Holy Week 2007-
Good Friday- The System Wins- or Does It?
(Based on thoughts from Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in the book, The Last Week.)

Darkness and death. It is Good Friday and all has come to an end. The "domination system of ancient Rome with religious cooperation wins. Jesus of Nazareth is gone.

It is injustice at its most visible. It is an injustice that is so horrifyingly common in history, so routine, that one would have to say that such actions and systems are the rule not the exception. Borg and Crossan (pp. 162-163) say it is part of the historic "normalcy of civilization."

Jesus has been crucified- killed- by the sin of the world.

He is far from alone.

Yet he accepted the road of the Cross. He accepted its inevitability for when you confront the sin of the world, it is never pretty, no matter where or how that sin is embodied. No wonder so few have felt the willingness to follow that call. No matter we (all, myself as much as anyone) transform it into a superficial emotional moment that happened to Jesus. We can be moved by Bach's St. Matthew Passion or emotionally overturned by Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. It helps remove me from the possibility that if I would follow this Jesus I might have to face the domination systems of sin and the world and establishment and the dark and broken places of my own heart.

Author John Howard Yoder reminds us of the real power of the Cross as we all wander away with the disciples this Friday to wait for the Sabbath to be over and the Lord's Day to begin:

The cross of Christ was not an inexplicable or chance event, which happened to strike him, like illness or accident. To accept the cross as his destiny, to move toward it and even to provoke it, when he could well have done otherwise, was Jesus’ constantly reiterated free choice; and he warns his disciples lest their embarking on the same path be less conscious of its costs.
Source: The Politics of Jesus
--from Inward/Outward