For The Record

Submit birth, marriage and obituary records online.

Personal Ads

Meet new friends today!

Advertising

Put your message in front of 33,000 readers.

PDF documents on this site require the free Adobe Reader:

Get Adobe Reader

2008-03-18 issue:

It isn’t over until ...

The tears of Good Friday lead to the gladness of Easter morning.

by Kenneth L. Gibble

Print Article

There they crucified him.

With those four short words from John 19:18, we reach the climax of the story of salvation. It’s the story of love so amazing, so divine, that, although two millennia of Good Fridays have come and gone, we are no nearer to understanding it than were the believers who have gone before us.

There they crucified him.

With those four words, the Christian faith makes a radical departure from every other world religion. Christianity alone dares to proclaim a crucified God. No other religion proclaims a Savior who died a criminal’s death on a gallows.

And that, they thought, was that. Who thought it? Those responsible for it, those who simply wished him dead, those who didn’t care much one way or the other and even those, especially those, who had desperately hoped it would not come to this—his disciples, friends, loved ones.

When they saw him hanging on that cross, saw him nailed there, stretched out between earth and sky, they thought it was over. Done.

What Pilate thought
Pilate, the Roman governor who had ordered and witnessed crucifixions aplenty, thought so. I wonder if he ever felt sorry for his victims. Did he give any thought to the agony of the ones he crucified? Maybe, maybe not. Whether he did or not, whether or not he even thought of it as a nasty business, Pilate knew somebody had to do it, and he was that somebody. And in the case of this Jesus, Pilate added a touch of humor to the event.

Humor? Yes, but not the kind of humor we call a saving grace, not the kind that brings happy laughter. Instead it was dark humor; gallows humor, we sometimes call it. It was the same kind of sadistic humor the Nazis forced on those they herded into shower rooms before turning on the deadly gas, a humor that mocks those about to die, shames them and so compounds the horror.

Pilate, the would-be humorist, had an inscription written and put on the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” It’s a joke. A sick joke, to be sure, but a joke nonetheless.

Get it? This pathetic, beaten, bruised human creature hanging on the cross is, of all things, a king. Isn’t that wild? Look at him; he’s the king of the Jews. Do you get the joke? You beaten-down, pathetic people who have been conquered by Caesar’s armies, here is your king. Look at him. This is what happens to anyone who forgets who the real king is around here.

This is Caesar’s joke. And to make sure everybody got the punch line, Pilate took the trouble to have it written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.

Not surprisingly, the religious leaders didn’t appreciate the joke. They got it, all right, but they were offended. They urged Pilate to do some editing, have the inscription read, “This man said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’ ”

No way. That’s not a joke at all. It may be the truth, but it isn’t clever, it isn’t funny. Pilate’s answer was terse, authoritative: “What I have written, I have written.”

What have you written, Pilate? Did you have any clue that eventually the joke would be on you? If only you had had a greater imagination, you would have created a better, truer joke.

You would have had an inscription placed on the cross that read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of kings.”

The truth is, Pilate, your attempt at humor backfired. You were wrong. Just as all the so-called powerful ones in history have done, you thought you would have the last word. You’ll show this “king” who’s really in charge.

You see, Pilate, the one you condemned to death was indeed a king, one who once said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all people to me.” And now he is indeed lifted up. His throne is a most unlikely one—two rough pieces of wood planted in the ground. But this dying Jesus is a most unlikely king. His kingdom is an eternal one. This king makes all the kings, all the Caesars who ever lived, look like little boys playing childhood games. What you thought was over, Pilate, has just begun.

What Mary thought
Hanging on the cross, the crucified one looks down and sees his mother standing there, next to a disciple he loves. He says to her, “Woman, here is your son.” And he says to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” Both Jesus’ mother and the disciple he loved also thought it was over.

The Fourth Gospel records only two appearances of Jesus’ mother in his account. She is there at the beginning for the first miracle Jesus performs, at the wedding at Cana. And she is there at the end, when another miracle is unfolding.

What had Mary been thinking and feeling as she watched Jesus go about his ministry of healing and teaching? Had she been apprehensive? Had she worried he was getting in over his head? Had she heard the rumors that his enemies were out to get him?

Yes, surely. And now she must stand and watch as the child she once nursed, once rocked to sleep, the child whose boyhood bumps and bruises she kissed to make them better, this child, her son, is soon to draw his last breath. The agony of Jesus on the cross is hard to imagine. It is equally hard to imagine the agony of his mother, who thinks all her prayers and tears on his behalf have come to this—a cruel ending to her son’s life.

What she doesn’t realize is that her dying son is offering her the gift of consolation. By entrusting her to the care of one he loves, Jesus gives his mother a prelude to resurrection, just as every act of solace and comfort to grieving ones becomes, by God’s grace, a step forward to a new reality. “In the midst of life we are in death,” says the service for the dead. It is equally true that in the midst of death we are in life, the kind of life Jesus meant when he said: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).

What the disciples thought
And the disciple Jesus loved, in fact, all his disciples—John, James, Andrew, Peter and the rest—all think it is over, too. All their hopes, their dreams of glory, are shattered. Gone are the opportunities they had to listen to Jesus as he spoke to the crowds, walked the road with them, always teaching, showing them signs of the kingdom. Never again will they see him reach out and touch a blind man’s eyes and give him sight, break a few loaves into a meal for a multitude, calm an angry sea.

For Peter especially, such an ending is nearly impossible to bear. He who had promised to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus when the testing time came, he whom Jesus had called “rock,” is devastated by his failure, his denial. Like the other disciples, he had turned tail and run away. Now that Jesus is dead, there is no possibility to ask his forgiveness, no chance for the broken relationship to be restored.

As he contemplates what the cross means, Peter can’t imagine it isn’t over. He can’t conceive the possibility of resurrection. Peter is anyone—even you and I—who face the kind of desolation unable to see beyond the immediacy of pain. Our sin, guilt and grief can become so intense, so all-consuming, that it takes over completely. We may get to the point of feeling dead inside.

Like everyone present on the day Jesus was crucified, you and I may think it is indeed over.
What is our response? Is it tears?

Perhaps. Tears for his agony. Tears for our complicity in his suffering. Tears for all the sorrows that assail us in this often grief-stricken existence of ours that some have called “a vale of tears.”

Tears are understandable. Tears are appropriate. But tears are not enough. And tears are not the last word.

It isn’t over until …

Resurrection is the last word. The tears of Good Friday lead to the gladness of Easter morning.

Something is over. For people of the resurrection, what’s over is the long night of despair. What’s over is fear that immobilizes our wills, guilt that cripples our relationships with God and others, self-hatred that blocks us from becoming the liberated, joyous people God longs for us to be.

Resurrection means that all the ills that plague us, even death itself, are swallowed up in the ending God makes possible: eternal life.

Resurrection also means we are set free to give our lives in service to the world God so loves. Resurrection people know their lives have meaning, have purpose.

“Feed my sheep,” the risen Jesus said to Peter, who had wept bitter tears.

And he says it still, to you and me: “As you look at the cross, are you weeping for me, for yourselves? I understand. But then, after the weeping, dry your tears. And go, feed my sheep.”

And maybe, in response, we will answer as the hymn writer did:

“But drops of grief can ne’er repay
the debt of love I owe.
Here, Lord, I give myself away;
‘tis all that I can do.”

Kenneth L. Gibble lives in Greencastle, Pa.

Reader Comments

Add Comments