Segun Gbadegesin
ACCORDING to convention, today is Good Friday or Holy Friday or God’s Friday. And convention is what human beings create and stick to. It is our tradition of doing things and naming events. There is a paradox here.
From the perspective of the Almighty God who ordained the birth and death of Jesus Christ, whatever He does is good, and that includes the sacrifice of an only son for the sake of His human creatures. But for us as humans, we tend to see things differently. We would not be humans if we didn’t. So, we consider death in whatever form or shape as bad.
In the particular case of the death of Christ on the cross, it was not only the manner of the death but the intrigue that caused it that was extremely bad and evil. He was wrongly accused of treason and blasphemy. He was maltreated by his accusers. He was mocked. There was a palpable miscarriage of justice. Yet, in the midst of it all, he remained calm and cool. No curse word came from his mouth. He even admonished his disciple who resorted to violence to defend him.
In that regard, the day on which his unjust killing occurred should be judged a bad day for all intents and purposes—that is, from our human point of view. If it happened to any of us, and we were in a position to pass judgment, we would curse the day it occurred. Therefore, if by convention we have come to recognize the day on which the Messiah was crucified as good, there better be a good explanation and justification.
There is an explanation and, humanly speaking, it is a selfish one. For Christians, the death on the cross is even a happier and merrier occurrence than the birth in the manger because without it, salvation is impossible. Therefore, for the salvation of humans, Christ must die on the cross and resurrect from the grave. The intended consequence of death on the cross—the salvation of humans—is good. Therefore, the means to that consequence is good. Even the elders who prosecuted and judged Christ made the point that it is alright that one should die so that the many may be saved. It is a utilitarian reasoning.
Let us agree that this is a valid reasoning and there is something good in the death on the cross and therefore this is indeed a Good Friday. Shouldn’t we also expect at least believers in the sacrifice that made possible the salvation of souls follow suit? Shouldn’t the example of Christ’s sacrifice be a model for leaders and followers at least in Christendom? His was a life of simplicity. His armor was truthfulness. He delivered a message of hope and redemption. He not only empathized with the poor, he also blessed them with sustenance. And while he abhorred sin, he did not reject sinners; he even dined with them.
More than two thousand years after the supreme sacrifice of the one we claim to follow, many Christians, including some in the leadership rank of all stripes and collars have only paid lip service to the creed of the Messiah. They complicate what is a simple message of love and sacrifice. They are pretenders and impostors who draw crowds of sycophants through means other than Christ. They court satanic powers to attract membership to their congregation and expect the spirit of Christ to fall on them! They sell their halls of worship to the highest bidder and hope that the God who noticed and recognized the widow and her mite is not attentive. And while they condemn corruption from the pulpit, they are not ashamed to receive the bounties that corrupted hands deliver.
No one preaches or expects perfection. Even the Messiah who reflected the perfection of God was humble enough to attribute perfection to God alone. But there is an expectation that spiritual leaders have the responsibility to lead by example and not just by words, in the observance of the teachings of Christ. Instead, in many congregations, the human inclination to categorize by rank and the promotion of inequality instead of the egalitarian teaching of Christ has been the order.
They rank spiritual kinds, with some higher than others, and the concept of the priesthood of all believers is jettisoned. Christ taught his disciples that he was their only Teacher and they shouldn’t call anyone on earth teacher. He told them that their only Father was in heaven and they shouldn’t call anyone on earth Father. He taught them that whoever was greatest among them shall be their servant. And he demonstrated this by symbolically washing their feet.
Christ lived a simple human life and was not a proud and haughty human. He dined with sinners. He drank with the lowliest. He had compassion on an adulterer without condoning adultery, and deftly dispensed an impeccable justice against her accusers. He revered the Sabbath day without worshipping it, which was one of the reasons he was rejected by the Pharisees.
Today, unfortunately, however, many that claim to be his followers have substituted the Big-man philosophy of religion for the teachings of Jesus Christ. In this corrupt philosophy of religion, what really matters is how big the followership is, and how much power and resources they are able thereby to control. They speak publicly against the kingdom of darkness but secretly serve as ministers of that kingdom.
No wonder that even as churches litter the nooks and crannies of our streets, the evils of cultism, kidnapping, and armed robbery are on the rise. Sure, we condemn the evils that eat at the soul of the individual perpetrators without harming others, but we condone those evils that harm others but benefit the perpetrator. While they condemn the specks in the eyes of others from bureaucrats to politicians, they cleverly hide the logs in their own eyes.
On this holy remembrance of an otherwise evil day, which by convention we have come to regard as good because we believe that it was the moment our salvation was bought with the blood of the innocent Master, it behooves all Christians to honestly imbibe the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the cross. If we truly believe that He sacrificed his life so we can gain salvation, it is our obligation to make humanly possible sacrifices so the downtrodden, the rejected and forgotten in our midst may live a life that is dignified and decent. It is not the magnificence of a cathedral that matters; it is the spirit of giving that we imbibe in the hearts of men and women that God appreciates.
In this stressful time of a global pestilence that has a devilish capacity to test our faith in various ways, the faithful have a responsibility to stand firm in the faith of the one who called them to discipleship; to be calming voices in the midst of the storm; to reassure a fear-stricken world of the omnipresence of the one who commanded the storm to be still. In doing so, however, we cannot afford to tempt God. Most importantly, in the spirit of the giving demonstrated on Calvary, there is nothing too much for us to give for that love that is beyond our understanding. And as he has directed us, we must do it for the lowliest among us. Not doing his will in this regard automatically earns his justifiable condemnation.
So, yes, it is still a Good Friday, and thankfully so because the evil committed on this day more than two thousand years ago turned out to be good for humanity. This is especially because the crucified, dead, and buried Lord rose triumphantly from the dead on Easter morning! And our faith in the living God is renewed. Hopefully, we are worth the sacrifice.
If the foregoing sounds like a sermon; it isn’t. It’s only a sober thought and reflection on our spiritual heritage in the age of ostentatious spirituality, an oxymoron in itself.*
- An earlier version of this piece first appeared on this page on Good Friday 2013.
