Reflecting on that First Good Friday

I always imagine the first Good Friday as cloudy, with a dark threatening sky. One version of the crucifixion story says that the sun was blocked and that there was an earthquake, even. Others have cited evidence that there was actually an eclipse. We don’t really know, but it couldn’t have been a nice day.

I also feel for the disciples on that tragic day. Imagine giving everything up, your family, your home, your job, to follow someone who was so charismatic, so inspiring that you KNEW he was someone special, and then watching as he is arrested very publicly, dragged before the authorities, accused of blasphemy, and executed.
Not only would you have felt in danger yourself, as one of his followers, of being arrested yourself, but you would have questioned whether he was really who he said he was.

We know the rest of the story. We know how everything he told them was true, how he warned them that this was going to happen. It all makes sense to us because we know the whole story, from beginning to end. We may even feel a certain impatience with the disciples for being so thick-skulled and not understanding, but those last days, those emotional days before the execution of Jesus must have been incredibly confusing.

One minute they are preparing for the Passover feast, renting an upper room to gather for the Seder meal, even riding into town on a donkey, with the crowd getting caught up in the event like they KNEW this Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. “Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” they all chimed in. The disciples must have felt proud to be associated with him, shooing away people who got too close, the children who wanted to ride with him, the women who must not touch this man of God.

How could it have gone from that to THIS so quickly? Now they are left to sort it all out, scattered from each other in fear, cowering in hiding places all over the city while their Lord was being nailed to a cross.

The women, the Marys, stayed anyway. Jesus’ mother, another Mary, and Mary Magdalene, whom some said was Jesus’ favorite--they all stayed with him at the cross, kneeling on the ground, sobbing openly.

And John, the beloved disciple, who looked younger because he had no beard, risked his own safety to be there with the women. The guards paid no attention to the grieving group. They were looking for weapons, for signs of an uprising by the followers of this troublemaker Jesus. They were having their lunch using the cloak they had stripped from Jesus as a tablecloth.

They were too busy trying to look fierce and do the bidding of Caesar’s army to notice the interaction between the four stragglers and Jesus, who was telling John to look out for his mother as if she was his own. “Behold, your son,” Jesus also told Mary, of John, knowing that John could not replace him as her son, but would remind him, in his love for Jesus, of all that Jesus had tried to do.

But Mary cannot be consoled so easily, although she had suspected for awhile that this time was coming. Hadn’t someone warned her that her heart would be grieved? When they told her what a great man her son would become, hadn’t they also told her that first there would be sorrow?

John, too, felt as if his heart would break. He had seen and understood so much of what Jesus had said, that as the Son of God Jesus was one with the Father. Couldn’t he have used that power to destroy these soldiers, to save himself from this horrible death?

But Mary Magdalene knew this could not happen. He had said that the temple would be destroyed, and that Jesus would rebuild that temple in three days. He was speaking of himself, Mary realized at that moment when the sky was at its darkest, as Jesus breathed his last breath. And at that moment she resolved to be there when he returned.