3 April 2026 Good Friday
Isaiah 52.13-53.12 Psalm 22 1 Corinthians 1.18-31 John 18.1-19.42
There is nothing ‘good’ about this day, nor is there anything ‘good’ about the abandonment, abuse, and absence found in our Psalm, the reading from Isaiah, or our gospel. These contain almost more pain and suffering than we can deal with, which may be why they create ‘psychic numbing’ in us as we hear the pain they contain, but our numbing may also be due to our social, political, economic, and health privileges.
Most of us have little experience of the type of trauma found in these readings. But we know that the cross is a pervasive reality in human experience, whether we see it in terms of victims of terrorist acts, malnutrition and famine, political violence and upheaval, or oppression and persecution. We also recognise that most of us will not escape facing our own diminishment and mortality, and we know we need a divine companion to give us hope and courage when we walk through the valley of the shadow.
Isaiah describes a great soul who suffers for our well-being and the well-being of the nation. While I am not an advocate of ‘substitutionary atonement’, sacrifice chosen by those who love others is at the heart of reality. If we bear one another’s burdens, it is reasonable to assume the One to Whom All Hearts are Open also bears our burdens and seeks healing through lovingly and creatively responding to suffering. Christ’s willingness to suffer for the cause of God’s realm is a model for our own sacrificial living.
The Psalm describes the experience of abandonment, even from God. “Why have you forsaken me” asks the sufferer. These words may be expressed at times of great pain, times when we feel bereft of any support, including God’s. But I suspect God can live with our doubt, anger, and sense of abandonment, and God can find ways to heal our woundedness and despair.
The Passion of Christ, from John, is not an invitation to passivity – let Jesus do it for us – but a challenge to agency, to creative and loving confrontation with the evils of our time. This reading awakens us to our own complicity as well as our own suffering and the suffering of others. We do not need more crosses in our world. We need healing of the wounded, the marginalised, the abused and the forgotten.
The goodness of Good Friday is not in the Cross, but in God’s joyful-creative-suffering love for our own world. We are not alone, God is with us, feeling our joy and our pain, and inspiring us to take our place as God’s companions in healing the world.