Fr. Dale’s Good Friday Homily
Gospel: John 18:1-19:42
April 18, 2025
Imagine walking into town from the country to go to market and passing through a line of naked, crucified men hanging on crosses along both sides of the road. Some of the men may be already dead, some still gasping for air as they slowly suffocate. Others are cursing the government and everyone else in outbursts of anger and pain.
That is what Jewish men and women had to endure whenever Rome executed someone. Crucifixion was a brutal, inhumane torture reserved for non-Roman citizens. Executions were public affairs meant to frighten people into submission. And for the Jew, crucifixion was proof positive of God’s total rejection and condemnation. Anyone “hung on a tree” was surely cursed by God.
So the crucifixion of Jesus was not a pretty affair. We sometimes decorate our crosses and clean up our art work to make it less revolting, but then we miss the human tragedy and horror of the event. But the death of Jesus was as brutal and gory as any execution could possibly be. Is it me, or does anyone else view the repackaging of the film, “The Passion of the Christ” as such an attempt to sanitize what has already been produced as “over the edge?”
May be… may be…
Those who had any hope that Jesus was a good man sent by God went home that day sorely disappointed and hurt. A crucified criminal could not be a good man. And Jesus was indeed a crucified criminal.
That was the human vision of what happened on Good Friday. That is how the event appeared to most of those who were there. The event was nothing less than a horrible disaster, a degrading end to a young man’s career. In the words of Isaiah, “there was in him no stately bearing…nor appearance that would attract us.” He was a “man of suffering…spurned, and we held him in no esteem.” Isaiah states further, however, that there is an entirely different way to view what happened.
To the eyes of faith, this horror was an act of love, an act of victory and, in John’s words, a moment of GLORY. As Isaiah says, “it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that He endured”. After Resurrection and Pentecost, the Christian community could look back on that horrible event and say that Jesus, in an act of unconditional love, had suffered for our sins and won our salvation. The early church interpreted the events of Good Friday in the light of God’s loving plan of salvation. Good Friday was not just a human event, a Roman execution. It was also an act of love as Jesus laid down his life for us, His friends.
John, more than any evangelist, emphasizes Jesus’ free offering of Himself in service to God and to us. John talks about the crucifixion as Jesus’ “finest hour”. Is John clueless? NOT. John has captured a deep fact of our faith. God, and only God, can take the most horrible act of a person’s inhumanity to another person and turn it into good, an eternal good. And that is what God is all about! He loves us so much that He is willing to turn gross evil into love and give us the benefit.
Today we gather not so much to lament the suffering and death of Jesus, as to glory in the love He has for us. As the song used to say, “We remember, we celebrate, we believe.” We believe that his love for us is unconditional and that He calls us to faith and life.
We do not celebrate the Eucharist today. We dramatically remember that what Jesus did at the Last Supper was to offer Himself totally to God and us, an offering that culminated at the cross. Today we venerate that cross knowing that we cannot look beyond it until we are called.