Indeed, the story began long before this point as I have been reminded by following the tradition of reading Luke’s gospel from start to finish during Holy Week. After Jesus’ closest friends realised who he really was and Peter declared he was the Messiah, he started telling them what would happen to him but they couldn’t take it in. He set his face towards Jerusalem and there are 12 chapters of story telling what happened along the way – challenging stereotypes with stories like the Good Samaritan and the prodigal son, staying with friends like Mary and Martha and teaching the crowds who came to see him.
Then there was the last supper, the poignant Passover meal where his friends couldn’t take in the danger he was in or recognise the one who would betray him. After hours spent pleading with God to find another way, Judas found him in the garden and led the authorities to him. A travesty of justice ensued in the middle of the night, a trial where no justice was done and Jesus was handed over to cruel Roman soldiers to be beaten, whipped and spat at as they mocked him.
This time last year, I led a service for Good Friday in York Minster as chair of Churches Together in York. After we had carried a huge wooden cross through York’s city centre to the Minster, we prayed and sang as we carried a bier down into the crypt to remember his burial. I was shown a place to stand at the east end of the Minster where no microphone is needed to make the whole building resound with song. Imagine a solo voice singing, reverberating around the ancient walls:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?Today is Good Friday, a day of mourning and sorrow as it seems that evil and injustice have triumphed. The one we loved has been murdered by a combination of envious religious leaders and a cruel Roman occupation force, and our hopes in the Messiah have been dashed. This is a day of wearing black from head to toe, of mourning and fasting and seeking God through the time when the sky went black for three hours in the middle of the day.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?Were you listening to hear his last words with those who stood around his cross to see how it ended? Do you remember how he cried out for God to forgive even those who had killed him, and when he asked his friend John to take his widowed mother Mary into his home and look after her?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?Were you there when all hope was gone, when the mourning started in earnest? Family tombs were expensive when they were hewn out of the rock for you, but one rich man, Joseph, came to offer his own to Jesus. Weeping, his friends and family took him down and laid him there just before night fell and went home as the Sabbath began.
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