Today the Church commemorates Good Friday, the day in which Jesus was crucified.
According to the accounts in the Gospels, the royal soldiers, guided by Jesus’ disciple Judas Iscariot, arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas received money (30 pieces of silver) for betraying Jesus and told the guards that whomever he kisses is the one they are to arrest. Following his arrest, Jesus was taken to the house of Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest for that year. There he was interrogated with little result and sent bound to Caiaphas the high priest with whom the Sanhedrin had been unlawfully assembled.
Conflicting testimony against Jesus was brought forth by many witnesses, against which Jesus remained silent. Finally, the high priest adjured Jesus to respond under solemn oath, saying "I adjure you, by the Living God, to tell us, are you the Anointed One, the Son of God?" Jesus’ response is hard to translate directly into English, making it sound ambiguous. The way he said "yes" was like linguistic judo, using the force and energy of an assailant to redirect it back on themselves. "You have said it, and in time you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Almighty, coming on the clouds of Heaven." To us, this might sound ambiguous, but to those there it was loud and clear. The high priest condemned Jesus for blasphemy, and the Sanhedrin concurred with an unlawful sentence of death. Peter, waiting in the courtyard, denied Jesus three times to bystanders while the interrogations were proceeding, just as Jesus had foretold.
In the morning, the whole assembly brought Jesus to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate under charges of subverting the nation, opposing taxes to Caesar, and making himself a king. Pilate authorized the Jewish leaders to judge Jesus according to their own law and execute sentencing, but the Jewish leaders replied that they were not allowed by the Romans to carry out a sentence of death.
Pilate questioned Jesus and told the assembly that there was no basis for a sentence of death. Upon learning that Jesus was from Galilee, Pilate referred the case to the ruler of Galilee, King Herod, who was in Jerusalem for the Passover Feast, also questioned Jesus, but Jesus remained silent. Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate, who again told the assembly that neither he nor Herod found Jesus to be guilty. Pilate resolved to have Jesus whipped and released. Under the guidance of the chief priests, the Judean crowd began to clamor for the release of Jesus Bar Abbas, who had been imprisoned for committing murder during an insurrection against the Romans, and who was also a member of the aristocratic, high priestly Abbas family. To the Judeans he was a hero. Pilate asked what they would have him do with Jesus, and they demanded, "Crucify him". Pilate’s wife had seen Jesus in a dream earlier that day, and she forewarned Pilate to "have nothing to do with this righteous man". Pilate had Jesus flogged and then brought him out to the crowd to release him. The chief priests informed Pilate of a new charge, demanding Jesus be sentenced to death "because he claimed to be God’s son." This possibility filled Pilate with fear, and he brought Jesus back inside the palace and demanded to know from where he came.
Coming before the crowd one last time, Pilate declared Jesus innocent and washed his own hands in water to show he had no part in this condemnation. Nevertheless, Pilate handed Jesus over to the Roman guard be crucified in order to forestall a riot, and ultimately to keep his job. The sentence written was "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." Jesus carried his cross to the site of execution (assisted by Simon of Cyrene), called the "place of the Skull", or "Golgotha" in Hebrew and in Latin "Calvary". There he was crucified along with two criminals.
Jesus agonized on the cross for six hours. During his last three hours on the cross, from noon to 3 pm, darkness fell over the whole land. Jesus spoke from the cross, quoting the messianic Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
With a loud cry, Jesus gave up his spirit. There was an earthquake, tombs broke open and the holy dead whose bones were in them came out alive and were praising God, and the curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom. The centurion on guard at the site of crucifixion declared, "Truly this was God’s Son!"
Pilate asked confirmation from the centurion of whether Jesus was dead. A soldier pierced the side of Jesus with a lance causing blood and water to flow out and the centurion informed Pilate that Jesus was dead. Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin and a secret follower of Jesus, who had not consented to his condemnation, went to Pilate to request the body of Jesus. Another secret follower of Jesus and member of the Sanhedrin named Nicodemus brought about a hundred-pound weight mixture of spices and helped wrap the body of Jesus.
They rolled a large rock over the entrance of the tomb. Then they returned home and rested, because Shabbat had begun at sunset. Matt. 28:1 "After the Shabbat, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb". i.e. "After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week,…". "He is not here; he has risen, just as he said….". (Matt. 28:6).
Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
