Day 6: Friday - The Crucifixion

Well, friends, before I blog this, I should put this post in context quickly. My amazing friend Rebecca gathered a group of her blogger friends, myself included, to discussed what happened on the corresponding day in the Savior's last week on earth. I planned to do an intro post to each of these and then direct you to the blogs for reading's sake, but alas, between work, the play and life in general, I've been too swamped to give this amazing project its proper play on my blog.

If you'd like to see how this should've been accomplished, check out Rebecca's blog at http://bartandbecca.blogspot.com/ - in the right-hand side rail, there's actually a box with the links to each post. Meanwhile, I'll try to do justice here to my assigned topic: Day 6 - Friday.

Today is Good Friday. I've often wondered why the commemoration of Christ's crucifixion - a day of mockery, suffering and tormet to the one perfect being who's ever walked this earth - would be deemed "good." Of course, the answer to that lies in the amazing blessings that came only through the culmination of Christ's mission to this earth, and part of that was for Him to leave mortality in order to purchase our immortality and eternal life.

The price of Christ's suffering began in Gethsemane during His infinite Atonement - an offering that redeemed all mankind, regardless of whether they accept Him or not, through going through all of our sorrows, sicknesses and sins. Rebecca blogged beautifully about the Atonement here.

A year ago this weekend, in last April's General Conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave a beautiful talk titled "None Were With Him" from which I'm going to pull heavily - he covers what I'd planned to address, only much, much better.

After praying in the garden, Christ was seized by soldiers per Judas's betrayal. One thing I've always loved about this vignette is Christ's unending compassion for others. Here He is, likely drained from the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual anguish of Gethsemane, facing death by these soldiers, and yet what is His first impulse? To heal. To give this man his ear back, whole and complete. To later, on the cross, plead for the souls of His tormentors. Christ never focused on Himself, His needs. That kind of infinite thoughtfulness and love would change the world if we could emulate it.

But I digress.

Just as Christ endured all of our heartaches to fully support and succor us, He also had to complete the act of the Atonement on the cross alone in order to make it so that none of us ever have to be alone. As Elder Holland wrote,

Thus, of divine necessity, the supporting circle around Jesus gets smaller and smaller and smaller, giving significance to Matthew’s words: “All the disciples [left] him, and fled.” (Matthew 26:56) Peter stayed near enough to be recognized and confronted. John stood at the foot of the cross with Jesus’s mother. Especially and always the blessed women in the Savior’s life stayed as close to Him as they could. But essentially His lonely journey back to His Father continued without comfort or companionship.

After Christ is seized, He is taken to ecclesiastical and political leaders for judgment. Again, I pull from Elder Holland:

Soon enough He was arraigned before the Israelite leaders of the day—first Annas, the former high priest, then Caiaphas, the current high priest. In their rush to judgment these men and their councils declared their verdict quickly and angrily. “What further need have we of witnesses?” they cried. “He is [worthy] of death.” (Matthew 26:65–66)

With that He was brought before the gentile rulers in the land. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, interrogated Him once, and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, did so twice, the second time declaring to the crowd, “I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man.” (Luke 23:14) Then, in an act as unconscionable as it was illogical, Pilate “scourged Jesus, [and] delivered him to be crucified.” (Matthew 27:26) Pilate’s freshly washed hands could not have been more stained or more unclean.

Such ecclesiastical and political rejection became more personal when the citizenry in the street turned against Jesus as well. It is one of the ironies of history that sitting with Jesus in prison was a real blasphemer, a murderer and revolutionary known as Barabbas, a name or title in Aramaic meaning “son of the father.” Free to release one prisoner in the spirit of the Passover tradition, Pilate asked the people, “Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you?” They said, “Barabbas.”(Matthew 27:21) So one godless “son of the father” was set free while a truly divine Son of His Heavenly Father moved on to crucifixion.

It is at this point that Christ is scourged, mocked and taken to Golgotha to die. Blogging about something so incredibly sacred is difficult. I can't fathom how completely and totally alone the Savior felt - and yet, He pushed past His mortality and completed His immortal mission for our benefit. Not His. It's truly humbling, thinking about it in that regard. There is nothing Christ stood to gain by completing His mission of salvation, really. Our thanks, of course, but really, why would He go through all of this pain and torment? For us, because He loved each of us that much. It's a love I don't think I'll ever fully understand.

Again, I turn to Elder Holland's beautiful explanation of what happened next:

Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually—that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this. Had He not said to His disciples, “Behold, the hour … is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” and “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”? (John 16:32; 8:29)

With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.

But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that He never flees nor fails us. When the uttermost farthing had then been paid, when Christ’s determination to be faithful was as obvious as it was utterly invincible, finally and mercifully, it was “finished.” (See John 19:30) Against all odds and with none to help or uphold Him, Jesus of Nazareth, the living Son of the living God, restored physical life where death had held sway and brought joyful, spiritual redemption out of sin, hellish darkness, and despair. With faith in the God He knew was there, He could say in triumph, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

With this, Christ's spirit left His body, and the earth physically reacted to the loss of the Light of the World, with three hours of physical darkness, not to mention earthquakes and other calamities. After soldiers pierced His side - instead of breaking legs, which was customary in crucifixions, thereby leaving Christ's corpse unbroken and unblemished - His body was laid in the tomb, something about which Tabitha will blog tomorrow, I believe.

Something I find interesting in these scenes following Christ's death is how the veil in the temple rips in half - symbolic of how, in death, Christ has also ripped the veil that separated life and death. Instead of death being an end, it is merely a move into the next phase of our eternal journeys - a journey which, thanks to Christ's gift, includes a reuniting of body and spirit in immortal glory and immortality for all, including the opportunity to live with God and Christ eternally for those willing to abide in His covenant.

In closing, I testify that Jesus Christ does live, and He did endure all things for the benefit of mankind, to give us the amazing opportunity for eternal progression. That agency and growth is something I cherish dearly. This I say in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.