God’s Sacrifice

Good Friday is part of a series of commemorative events that make up what is known in Christian terms as Holy Week. It is a very significant day in the Christian calendar for it marks the death anniversary of Jesus, the Lord. It can be looked at as a day of mourning of sorts for it is the day that God died.

The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche made a very bold assertion in one of his books. He had a madman run around the marketplace at noonday, carrying a lantern and shouting, “God is dead! God is dead!” When he was questioned by one of the passers-by as to what the matter was he replied in a grave tone, “God is dead! And we have killed him!” When I first came across this passage from Nietzsche I was immediately taken up by the imagery and the language he used. If you pause and think about the words of the madman you will begin to see the point he is making. Have we killed God? The Christians believe that God became a man, Jesus, and shared life with the rest of us but He was killed by the very people He called His own.   

Jesus never said definitively that He was God. He made allusions to that effect but He never said it openly. When others referred to Him as Son of God, he urged them to keep it to themselves but invariably they couldn’t contain the Good News. Ultimately, the Jews, particularly their clergy, held this as the primary motive for wanting him dead: He claimed to be the Son of God! Now that is something unthinkable. The Jews in their tradition never uttered the name of God instead they used ‘Lord’ or an equivalent term. Even when God revealed himself he did not reveal His name instead He mysteriously called Himself, “I Am Who I Am.” The Jews perceived God as the distant other even though their spiritual history speaks of a God who wanted to be close to Man.

In Jesus, God took human form and became one like us. This was something the Jews couldn’t stomach. This would imply that God had left his divine abode and become simple and tangible. If this were the case He could not be God anymore and that is absurd. The Jews were familiar with the concept of ‘Messiah’ or ‘the Chosen One of God’ who would come to liberate them from their socio-political chains and establish a new kingdom of peace and justice. A number of false messiah’s arose and rallied the people around themselves but sooner or later their enterprises were beaten to the ground. Jesus came on such a scene. The people were weary of messiah claimants. Jesus even though he had none of the swagger or style of the other messiahs didn’t fit the bill. He had no power, wealth or great band of followers. The people who followed him were the riff-raff of society. His outreach was primarily to those on the fringes of society. He could well have been the messiah but he showed no signs of garnering political support to overthrow the repressive Roman regime.

Little did the Jews understand that the Messiah wasn’t a purely political figure. He was rather someone who had come in the name of God to liberate God’s chosen people from the muck they found themselves in. He would establish a kingdom of justice and peace but that kingdom would not be a political state. He would restore the dignity and pride of the Jewish people but not in the way they conceived. The Jews had fashioned a Messiah-figure according to their interpretation of the prophecies, coupled with their history of oppression and powerlessness. The messianic claims that Jesus put forth didn’t fit in at all with the constructed idea of the Jews and hence they rejected him but in doing so they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Jesus’ mission on earth was to “reach out and save the lost”. He came as a physician not for the healthy but for the sick. Hence the Bible records his interactions with people who were considered outcastes and untouchable. He cured the sick, cast out demons and raised the dead. He went about preaching the coming of the Kingdom of God and through his words and actions sowed the seeds for its growth. In the person of Jesus God was making an attempt to restore to the human race its dignity and status as His Children but humanity wasn’t ready for that. They wanted God to do things their way and so they hung him on a cross; killing him in the most shameful and humiliating manner that was available to them. They literally spat in his face and mocked him for trying to reach out to them. But God didn’t retaliate. He submitted to their torture and through it he offered them a chance at redemption.

On Good Friday we recall these events. We remember the humility of God who left his glory and power and became perhaps simpler and weaker than us. He died so that we might realize His love for us. His coming aimed at liberating us from the bondage of suffering and sin that had constricted us and his death fulfilled that purpose, for “by his wounds we are healed”.