How do you know if someone genuinely loves you? Do you know that they love you, because of their words? Or because of their actions? Does another person’s love for you speak louder because of what they say? Or because of what they do? For most of us, actions speak louder than words.
Today is Good Friday, and we will read or listen to, a very lengthy gospel narrative of the passion and death of Jesus Christ. These are not just words in the bible that we read every year on Good Friday. This is an actual account of what Jesus Christ did for you. All of His words would have been meaningless … if it wasn’t for His actions. Jesus followed up His words, with actions.
And, there is no greater love than to sacrifice your life for another person. But, that is exactly what Jesus did for you.
How hard it is to even begin to think about the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, especially knowing that He did this for us! Not “the world” but individually, for each one of us.
Words sometimes fail us. If someone who was not a Christian asked us to explain what Christ’s suffering and death on the cross meant to us, it would be hard to put it into words. Our emotions well up to the surface and get in the way.
Many people withdraw inside of themselves, shutting out the world around them during Good Friday services, when the gospel account of Christ’s passion is read. Many of us who attend Good Friday services in the afternoon, watch the procession of people who venerate the cross in silence. One by one, each person makes a profound statement of their love for Jesus in their own unique way. Words are not needed. Their love for Jesus Christ is demonstrated by their actions. Their emotions show on their faces and in their body language. Words may fail us when we contemplate Christ’s death, but our hearts do not. The heart has a language all it’s own.
Peter had a hard time handling his emotions when the soldiers came for Jesus. He defended Him with his sword, and cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave. Sometimes we act before we think too, when our emotions are out of hand. But, Jesus calmed the situation down, by telling Peter to put away his sword. He was doing His Father’s will. Out of compassion for his injury, Jesus even healed the slave’s ear.
We think we know the story about the passion and death of Jesus Christ on the cross by heart, because we’ve heard it for so many years. However, what we notice about the passion of Jesus Christ is always a little different each year. For an example in one gospel account, after the soldiers arrested Jesus, Peter stood with the slaves warming himself by a fire, because it was cold. Have you ever thought about it being cold the day Jesus was crucified? All of the movies we’ve watched about the passion of Jesus show him sweating a lot, but in reality it may not have been very warm. The cold is something we may not have even considered, when Jesus lay in misery, dying on the cross, without any clothes to keep him warm. Every single shred of human decency, need, or comfort was taken away from Him in the final hours of His life.
And yet, the Jews that brought Jesus to Caiaphas would not even enter the praetorium, for fear of defiling themselves (so they wouldn’t be able to eat the Passover meal.) What’s wrong with this picture? If we think life isn’t fair for us sometimes, then we should remember life wasn’t fair for Jesus Christ either.
The Jews even had to find someone else to order Christ’s execution, because they did not want to kill Him themselves. Pilate didn’t want to go along with it though. We need to give him a little credit for that. Pilate wasn’t even a Jew, but he recognized that Jesus was not an ordinary person. Did you notice Pilate’s reaction after the Jews told him that Jesus was guilty because he claimed to be the Son of God? The scriptures said, “Now when Pilate heard this statement, he became even more afraid.”
Jesus even had compassion on Pilate’s plight though. He was caught in the middle of a a very bad situation that he didn’t want to be a part of. Jesus understood this and did not condemn the man, who would later sentence him to death. Jesus told Pilate, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.” Jesus even eased the guilt of his own executioner.
When Jesus was crucified, Pilate had a sign made, written in three different languages stating that Jesus was the King of the Jews. He would not remove it, even after the chief priests asked him to take it down. He said, “What I have written, I have written.” Even Pilate recognized that Jesus was no ordinary man. He didn’t want anything to do with his death, and made it very clear that it was the Jewish people who wanted him dead.
Thankfully, the gospel account of Jesus’s death on the cross today is not as detailed as the readings we had on Palm Sunday. It is still very difficult to read them … but it’s also very difficult to think about Mary’s suffering as she stood beneath the cross, watching her own son die. The pain must have felt like a knife – absolutely cutting her heart in two. How could she have stood the pain? Standing by helplessly, while her precious son suffered such a horrible, excruciatingly painful death? She watched his life slowly slip away and there was absolutely nothing she could do to ease His suffering.
There was nothing Jesus could do to ease her pain either, while she watched him die, except give her to John. He gave his mother to John, to love her and take care of her for Him, after He was gone. They needed each other. They would need each other a great deal to get through the days ahead. Mary needed John, but John also needed Mary.
Jesus Christ knew what Mary, John, His apostles, and each one of us need the most. Love. Connection to one another. Forgiveness of all the things that we are most ashamed of doing. Our sins both small and great. To be “included” in the kingdom of heaven, and loved unconditionally. To experience eternal happiness, not sadness. Jesus journeyed through the worst day of His life, to open the gates of eternal life for us.
That’s what real love is.
