Good Death

On The Meaning Of The Cross

Rembrandt’s “Descent from the Cross” (1634), the most captivating painting I’ve seen in person.

The fleshless word, growing, will bring us down,
Pagan and Christian man alike will fall,
The auguries say, the white and black and brown,
The merry and the sad, theorist, lover, all
Invisibly will fall:
Abstract calamity, save for those who can
Build their cold empire on the abstract man.

from "The Incarnate One" by Edwin Muir

The other night my youngest son accidentally referred to Good Friday as “Black Friday.” I was teaching the boys some of my favorite Easter hymns before bed, so they would be ready to sing on Easter morning. That led to a discussion of the different days of Holy Week, of which Black Friday is…not one.

When I corrected him, laughing, he said, “Wait, what is Black Friday then?” Black Friday, I told him, is when everyone goes on a shopping spree for things they don’t need the day after thanking God for what they already have.

“Oh,” said my son, squinting. “It just seems like the day Jesus died should be Black Friday. It wasn’t good that we killed him.”

It was a fair point.

“You’re right,” I said. “It was definitely a black Friday. The Bible says darkness came over the whole land for three hours when Jesus died.” I went on—and I know this isn’t the conventional explanation, but—“We call Black Friday ‘black’ to remind ourselves that even though it seems good to go around buying random things at a discount, it’s not usually the kind of thing that brings light or life. Likewise, we call Good Friday ‘good’ to remind ourselves that even though it was the darkest day in history, it was truly good.”

My son had reminded me, once again, just how strange it is to be a Christian. How very strange to call Good Friday “good,” the day we murdered the Lord of Life. How quickly we forget the paradox which makes good good. How quickly “good” becomes a fleshless word. And not only “good” but “cross” and “sin” and “saved.” Fleshless words, abstractions which we swallow without chewing or digesting. “The word made flesh is here made word again,” writes Muir earlier in the same poem.

We sing of “the wondrous cross,” forgetting that the cross was not made of abstract wood, forgetting that “wonder” means awe—not only awesome but awful—even if somehow still good, forgetting that our Lord was not crucified so that we might merely sing of it from a safe distance. “The Son of God,” says George Macdonald, “suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” As our Lord himself made clear, there is no safe distance from the cross.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-26)

What I am saying is that Good Friday did not merely save us from sin but from abstraction—from fleshless words and safe distances—from knowing about God rather than knowing him. For on that day, we knew him, intimately enough to kill him. And this knowledge, strange as it may sound, was the beginning of our salvation.

The cross of Christ was not so much a transaction as a trap. We were all drawn in—Jews and Gentiles, friends and enemies—condemning him, denying him, nailing the nails into his flesh. Palm Sunday’s “Hosanna!” may have been a fleshless word, but Friday’s “Crucify him!” certainly was not.

This is the predicament in which we find ourselves on Good Friday. We may sing that the cross was good. We are right to do so. But we may not, if we want to understand it—if we want to believe it—sing without some semblance of participative terror. Terror, first, because we are the ones who killed him. And second, because we are the ones who must follow him there, into the grave. He did not die so that we would not have to. He died so that death itself might be redeemed, so that we could die with him, and in him find new life.

The cross as fleshless word—as mere theory or history or formula—does not fix a thing. If it could, he might as well have been crucified on the moon, and much longer ago. But this would have accomplished nothing, because the problem was never in God, but in us.

So instead, in the fullness of time, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we did not recognize him. We would not come to him. But luckily, he came from a great line of tricksters, so he knew exactly what to do. He let the world be turned upside down, so that in rejecting and killing him we came to him. In rejecting and killing him, we recognized him (“Surely this man was the Son of God!”). We tore down the Temple without believing his prophecy that he would rebuild it anew. We ate his flesh and drank his blood, not because we trusted his words, but because we didn’t. We cursed him. We cursed ourselves (“Let his blood be on us and on our children!”).

But the trick worked.

Three days later, the world suddenly turned rightside up again, and all our curses became blessings. We were caught in his trap, caught up with him in his death, and therefore in his resurrection.

Only in retrospect—only once we had been dragged into the horrible climax of the story and emerged on the other side—could we see how he saved us, and from what. We had been trapped in a prison called Sin with a tiger named Death. Not recognizing the prison for what it was, we cried out for a savior to come and kill the tiger. But Christ, who knew better than we—who knew that our prison, our hell, was not death but sin—made the tiger his pet, his very weapon against its gates. And death became our doorway.

So we must die with him.

Yet, there is danger even here, danger that even “death” would become for us a fleshless word. Die how? Die when? But he has shown us. In everything he said and did, he has shown us the way out of that cold empire of the (increasingly) abstract man, and into his incarnate kingdom: Do not pray before men to be seen by them. Do not seek the reward of their praise. Instead go into your room and shut the door and pray in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Forgive others their debts. If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. Do not let your left hand see what your right hand is doing. Love your neighbor. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Do not store up treasures on earth. Do not worry about tomorrow, but seek first the kingdom and his righteousness.

What will happen to you if you live this way? You will be blessed…and you will die. You will die, one day. And you will die every day between now and then. Not accidentally or anxiously, as the coward runs from his fate. But confidently, willingly, as one who knows that, in Christ, death has become the doorway to life, trust and love the means to enter in. And the word of the cross will be made flesh again in you. And you will know the paradox that makes good good.

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Thanks to Nathan Horner for sending me the Edwin Muir poem which begins this piece (after hearing of it from the great

Malcolm Guite

).