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Good Friday

Writer's picture: Justin Scoggins, Th.D.Justin Scoggins, Th.D.

Crucifixion/Passion of Jesus Found in Matthew 27:27-44; Mark 15:16-32; Luke 23:26-43; John 19:16-27.

I think about this moment a lot. I believe I would skirt the edge of arrogance if I said that fully grasped what happened today some 2000+ years ago. Whatever atonement theories are out there (which each have merit), I like to stick to what scripture has to say. The biblical word in Greek for atonement is ‘kattalage’. It’s ‘reconciliation’. Right relationship or ‘oneness’. A rough translation would be “to-one”. The state of being ‘at one’, in harmony, in friendship, is ‘atonement’. All the other theories have to be wrapped up in this.

This moment stands still. As the painting below by Max Ernst so eerily captures, there is pain and agony. Darkness and death are ever-present. Again, this is God keeping his covenant with us, but it was truly a covenant with himself on our behalf. The humanness of Christ shouldn’t be overlooked here. The blood, the immense pain, the screams. All of it is there in the human God on the cross. He issues forgiveness, he sings a psalm, he sees his mother, and he thirst. All to set things right, at one with himself and creation. It’s a paradox of violent beauty. It is love to the uttermost. From a human perspective, it is absolutely absurd. I think an early church father named Tertullian said he believes it because it is absurd.

An old hymn goes: “How deep is the Father's love for us? How vast beyond all measure? That He should give His only Son To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss? The Father turns His face away As wounds that mar the Chosen One Bring many sons to glory

Behold the man upon a cross My sin upon His shoulders Ashamed I hear my mocking voice Call out among the scoffers”

Again, this moment stands still. I think about it often. All I know for certain is that love, true and unvarnished love, was shown that day in the human God, Christ, so we could be ‘at-one’ with him.

“So my thesis is that Jesus died of being human. His very humanity meant that he put up no barriers, no defenses against those he loved who hated him. He refused to evade the consequences of being human in our inhuman world. So the cross shows up our world for what it really is, what we have made it. It is a world in which it is dangerous, even fatal, to be human; a world structured by violence and fear. The cross shows that whatever may be remedied by this or that political or economic change, there is a basic wrong, persistent through history and through all progress: the rejection of the love that casts out fear, the fear that without the backing of terror, at least in the last resort, human society and thus human life cannot exist. The cross, then, unmasks or reveals the sin of the world.”—Herbert McCabe from “Good Friday” in his collection “God Matters”

Crucifixion, by Max Ernst. 1913.



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Artwork credit: The Last Supper, Sadao Watanabe ,1977

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