Good Friday
April 18, 2025
Good Friday, April 18, 2025
On this Holy Day of Holy Week, our heart is very aware of Jesus’ surrender of his life for the world. Though he prayed to God for this cup to pass from him, he said, “…not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus gave up all he had known and everyone he loved. He suffered torture and unspeakable agony and relinquished his life in a painful and humiliating death.
But no sacrifice was too great for Jesus. His death fulfilled his mission to save us from our temporal selves and to restore our souls. As is the way with the world, Jesus’ total innocence and purity were persecuted. His way of love, which was to replace the way of the sword, was rejected. Power, oppression of others, deceit, and greed cannot exist in the face of goodness and mercy, so they killed him. But they could not destroy the way, the truth, and the life. Those remain for all of us.
As we think about our lives during this Easter, we realize that we must give up many things to reach the union with God that our spirits so desire. We may not be called upon to give up our lives as Jesus did, but we are called upon to die to many of our hopes, dreams, and even parts of ourselves. We are called to transform our fury, disgust, and hatred into love, even for those who live by the sword and oppress others. We are called to kill our selfish inclinations and reach out to the oppressed, the rejected, the unlovable, and the unseen. This death is a difficult one, and for most of us, it takes our entire lifetime. Dying to our self-centeredness and passions requires great sacrifice. But more than that, it requires a desire for a reunification with our Creator, not only in death but now.
Each of us has a cross to bear. It is not a tree on our shoulders as was the cross of Jesus. Our cross is one of shame, the lack of being fully understood, our deficiencies, missions, necessary pain, limitations, and losses. By bearing this cross consciously, we admit our mortality and insufficiency. Our ego’s pride can reject this cross. In our arrogance we can say, “I do not have to look at my pain or the pain of anyone else.” Or instead, our soul can deny our self-centeredness, and bear our cross by receiving love beyond our own capacity. The choice is ours.
German Theologian and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer risked his life for the cross he bore. He dedicated his life to the people he pastored and Christ’s invitation to love the oppressed. Therefore, he was part of the resistance movement to the Third Reich. For following his heart and his sense of the greater good, he was imprisoned and hanged 80 years ago this month. He was only 39 years old. Before he was stripped and executed by hanging, he wrote:
“I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.”
Self-inquiry: Have you discerned what your cross may be? How has your ego dealt with your cross, and what has your soul provided you?
Dear God,
Today, we ask for your goodness and mercy as we bear our crosses. Amen
