April 15, 2022

Good Friday - and the Politics of Evil

It is Good Friday, the day Christians celebrate—yes, celebrate—that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. It will seem strange to many that we call this day good.

Last week at church, during the Q &A after the sermon, someone asked, “What does the death of Jesus really mean for me?” It’s a good question, especially because we often consider that the good news of Christianity has more to do with the dawn of Easter morning than the dark of Friday afternoon.

I can’t enumerate a theology of the cross here (see Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion). I will say that in writing A Habit Called Faith, I was staggered to learn what Jesus meant when he said, on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, “Now is the judgment of this world: now will the ruler of this world be cast out,” (John 12:31).

Jesus’s words signal that the cross, to which Jesus was looking ahead at that moment, would act as a kind of exorcism. On the cross, Jesus would cast out the powers and principalities of darkness and the politics of evil. Yes, you heard that right. You can think of all the gospel accounts of Jesus casting out demons—and put the crucifixion alongside them.

I know there are probably many reading this letter and feeling dubious that I’d mention demonic powers here. Aren’t these superstitions left over from the Middle Ages? I don’t think so. To hear Jesus’ words is to reckon with the true nature of reality. It is to see that our problems—social, mental, political, environmental—aren’t simply owed to the fact that there are good people and bad people, informed people and ignorant people. The Bible witnesses to a world made by a loving Creator whose redemptive will is actively opposed by forces of darkness.

Yes, demons exist.

I can’t help but feel we’ve lived the reality of spiritual darkness more palpably the last couple of years. Pandemic isolation and the ensuing mental health crises. Relational fracturing and increased political hostilities. Sexual abuse within the church. War—and the deliberate killing of civilians. Rising inflation and growing food insecurity for the poor. These aren’t new problems, of course, but it certainly seems that the world is particularly beleaguered right now, that we are feeling particularly embattled.

The truth is we can’t solve these problems simply by funding new government programs or even giving to the church. We must pray, remembering, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, to arm ourselves with the “whole armor of God” (vv. 10-20). We must resist, renouncing all forms of worldly power and wisdom as Jesus did—by making himself nothing. And finally, we must celebrate: the cross is a symbol of victory.

Sin—and with it, death—is no longer the ruling power of the world. Jesus is King.

On good Friday, we remember the announcement that hung above Jesus’s head. It was an imperial pronouncement, written in the most common languages of the day: Aramaiac (for the Jews), Latin (for the Romans), Greek (for the rest of the Mediterranean World).

Jesus is King of the Jews.

Jen