What is good about Good Friday?

It is an expected situational irony that Christians all over the world call the day that Jesus was crucified as ‘ Good Friday ’. How odd that the humiliating and painful death be observed with such an adjective?

The English word ‘excruciating’ has Latin roots signifying ' out of the cross. The Romans specialised in this form of capital punishment, where physical torture and public shame were maximised. Intriguing, then, that we have culturally come a long way in our perception of the cross itself. It is not surprising to see followers of Christ and even others sport a cross around their necks. It has become a treasured symbol for the Church , with crosses featured on steeple tops and in sacred places within a Church. The cross has also been used in the media to represent a Christian follower or a Christian community .

One of the much-loved hymns sung around this season goes: On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, an emblem of suffering and shame. Strange though, as one pauses to reflect, an inglorious, shameful object has now become a revered symbol. Why would a community glory in an object of scorn and defeat? We certainly do not see people wearing ornaments with symbols of an electric chair or a guillotine. But why the cross?

Christ dealt evil and cursed a deathblow. As an old adage goes: ‘To take a thorn, you need a thorn’. Christ, in a counter-intuitive way, goes through death to give us life. He subverts human expectations as the Scotsman James Stewart penned: ‘They gave him a cross, not guessing that he would make it a throne … He did not overcome it in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it. No wonder, then, that sacrifice and selflessness, which the cross displayed, are now priceless virtues, making that unforgettable Friday a ‘good’ one for all humanity.

Authored by: Neil Vimalkumar