Good Friday Thoughts

Good Friday, to me, is the day we remember love at its truest. The term 'love' is one we use a lot, and has a vast range of meanings; however, not one of these comes close to the first, the purest love. God's love. And nothing, bar none, could even scratch the heels of the love God showed us at the cross. In fact, in many ways it's in stark contrast to our commonly held views of what it is and how it manifests itself.

When we try to depict love, we'll often draw hearts, flowers, happy couples embracing, and we'll use lots of delicate and appealing colours to do so. In fact, here's a Google image search for 'love'

The love of Good Friday is an entirely different image. Blood everywhere, rusty nails forced into flesh, gaping wounds, screams of pain. Crowds around jeering, mocking, gambling for a dying man's clothes. It's far from pretty, and about as far as you can get from delicate. True love isn't flowers, kisses, happy hours spent together, public affection or butterflies in the stomach. It's separation, humiliation, being denied and betrayed by those closest to you, and it's excruciating, unbearable, unthinkable agony. Jesus was in unspeakable pain on every level - physical, emotional and spiritual. And it wasn't even for someone deserving. Someone who is guaranteed to always love Him back. It's for us. Undeserving, often ungrateful people who will continue to hurt Him.

I have to admit, I still can't get my head round it in many ways. Occasionally, just a fraction of the enormity of what God's done will hit me. And it moves me to tears. I can never fully understand why someone who is perfect, holy and majestic loves someone like me at all, forget enough to die on that cross. I mean, come on, me. This person so wrapped up in self, who constantly messes up, thinks she knows better. For someone so perfect to die for someone so messed up, not only that, but to die in such agony, humiliation, separation and shame is beyond anything I've ever known. He did this not because of anything I did right but because of everything I did wrong.

Of course, the result of all this was redemption, reconciliation and forgiveness. We sing for joy about what has been done for us. But this only came through pain we couldn't even imagine.

And you know what? I'm still learning. God's constantly showing me how deep His loves goes, and how far it went on that dark day. Today, it was about weakness. At the Good Friday service, instead of the more traditional gospel readings, we had a reading from 1 Corinthians. There were lots of amazing words in that passage, and I plan to go back over it at some point and explore it more thoroughly. However, there was one verse that stuck with me:
‎"For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" (1 Cor 1:25)
That is nothing short of amazing. God at His least intelligent, is smarter than every mind on this earth at its most intelligent. God at His weakest, will always stand taller than all of humanity at its strongest.
But I think it goes further than that. At the cross, Christ had to become vulnerable. To become exposed to the cruelty of humanity. Instead of shaming those accusing Him at His trial, Jesus stood in silence. Instead of jumping down from the cross, Jesus stayed up there, His body becoming weaker and weaker, being mocked by those around Him and doing nothing to stop it. This was interpreted as weakness and stupidity by those around Him. But in becoming weak, vulnerable and separated from the Father, came such strength, that the earth physically shook. It physically shook. The curtain in the temple tore in two. Our love couldn't do that. And that was just the side effect. The strength of God's love redeemed us all. Jesus's separation from the Father reconciled us to Him. That's so far beyond our powers. The weakness of God is, and forever will be, stronger than human strength.

All this is what love actually looks like, and there's still so much more for me to learn. God's teaching me wound by wound, tear by tear, mercy by mercy, what true love really looks like. And it's certainly not a bunch of flowers.