Holy week; Good Friday

This morning, as I write this blog, I can hear the dawn chorus. Good Friday always fills me with hope, even though it is shrouded in solemnity, it is, as it's name suggests, a 'Good day'. It is the day, of all days, that I look to every day.  It is my reason for existence. The beauty of the love of God expressed to me in what Jesus achieved on that cross. A good day indeed. And hearing the birds sing as the light starts to change and the darkness diminishes feels so hopeful.

But on good Friday Jesus enters the day with a rather different perspective. As the Dawn Chorus commences The rooster joins in the song and Jesus catches the eye of his very close friend who has just denied even knowing him. After the night in custody and the grilling it held, dawn promises that the day will not be improving.

Dragged from pillar to post, mocked and beaten repeatedly, facing the jeering of the crowd and their baying for his blood, sripped, whipped and force marched, carrying the instrument of his own torture and execution, before his mother and friends, and then made a public spectacle of, an example, as he is nailed and then raised.

And in all of it he never wavers or cries out for mercy. He forgives even as he dies.

The sky goes dark.

The temple curtain is torn in two.

'Into your hands, Father, I commit my spirit '.

Jesus dies and all is silent.

After the crowd have gone away, beating their breasts, and the air is silent. Jesus lifeless body hangs limp on the cross, the blood congealing. All is still, once more.
Just another day.

I quietly creep in on the scene for a private audience. I stand and gaze in awe and wonder and with pain. So much pain.

This Jesus who has thrilled and excited me, who has moved me to tears with his compassion for the lost, who has inspired me with his purity, dazzled me.with his simplicity and creative brilliance. This Jesus who awakened hope in me, now hangs here, without hope. Lifeless. Hands that touch leppers, hands that held his mother now held by cruel nails.

I did this to you.

Me.

My sin put you here and if I had been in the crowd I may as well as have been shouting 'Crucify'.

The punishment that bought us peace was upon him,
And by his stripes we are healed.

All we, like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us turned to our own way.
And the Lord has laid on him
The sin of us all.