good friday – Aspirational Adventures

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In the gospel of Matthew [Matt 27:46] Jesus is quoted as saying Psalm 22 “My God, my God, why did you forsaken me?” which has allowed for many debates, books, and sermons about what was really going on that this moment of Jesus’ crucifixion and why Jesus said those words and why he felt/was abandoned by God.

But what if he didn’t actually say those words! Have a conversation with someone and then an hour later both of you sit down and write down what was said. I bet both accounts are different.

Here’s a thing – when one writes historical fiction the writer only has so much to go on and so will, using the information they have from many sources, will put words into the historical character’s mouths. These are real people who did say real things but maybe not as is written in the books.

But what if that is the same with Jesus? Jesus, I believe, is a real historical person who really did stuff, who really died and really did rise again. But I’m not 100% sure he said what he is quoted as saying.

Each of the gospel writers has an audience they are writing for so each pulls in from difference sources the message they want to convey; the same as all writers do. Also every thing about Jesus came from memory because I don’t think anyone understood really who he really really was until after his resurrection.

To go against this feeling of God forsaking him on the cross Henri Nouwen says

Jesus suffered and died for our sake. He suffered and died, not in despair, not as the rejected one, but as the Beloved Child of God. From the moment he heard the voice that said, “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests,” he lived his life and suffered his pain under the Blessing of the Father. He knew that even when everyone would run away from him, his Father would never leave him alone.
Henri Nouwen DAILY MEDITATION | MARCH 20, 2024

I think instead of saying “this is what Jesus really said” we need to say “this is what the gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus as saying” and we then wonder what Matthew’s reasoning behind that was. Did Matthew feel that way when Jesus was crucified?

Nouwen is saying, and does in many of his meditations, that once one knows one is a beloved child of God, loved unconditionally, then one knows that even when one screws up God doesn’t leave. Read Job. He knows that no matter what God is God doing God stuff that Job will never understand.

Maybe Matthew misquoted or had an agenda in his gospel writing that we do not know today. Don’t you wish you could talk to the gospel writers, all of them even the ones the early church didn’t put in the Bible, and ask them why they wrote what they wrote and what it meant to them?

Etching of crowded crucifixion scene by Nicolaes de Bruyn 17th C — 17th Century etching of The Crucifixion (Matt. 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; John 19:25-27) by Nicolaes de Bruyn

I often wonder why we now associate Easter with eggs and rabbits in church as much as outside of church. I think it is because to accept the reality of what happened to Jesus on the cross is too horrific to bear. It is also easy to gloss over it because the gospel writers didn’t do a description of it, but that was because they didn’t need to go into descriptions of what it was like because their readership knew. Crucifixion was not something that only happened on Good Friday to Jesus and the two unnamed robbers either side of him. It was something that the readership of all the gospels would have seen on a regular basis. It was the Roman’s way of punishing and letting the local populace know what would happen to them if they disobeyed the might of the “Pax Romanus”. For those who fell foul of Roman it was a brutal. Again something that is often not explored.

But Jesus knew the horror of what he was walking towards. He talks of “carrying your cross” which again has become a nice sanitised sermon about setting out on a journey to “give up self”. I think when Jesus said about carrying your cross, him and his disciples had just walked past a row of dying people hung on crosses. Jesus was saying “are you willing to die a humiliating death for what is right and true?” It is the same as turning the other cheek. To carry one’s own cross does not mean that we defend ourselves, or even willing submit to giving up “ego” but that we let someone else have their way even if it is the wrong way to realise the greater good, or as Aslan said in “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” so we can “release the deeper magic.”

We need to remember that Jesus wasn’t all nicely wrapped up in loin cloth hanging serenely from the cross for all to see. He was beaten, crushed, naked and possibly with an erection because apparently when a man is in horrendous pain or when the body is wrenched as it would be on the cross the penis goes erect, which is a place of total humiliation. This is why the Romans did this. Not only did it kill slowly but was humiliating. It was not a nice death and Jesus opted in for this kind of death.

My husband shared a story – and I can’t find a link for it – about a church that makes a Jesus on the cross out of bread. From what I can remember of it they did a naked Jesus and when someone played the soldier who speared Jesus side he accidentally knocked off the bread penis. But that got me thinking about how high Jesus would have been from the ground for a grown man to be able to push is spear into Jesus’ side. I am thinking these crucified people would probably have been hanging just off the ground with their feet almost touching. I wonder if it is worse to be almost touching the ground rather than up high like Jesus is portrayed in many church renditions. I don’t think he was high up and able to see across everyone. Possibly when he spoke to his mother and to John he was only head and shoulders above them.

I’ve also wondered the bits in the Bible during the crucifixion where it says people didn’t understand what he said. Ok some of it was because he was slowly losing the power to breath as his lungs were stretched – another thing that we don’t talk about it in church. But also the site of the crucifixion was really busy with people. There would be those who were quietly weeping aas they watched their family members die hoping ot to be open grief probably did not happen because of fear of reprisals from the Romans. But there would also be the crowd who were there to jeer and catcall to make themselves look good in front of the Roman authorities. They would be wanting to heard saying how pleased they were that these people were being crucified. They were fitting in and covering their backs, denying association with those hanging there. Remember that when Jesus was crucified it was not a sombre religious occasion but something people were fearful of, were glad it was happening to someone else. It was humiliating! Horrendous!

Yes church talks of Jesus rejected and alone but do we really know how rejected and alone. And also how quickly we would probably be to fit in with the crowd rather than stand out say he was our friend and maybe be in the next lot to be crucified?

Crucifixion was crap, horrendous, brutal. I often wonder if that was why the early established church shortened the time from crucifixion to resurrection? So one doesn’t have to dwell on it for too long. Jesus says he’ll be in the belly of the earth three days [about 72 hours] and yet the church shortened it to two nights, about 36-40 hours in total. Half the time. Are we all too willing to brush over the horrors not just of what Jesus went through but of the horrors that goes on in our world now?

Perhaps today should be called “Horrendous Friday” not Good Friday. Though of course it is good Friday because we know what happens next so again maybe that’s why we gloss over the bad bits?