What's so Good about Friday?
Imagine an alien visiting earth and asking about Easter. It can be a confusing time involving church rituals, eggs and bunnies, and arguments over how many public holidays we get. Let’s give our poor sojourning alien three questions to try to understand Easter.
WHY DOES IT MOVE?
Every year, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are on different days to the year before. This year they’re happening relatively early, on the 25th and 27th of March. Easter Sunday always falls between the 22nd of March and the 25th of April. Most of us have grown up with this ‘movable feast’, but it’s the only public holiday that we have that varies by that much. Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, ANZAC Day, they all occur on the same day every year. Why does Easter move?
Is it that we don’t know when Christ actually died, and we’re just hedging our bets? Well, no. We have much more information about the date of Christ’s death than his birth. We celebrate his birth on the 25th of December, which is almost certainly not his birthday, but rather the date of a pagan holiday. So when did Christ die?
Mark 14:12 (ESV): “And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, ‘Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?’”
The night before Jesus was betrayed was the first day a feast called the Passover, which was instituted for Israel by the LORD in Exodus 12-13 as a way of remembering their exodus.
Exodus 12:18 (ESV): “In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.”
So the night before Jesus died was the fourteenth day of the first month of the Jewish calendar, Nisan. The next day, the day of his death, was 15 Nisan. We know exactly the day when Jesus died.
What is more difficult, however, is how to translate that day from the Jewish calendar which is based on lunar cycles, to the Gregorian calendar that we use which is based on solar cycles.
A simple rule is that Easter is the first Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox. But this is an oversimplification because the tables used to determine the dates of lunar cycles did not take into account the complexity of the moon’s motion.
The exact dating of Easter was a huge issue in the early church, and one that still divides the Western Catholic Church from the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Orthodox churches celebrate Easter on a different day of the year to Roman Catholics most years.
Protestants have followed the Roman Catholic method of working out the date of Easter, not for deep theological reasons but just for continuity’s sake. As we will see, it is much more important THAT we celebrate our Lord’s death and resurrection that when we happen to do so.
WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT IT?
I was asked a question after one evangelistic event: “Why do Christians spend more time talking about Jesus’ death than his life?”
Is this true to your experience of Christianity? Do most of the church meetings you attend, most of the talks you hear, involve a mention of Christ’s death and resurrection? I certainly hope so. So why do we spend much less time talking about, for instance, his incarnation, or healing ministry, or authoritative teaching.
Well, our understanding of the importance of Christ’s death comes from his understanding:
Mark 10:45 (ESV): “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus tells us why he came – not to teach or to heal or to perform miracles – but to die, to give his life as a ransom for many.
For Israel, the Passover Lamb was the lamb that had been killed, to have its blood smeared on the doorposts in Egypt, which protected them from the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn. This plague meant the end of slavery in Egypt, the salvation of Israel, and led to the exodus of God’s people to the promised land.
But the Passover Lamb was just a shadow of the full reality:
1 Corinthians 5:7b (ESV): “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”
1 Peter 1:18-19 (ESV): “...knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”
WHY IS FRIDAY SO ‘GOOD’?
So, if Good Friday is the anniversary of the slaughter of an innocent – a lamb without blemish – at the hands of sinful men, why do we call it ‘good’?
In Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have been ransomed, bought with his precious blood to be a people holy and blameless. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God reconciles the world to himself. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, a slain Lamb rules the universe!
Revelation 5:12 (ESV): “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
I wish you a very Good Friday and a relaxing Easter break. Take the time again to reflect on the cross of Christ and the empty tomb. Remember the price that was paid to ransom you, and give glory to him who sits on the throne.
[Stephen Bell]
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