Dying and Rising: A Holy Week Meditation For Good Friday
And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
Even though the Romans did not invent crucifixion, they certainly perfected it. Reserved for a special class of traitorous criminals, the cross was even more gruesome than being fed to the lions. This form of capital punishment was so heinous, it was frowned upon to even mention it in public. But public it was, and for very good reason. Crucifixion was imperial propaganda, designed to deter future rebels from resisting the way of the empire.
Victims were typically stripped of their clothing, paraded through the streets, and led to a high place outside the city gates where their naked bodies hung for all the world to see. Worse, most victims were crucified low enough to the ground that upon death, wild dogs and carrion birds would devour their bodies, leaving no remains for burial. In all of human history, only one crucified body has ever been found, pointing to Rome’s intended effect: “Here is a nobody, who has come to nothing, and is now nowhere.”
It’s difficult to make sense of such brutality, to wrestle with the almost necessity of the cross, not so much as a divine requirement but rather as the archetypal pathway of transformation. When we say '“Jesus died for us,” we don’t mean it as some substitutionary atonement theory or heavenly transaction, but rather from the perspective that Jesus died in solidarity with all our human suffering, transforming our pain in the process. Seen from this perspective, the death and resurrection of Jesus isn’t simply a one-time historical event, but rather the eternal invitation to join Him in the needful process of dying and rising. Author Caitlin Matthews reminds us, “The seeds of renewal are always mysteriously buried within the thick of decay and corruption, ready to spring up when all seems lost.”
This is the great Paschal Mystery: To truly live, you must die. Dying to self serves as the paradigmatic pathway, reminding us that life isn’t about avoiding death, but transforming it. “Death and life are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other. Each time you surrender, each time you trust the dying, your faith is led to a deeper level and you discover a Larger Self underneath,” writes Father Richard Rohr. The daily practice of dying to ourselves, our ego, our attachments, and our very identity opens up the possibility of authentic personal transformation and rebirth. To be reborn is one of the great dreams of every human heart. We long to leave behind the depression or addiction, the anxiety and pain, but the only way forward is downward.
Friday of Holy Week is only “Good” if we, too, willingly and freely surrender to this mystical process of life and death, decay and new birth. As Reverend Brendan E. Williams beautifully reminds us, “We’re all headed toward the same place in this life. We’re all headed to the grave, or to the burning ground. And we can either go there free, or we can go there imprisoned, and that choice is always ours to make.”
