“You Coming?”

Last night’s Good Friday service got me thinking about a few points I hadn’t considered before. I’m still chewing on them.

First, the Roman soldiers abusing Jesus, which all of us would agree was cruel, strikes me as also being overkill. The mockery, the staging of a phony court, and the general bullies-on-steroids behavior, makes me wonder if this was more than just a bunch of sadists being themselves.

And maybe it was, but wasn’t it also the reaction of Evil in the presence of Good? If you saw that terrific Disney version of The Chronicles of Narnia from 2005, you’ll remember the scene where the White Witch oversees Aslan’s execution. The woman was downright manic, looking at the Lion like she was obsessed with him even as she killed him, and the mob of creatures was whipped up like maniacs at an orgy. So the Passion proves not only how much God hates sin, but how much sin hates God.

Second, the Lord’s horror in the garden beforehand then, for sure, through the whole ordeal. The physical pain He dreaded then endured is way too much to grasp, as is whatever sort of depraved mind came up with the idea of crucifixion in the first place. The details of what He went through for us can turn you inside out.

But there’s the mystery part of the suffering, too, which He may have dreaded even more when He asked in the garden, “Is there any other way?” Because two things were about to happen: He was going to taste and become sin, and He was going to be separated from the Father who He’d eternally loved and communed with. That’s a part of the agony we can easily overlook.

He became sin. (II Corinthians 5:21)  It was put on Him just as it was put on the innocent sacrificial lamb under the Mosaic Law because sin had to go somewhere, and someone had to pay, and no human was innocent, so nobody else was fit for the slaughter. If I imagine being forced to roll around in excrement, I can get only a fraction of what that must have been like.

Sin is something so abhorrent to God that it decimates His relations with what He loves most. He can’t tolerate it, and He certainly knew nothing of what it was like to be affected by it. Yet there Christ was, God in human form, tasting it, rolling in it, becoming it. And in the process, experiencing alienation from the Holy Father who turns away from sin, even when His own Son is the carrier, and what that did to both of them is part of the mystery we can always appreciate but never understand.

Which makes the third point so important. Jesus didn’t say “Admire Me.” He said “Follow.” And taking up my own cross is the requirement, because if I’m not doing that, I’m not following. Where there’s no cross, there’s no disciple, only an admirer mouthing sweet religious phrases.

But there’s nothing sweet about crucifixion. It’s all about sacrifice, blood and ripped flesh, realities we almost certainly won’t experience literally, but aspire to, however they come. And they come only by what we are willing to sacrificially suffer for others.

Our cross isn’t just what we suffer, because who the heck doesn’t do that? We get sick, loved ones die, injustice thrives, we suffer. That hardly distinguishes believers from non-believers.

But Jesus didn’t just suffer; He suffered with purpose. It was agony for the sake of others, and there’s the stuff personal crosses are made of. To hurt isn’t noble. To hurt for someone else’s sake is Christ-like.

Usually, at least for me, there’s not much to that. It means experiencing the discomfort of getting on my knees for a brother who’s sick or struggling, or taking extra time to do something inconvenient, or working harder to insure a project will really build someone up, or going through the tension of telling someone a truth they don’t want to hear. Big wow.

But in those daily “Thy will be done” kind of obediences, we develop the mindset and lifestyle of cross-bearers. These routine sacrifices He calls us to may be enough, or, who knows? Maybe today’s minor sufferings are training grounds for tomorrow’s extraordinary, unforeseeable ones, crucifixions we never thought we’d be up for but, by God’s grace, are in school for even now.

Bonhoeffer noted, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” I’m pretty sure that’s why last night, while we sat in the darkened sanctuary contemplating Good Friday, I heard the still small voice ask, “You coming?”