What's "Good" About Good Friday?

The most popular question asked on Good Friday every year is, “In light of what happened today, why do we call it ‘Good’ Friday? What happened was pretty awful.” In truth, theologians and thinkers have written many commentaries and meditations on the answer to this question, and now I am going to be one of them.

A couple of years ago my family experienced the singularly unique experience of dealing with the loss that comes from a fire, as on New Years Day, my parents home burned to the ground leaving them only with the clothes on their backs. In the months that followed, my siblings and I tried to work together to replace those items that were most dear to them that were lost that day. We took family photos that we had and got them reframed and gave them to replace those that were burned. We brought them statues that they had entrusted to our care through the years hoping that they would bring them some comfort as they returned to their original caretaker. Immediately after the fire my sister came to my parents who were staying with my brother, and gave them a crucifix: the crucifix that had sat in my grandfather’s casket. I watched my mother as she took it in her hands, and with tenderness and love, she held it close to her, as she expressed her thanks with only a look, because the tears choked her up too much to get out any words. Isn’t it interesting – that in a time of devastation and loss- a symbol of death can bring such comfort? There is likely not a catholic home in the world that does not have a crucifix hanging somewhere within it! It’s an image that stands the test of time in a world that is so fleeting and so flippant. In a day and age where nothing is permanent and nothing is sacred, there remains this one thing that provides for us sentiments of hope, faith, and the promise of a brighter tomorrow. Somewhere at the very core of the mystery of the cross, it would seem that we inherently know there is something “good.” The answer is simple, and it even rhymes: today is good, because of the wood. This whole story begins, and culminates, with the wood of a tree. God had created the world out of pure and perfect love – love for you and for me. He created it as a paradise wherein we would want for nothing, and live forever in perfect union with him! He creates Adam in his very image and likeness, and gives him dominion over all creation. God looks over the whole scene and scripture says “he saw how ‘good’ it was.” The Hebrew word used here is twob (tobe). It means more than just the simple and passing way that we use the word, in fact it’s used in the Old Testament 559 times, in various ways. It means completeness, it means elite, it means holiness, joy, favorable, and loving, among other things. God looks upon his creation and sees that it is all of those things twob. As we know, God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…three persons united in a relationship of perfect self-sacrificial love! If Adam is made in his image and likeness, then he too is made for relationships of love. So God looks upon Adam and says, “it is not good for the man to be alone.” It is not twob because Adam is incomplete, so He creates Eve. Now Adam can truly live as one who is in the image and likeness of God, for now he can live in a relationship of love! They come together as husband and wife. God plants a tree in the Garden of Eden and instructs them not to eat of its fruit, and Adam and Eve in their disobedience eat the fruit anyhow, causing humanity’s permanent separation from God and the eternal life he had intended for us, and introduced the notion of sin and death into our world: twob is destroyed. But Jesus comes to us as the new Adam, who by his very nature is the perfection of twob, of completeness, love, joy, and holiness. He’s the one who’s going to fix it, and just like the first Adam destroyed it by the fruit of a tree, the new Adam will restore and redeem it by being the fruit of a tree…the tree of the cross, and the fruit is his glorious resurrection. Consider the experience of this new Adam. A week ago the crowd hailed him as king, today they declare “we have no king but Caesar!” The Jerusalem that welcomed him, today disowns him. The new Adam, like the first, finds himself alone. Jesus embraced the cross – the instrument of his death- and carried the 150lb beam of wood to the site of his crucifixion. Dehydrated, sleep deprived, starving and bleeding, scholars estimate this mile walk with the additional weight of the cross, likely took him about an hour and a half. St. John told us tonight that the site of the crucifixion was called Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull.” Upon arrival, Jesus is stripped of his garments. The new Adam, like the first, is alone and naked. When he is crucified a sign is hung over his head with the charge against him written on it in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” They are trying to mock him, but are in fact proclaiming his kingship to the three major cities of the world: Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens. The new Adam, like the first, is alone and naked, and given dominion over all creation. Then he changes everything. Where the first Adam looked at the wood of the tree and took what he wanted, the new Adam instead gives up everything. I imagine that as the Roman Soldiers’ hammer hit the first nail, there was from the crowd a stunned silence. Even those who called for his death would have been shocked at the horror of their barbarism. The unmistakable, and sickening clank of the hammer hitting that nail pierced the barriers of heaven to announce to the Father that the moment of mankind’s redemption was at hand. As Jesus felt the excruciating pain of that nail driving through his wrist, his mother Mary felt the same pain as that nail mystically tore through her heart. I imagine that Saint John held our inconsolable Blessed Mother in his arms, covering her ears, praying he could spare her the horror of hearing the blows of the hammer, as they would have had to strike the nail harder and harder in order to accomplish their inhumane goal of pushing a nail through a man’s wrist, and deep enough into the wood to secure him to it. The wood of the first tree was planted by the hand of God in the plush and green Garden of Eden. The wood of this tree would be planted by man in solid rock. When the soldiers were done with their barbaric work, they raised the cross from the earth, as Jesus is jostled about, and the only sound more sickening than that of the nails was likely the thud of the wood of the cross sliding into the rock below: a thud that shook the very core of hell, announcing to the prince of darkness that the day of his defeat had arrived, while the roots of this new tree of life penetrated the earth like a lifeline to those who had been waiting in the sleep of death. As he hung there and wept for our sins, his mother wept in sorrow, and as their eyes met, they each knew the bond between them. Just as Adam and Eve each saw in the other the purpose for their existence, so too is the case for the new Adam and Eve. They are united as one in their suffering: and as it was for the first Adam and Eve, the love they shared was once again the only cure for Adam’s loneliness. In the new Adam and Eve two become one at a level far deeper than any husband and wife, they discover that the bond between them is not only that of flesh and blood, but in fact divine grace: the divine grace that pours from his wounds, is the same divine grace that makes her who she is. Literally: it’s in their veins. Saint John tells us that the last word of Jesus from the cross was “it is finished”: “Kalah” (kaw-law) in his native Hebrew. Which means more than just “it is finished”, it also translates, “it is accomplished”, “it is consumed”, “it is destroyed”, or “it is defeated.” When the first Adam and Eve disobeyed God at the tree in Eden the result was confusion and chaos. The worst of humanity was on parade as Satan won the day: dishonesty, blaming, separation, and shame. On the wood of this tree, the new Adam and Eve do no blaming, but rather take upon themselves the guilt of every sinner. There is no dishonesty but rather pure righteousness. There is no separation, but only communion. There is no shame, but rather this victorious declaration by our Savior that hell has been defeated, death has been destroyed, the fires of hell have been consumed by the open wounds of his body, and once and for all IT IS FINISHED: redemption is accomplished. But that’s not the end of this story about wood is it? Tonight a priest or deacon will process down the aisle of YOUR Church and will proclaim, “Behold the WOOD of the Cross, on which has hung the savior of the world!” We will then in turn come forward and venerate the wood of that Cross, but what does that veneration really mean? We call the Church “the Bride of Christ”…and we like to always brag about how WE are the Church, but it is at the wood of the Cross that this phrase finds its true meaning. You see Mary is a place holder at the wood of Calvary. As the model and exemplar of the Church, she stands in our place as the new Eve, but we are called to be Eve in the world today: we are the bride of Christ, the bride of the second Adam! It is not good for him to be alone – he longs for us, and we are incomplete without him! We are called to come together in union with our Adam, it is in fact our destiny that two become one. In Eden, Adam and Eve discover that they are made for relationship with one another at the very core of who they are: they recognize in each other that there is no one else like them, and they come together in their flesh. At Calvary the new Adam and Eve likewise discover that they are in the world for one another, and there is no one else like them, as they come together in their suffering, and then in their glory. As we approach the wood of the cross tonight what do we find, when each and every one of us beholds our Adam? As the new Eve, we who are the Church should find all the same things as the Eves before us: we should find in him our purpose for our existence – because that’s what he finds in you. We should find in him the completion of who we are- because that’s what he finds in you. When we venerate the wood of the tree of the cross we express the reality of what happens when we receive him in the Eucharist: two are to become one sacramentally in this world – joined together in suffering and in love…so that one day we may reign together, sharing the dominion over that new and perfect creation that is to come. That is precisely why we call this day “good.”