I was flipping through the TV a minute ago and saw briefly some church doing another Easter Drama. This was not a choir singing but an elaborate well staged drama with people boldly acting out their parts.
I am not a fan of biblical movies and dramas or even novels for that matter. Dramas of Easter diminish their subject. I have sat with the dying enough to know that a drama or even a movie cannot capture the horrible moment when a friend, a loved one, even a stranger dies. Whether or not there is blood spurting or a whithered face gone pale, the moment a life leaves a body, quite or dramatic, is something that rolls in you mind forever, a reality that you wish never to relive, never to remember again.
After the drama is over, the accolades begin, the false humility exudes. All the glory focuses on the people who performed. And the subject of the drama fades as the spot lights fade. At this moment, there are lives being destroyed, self destructing and no drama, no movie can save them. Whenever someone tells me a movie changed their lives I run away from it because I know that a false god is being proclaimed. When I hear how wonderful some preacher is or some ministry is, I know that something is wrong. Unless the glory goes to Christ, unless we see that it is he who redeems and saves and frees us and empowers us, then we have misplaced fame and glory. We have assigned what belongs to God alone to another.
Rituals remind us of the grim reality of Easter. The bread and the cup relive the drama. Good Friday services tell the story again. Through the words of Scripture we hear the condemning words, the acts of betrayal, the pounding of hammers, the weeping of women. Through Scripture we see the darkness fall, the false compassion of sponges of vinegar, the cry of forsakenness, and then those words of triumph, “It is Finished!” The Word preached goes forth in the power of the Holy Spirit and renews our minds and replenishes our soul. We do not need the editorial eye of the camera to understand the destruction of thorns, and whips and nails and wood. However, we also know that the physical is only the surface, the tip of the iceberg. How can a drama capture the fact that God (who dwelt in eternal bliss) chose to become man and then die for us? But more so, how can a drama capture the fact that the God-Man became sin for us. The older I get the more I understand the sewage of the soul and how utterly repulsive our sin must be to God. Yet, God became sin, became our scapegoat, our substitute, our lamb. The God-man submitted to this soteriological end for sinners like us, experiencing death, even perhaps hell for our sakes. Good Friday is the ultimate expression of Love and Grace. No drama, no movie will ever capture this reality.
While Resurrection Sunday should be filled with Joy, Great Joy, Good Friday should be a day of sorrow. What a bittersweet sorrow.
Man of sorrows! What a name
for the Son of God, who came
ruined sinners to reclaim!
Alleluia! What a Savior!
Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned he stood;
sealed my pardon with his blood:
Alleluia! What a Savior!
Guilty, helpless, lost were we;
spotless Lamb of God was he:
full atonement-can it be?
Alleluia! What a Savior!
Lifted up was he to die;
‘It is finished!’ was his cry;
now in heaven exalted high:
Alleluia! What a Savior!
When he comes, our glorious King,
all his ransomed home to bring,
then anew this song we’ll sing:
Alleluia! What a Savior!
Philip P. Bliss (1838-1876)
