Why Good Friday Is Good: Reflections on Mark 15

Why is Good Friday, “Good”? I will answer that question with a question, “Why does Jesus cry out saying, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Why has thou left me? “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” There are many who see Isaiah 52:13 through the end of chapter 55 as a “controlling narrative” when it comes to the cross. They see the prophecy of the man of sorrows fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. There are some who do not and though I greatly value the naysayers point of view and believe that it has almost incalculably furthered the discussion, I agree with those who find Isaiah in the gospels and particularly in Jesus’ death on the cross. For numerous reasons it would seem that the Hebrew of Isaiah is alluded to time and time again in the gospels, particularly when it comes to the cross. However, because the prominence of the Septuagint, those allusions are “work-arounds” i.e. not direct scriptural quotations, pointing hearers to the Hebrew. It’s a way to show the way to the Hebrew behind the Septuagint. Be that as it may, we see when we read these chapters in Isaiah that nowhere is the suffering servant “left.” God the Father does not forsake the man of sorrows. In fact, it’s clear that this man of sorrows is loved down to his toes! “Behold my slave shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled and very high.” (52:13) The good pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” (10) When Isaiah “sums up” this vision in chapter 55, we hear “For as the rain comes down and snow from heaven and returns not but waters the earth and makes it bring forth and bud, to give seed to the sower and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty but shall accomplish that which I please and prosper…because ye shall go forth with joy…the mountains and the hills…the trees shall clap hands.” (55:10-13) Moreover, good pleasure suffuses the entire poem. We certainly see this reflected in the gospels. It is clear that it was out of God’s good pleasure that he sent his only begotten son. “Behold I bring you good news of a great joy which which is for all the people…Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to Men of Delight!” Such is God’s delight in sending his only begotten son that men have acquired a new nickname! Once upon a time Adam gave the woman a new nickname as well, “Chaya” or “Eve,” meaning life. He was correct to nickname her this and no doubt God is quite right to give man his new nickname as well! It is God the Father’s good pleasure and intention that Jesus would suffer and die on a cross, carrying away our sins. In Mark 15 we see this victory clearly in Barabbas, as other commentators have noted, Barabbas was on death row. He is literally a dead man walking, but the Lord Jesus’ cross literally frees Barabbas. He goes from death to life. He was the first but not last. We too were dead in our trespasses and sins,” You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient…but God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead through our trespasses made us together alive in the Anointed One.” (Ephesians 2:1-5, translation mine) Now here, a caveat in Mark’s gospel especially we do see something that might indicate the grief of the Father. This is after all his beloved Son. We see darkness cover the whole earth from noon until three o’clock. In Ezekiel we see that lamentation, “keening” and darkness covering the whole earth go hand in hand. I think we can say that our heavenly Father knows what it is like to lose a child. And yet, the “good pleasure” overwhelms it. To illustrate, I think were we to come to God the Father in tears to say “I am sorry!” The Father’s answer is “It was my joy.” As we read in Nehemiah 8:10, “the joy of the Lord will be your strength.” This isn’t their joy, but His! The good pleasure of the Lord to put his son to grief in order to give him the victory over sin and death and the devil overwhelms his grief like the sun overwhelms a lightbulb. But if God is so pleased why does he withdraw himself? The answer lies in something we have become aware of since WWII, it’s called “midrash,” or more specifically in this case, “stringing pearls.” Something I call, “magnetic points.” Look at Psalm 22. When Jesus cries out to God, he is quoting its first line. Here is Psalm 22 in full:  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? 2 O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. 3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. 4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. 7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 8 He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts. 10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly. 11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. 12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. 13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. 18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. 19 But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. 25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him. 26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. 27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. 28 For the kingdom is the Lord's: and he is the governor among the nations. 29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul. 30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. 31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this. What we see in Psalm 22 is that it has “magnetic points” to many places in the Song of the Man of Sorrow and indeed, throughout the entire Psalm we see a suffering servant ahead of time. What are these “magnetic points”? Consider the use of the world affliction we see it in Isaiah and we see it Psalm 22. There are numerous “join-up” places, pearls that are joined with pearls because of their likeness. In other words, the prophecy of Isaiah joins itself to Psalm 22. They hold hands and work together. This is why Jesus is scorned and mocked in the way that he is. This is why his clothes are divided, something never mentioned by Isaiah. Isaiah’s song of the man of sorrows is filled out with Psalm 22, magnetic point to magnetic point. In other words, part of being the man of sorrows is the withdrawal of God but in neither place, neither Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 through the end of chapter 55 is any displeasure indicated. Indeed, it is quite the contrary. I remember when my mother was in the hospital she said to me, I feel that God has left me. I don’t feel his presence. Now, many times we can imagine all sorts of wrong things about God. I certainly do, but to illustrate what I am saying above concretely through a pastoral example, we see now, with this new information that we need not be so quick to deny people’s feelings. Now we can say, “You might or might not be right, but even if you are right, even if God has withdrawn himself from you, this is the story of the cross!” At this point the sufferer will of course want to know more…and quick! One might go on then and say, “Jesus was left by his Father but not because his father didn’t love him. God the Father loved Jesus right down to his toes. Jesus was not left because God was displeased about anything but to fulfill the promise, the full promise of the suffering servant. You may be also carrying your cross and God loves you more than anything. He is pleased with you and pleased with what he has given you and the whole world through this suffering.” Much talk after this will probably ensue. But there is one thing that we really need to know at this point; we need to look at the Psalm once again and carefully. Look at the turn in the Psalm. Here it is again beginning at verse 21. Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. 22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. 23 Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. 24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Look especially at the last verse here, verse 24. In Isaiah we see how the man of sorrows is despised, how the people hide their faces from him but now God, here in Psalm 22 is saying, “Not me!” The psalmist is telling us “though they may despise the affliction of the afflicted, He will not. Though they may hide their faces from the sufferer, He will not.” In fact, when God the Father hears the cry of the sufferer, He will hear. To put this in concrete terms, when he hears you call, he comes running back into the room. He hears. When Jesus cried, Eloi, Eloi…God the Father ran back into the room. Is this not confirmed in Hebrews? “He offered up prayers..with cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.” As Psalm 22 says, “the Kingdom is the Lord’s” now and his righteousness declared to a people yet unborn, that he has done this, it is finished.

To My Muslim Cousins--After Reading Theo Padnos' Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment

Yes, you are right. 

Your point is valid.

 You say, “How is it that you Christians preach at us, nagging us not to hate and despise the Jews? Did not Christendom hate and despise the Jews?"  And although many of the ‘Aryans,’ the Nazis, also hated the church-going people and Jesus himself,  you say quite wisely, "Were not the Nazis the children of the church-going? Did not their ideas not spring from Christendom?"

You ask "How is it that you inveigh against our antagonism towards Israel and indeed towards the Jews?"

And you say further,  "Did not the Jews want to kill Jesus? One of our prophets whom we love... and your god?" 

And "Are not the Jews unbelievers, kaffir and thus essentially out of harmony with the divine?"

Finally (and here the point of your sword touches the heart)-- "Did you not do far worse than our Al-Nusra or Al Qaeda or ISIS  ever do by killing six million of them in these camps of the Europeans? Who are you to lecture us?”

 My cousin, this is indeed what we did-- and this is indeed, who we are, but let me also say this, our error, our sin, is also your sin. We worship the same God and we both of us misunderstand and reject the same God. 

We were in error in our understanding of faith and you are in error now and this error leads to the hatred of our elder brothers (and sisters too), the Jewish people. You are under the same delusion as we were and to some extent still are. What is this delusion? We think that faith is primarily something that mankind does. Man has faith, or not. And those who do not have faith, or the right kind of faith, must be redeemed or if not, go to Hell. Torture must be used against those who do not believe. This torture does two good things. It shows the difference between faith and non-faith to the people of one’s community and it encourages the non-believers to become true believers or at least submit to the divine harmony. Is this not how Al-Nusra thinks? Is this not the doctrine and policy of HTS and many other militias? Well, this doctrine and policy is quite familiar to us in the West, after all, it was our own.  Have you heard of the Inquisition? No? Well let me tell you, we know from torture. Maybe more than Al-Nusra or ISIS will ever know. Moreover, let it be said, that we “knew” as Al-Nusra “knows” that the unbeliever defiles. He defiles his community, he defiles the land. He is a disease-vector and a risk. This idea was also part of our doctrine and policy. But then something happened. This doctrine and policy grew to be something more than a doctrine and policy. It became an hypnotic trance; Germans and many other nations believed that the best way to save the entire earth was to eliminate the disease-vector from the face of the earth. The name of this disease vector was “Jew.” And we did what we did best: we exterminated. This is something, thank God, that the Middle East does not share, the urge to exterminate. In the West however this is our ancient manner of problem solving.  My cousin, here is what I have to say: we were wrong and our wrong was layers and layers and layers deep. God is like a janitor in a church basement where the sewage has overflowed and hardened. He cleans there with his mop and his scraper. And God, as you know, is not discouraged. He is an amazing janitor indeed. We in the West have layers of the foulest gunk to work through and it is not worked through yet. He works through faith and love. And faith and love? Those are his cleaners, these are his tools and this is who he is. Listen, my cousin, we in the West were completely wrong about faith. We thought that faith was primarily an attribute of man. We were wrong. God is a God of faith  (Deuteronomy 32:4) . He is the one who has faith, emunah in Hebrew. And he “enfaiths” people, people like the prophet Samuel, Shammil in the Koran.  Samuel was "established" or "enfaithed" to be a prophet. (I Samuel 3:19) He was girded about so that he could become a prophet.  And yes, we do have belief but it is a result of God's faith, his enfaithment, his girding of the prophet whom you love, Jesus. The one we know to be God. 

Cousin, you bear the Jewish people a grudge for wanting to crucify Jesus. But though we, both Jews and people of the other nations (Gentiles) meant it for evil, God meant it for good. He sent Jesus. He made Jesus to be a sin offering for many, for Jewish people and for people of the many nations. God so loved the world. He saw a terrible problem and he fixed it through Jesus. He made right what was wrong through this faith, this enfaithment. He justifies through this faith, this enfaithment. Therefore, lay down your burden, lay down your grudge against the Jews and against all unbelievers and even against own selves. What does your grudge have to do with God? Nothing. It's is not of him and it's not from him. Let me repeat, God so loved the world, enough to send his only begotten son. There is one thing you can know about every human being on this earth, from the littlest to the greatest. They are loved by God, so much so that he would give his all and more than his all. Do you see that? So, now, I ask you, what is it that God might have in store for us to do? Knowing this about God, what is the adventure that he sets you on today?-- waiting for you with loving arms with each step that you take, the one who prepares the way, the one who lifts you up as on eagle's wings.

Isaiah 25; Lincoln Kirstein and the Restoration of the Human Figure (2)

 “And he will destroy on this mountain the face of the covering that is wrapped over the people, the web that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the rebuke of his people he shall take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, ‘Behold, our God, this, we have waited for him, and he will save us, this YHWH, we have waited for him and we will be and rejoice in his salvation.’” (Isaiah 25:7-8)

And so we see in this chapter, literally headed up by the faith of God and his “enfaithment” (see 25:1 Hebrew) that the human form, figure and face is far more important than perhaps us sinners have ever imagined. We see here that the erasure of the human walks hand in hand with Death, death as a force, Death as an entity that has a life force of its own. This entity covers us in a mask, a webbing.  

When Lincoln Kirstein returned from the war, returned from work as as a “Monument Man,” he wrote to his sister of the local Germans: “Hitler was what they wanted, they made him, and everything else is simply eye-wash. The voted openly for him in 1933 and all things being equal they would vote for him tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock.” (from Jennifer Homans book Mr B: George Balanchine and the 20th Century, full footnote forthcoming) When Lincoln returned to New York his desire was to try and restore the human figure. And how could it not be so? The Bible speaks of “sorrows too big for words,” sorrows that are so big that they can’t get out of one’s mouth. What did Lincoln see over there? It was the inhuman. What our soldiers saw when they opened up those camps was a glimpse of what things would be like without the Lord Jesus. When Martin Niemoller came to New York after the war he said this in my father’s hearing: “There is nothing good in all of Western Civilization that does not come from Jesus.” And he was in a position to know. He had been in a concentration camp for eight years. 

    The killing of the Jews was different than all the killings that Stalin and Russians perpetrated. In Siberia if one did not gather so much wood, one did not receive one’s food allotment. The result was death or execution. Prisoners knew that in the main, the situation was not personal. The guards bore no grudge, no special purpose. Things were different in the camps of the Nazis. What was being done there was a special project, it was the project to save the world. It was an effort to save the world and mankind by killing off the virus-carriers, the Jews, the bringers of evil and disease. This project though was but a small step away from suicide. It was a crime against humanity; the killings of the Jews, were simply another way of killing off the human.Were the suicides and murder-suicides after Hitler's defeat really any surprise? (Think of Magda Goebbels killing off her children and her eldest daughter knowing somehow that her mother was up to no good and being very resentful of her mother as she and her siblings went up the stairs to their bedrooms that night) These killings of children and wives and husbands should come as no surprise because the entire project was really a project for murder-suicide. It would never have stopped with the Jews and indeed, it did not. Thus, we begin to understand how it was that when Lincoln Kirstein returned to New York his project was the restoration of the human and the human figure. 

    In 2020, the human race succumbed to yet another attempt at murder-suicide. It was quite different than the one in the 1930's.  It was tempered to our state and situation. Many hearts were broken, millions slid into penury and death. We must remember this, but we also must see that God was not abandoning us, rather he was and is working through this chastisement for our good. What is it to impose masks on one’s fellow man but an attempt to distort the human figure, the human face? What is the oppression of masks but an attempt to off humanity and expression of the delusion that humans are disease-vectors that must be punished and then destroyed in order to “save the world”?  Masks and the concentration camps are not the same thing, but as Dr. Mark Changizi points out, they are "in the same section of the library." Perhaps God is reminding us of our situation, namely that we are still in the grip of Death and its delusions. Perhaps as the last survivors of the concentration camps pass away, God, seeing the lack, is reminding us himself. We are no better than the Germans of whom Lincoln wrote. But we also reminded at the same time that God is faithful. He sent his only begotten son because he so loved the world, both Jew and Gentile and as we can see, he does not wash his hands of us like some cowardly and cruel Pontius Pilate, he loves us and gives us all things. He intends nothing less for us than victory. His glory is when mankind comes to freedom and freedom of heart to love one another and forgive and to be like him.