Lectionary Commentaries for April 7, 2023
Good Friday

These two chapters can be easily divided in five parts:

1. 18:1-11
2. 18:12-27
3. 18:28—19:16
4. 19:16-37
5. 19:38-42

In each of these sections there are some main characters apart from Jesus: Judas and Peter in the first, Peter and Annas in the second, Pilate and the Judeans in the third, the soldiers, the women at the cross and the beloved disciple in the fourth, and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus in the fifth. All of them are playing a single role: that of confirming what had been prophesied about Jesus (see also 19:24,28,36,37). As in the rest of the gospel, everything has been carefully designed by the Master Planner and everyone has a specific role to play, including Jesus.

Prominent in this section is the expression “to fulfill.” It is used in two different ways: to refer to prophetic texts in the Hebrew scriptures (19:24,28,36) and to refer to Jesus’ predictions in the gospel (see also 18:9,32). In the first case it means to fill them with new meaning. Today we would use the expression “re-reading”, that is, reading the text again from a new perspective. In the second, it means to confirm what Jesus had predicted about himself.

In the gospel of John in general, and in these two chapters in particular, Jesus behaves not as a victim but rather as a victor.

1. He is a commanding presence, even a divine presence (verse 5, “I am he”) that makes the soldiers and the temple police fall to the ground.
2. He does not apologize, as Paul does in Acts 23:5, for having answered disrespectfully to the high priest.
3. He knows what kind of death he is facing so he does not ask God to spare his life, if possible, as he does in the other three gospels, but rather has the foreknowledge of what is going to happen to him.
4. He takes away Pilate’s power by telling him that he received it from above. He is not an actor but a subject of a higher power.
5. Finally, at the cross, he decides when he is to die. He gives up the spirit when he knows that everything is finished. He had faithfully played the part God had assigned to him and now there was nothing else to do. Death will bring an end to his human life but also to his ministry.

Two anachronistic affirmations in these chapters seem to stem from the fact that the gospel was written at least 60 years after the events had occurred:

1. The “Jews” are really people from Judea. We would call them “Judeans.”
2. Hebrew, Latin, and Greek were known at the time as Aramaic, Roman language, and Hellenistic language.

Of these two the most dangerous is the expression “Jews,” because it feeds into the historical antisemitism that caused the persecution and murder of millions of Jews, from antiquity until the present.

Here are some additional considerations that could lead to fruitful preaching:

1. Betrayal and arrest (18:1-11)

• A defiant Jesus foregoes violence and accepts his role in God’s plan. He will not allow anything or anybody, in this case Peter, to deter and deprive him from his final victory.
• The garden that is referred to is the garden of Gethsemane, which was located across the Kidron Valley. It was a very well-known place for everyone, so Jesus has nothing to hide. In fact, he wants people to know where he is because it is part of the divine script everyone, including him, is playing.

2. Trial before Annas (18:12-27)

• Jesus comes into the high priest house and is followed by Peter and another disciple known to the high priest (this is mentioned twice so it must be important). We do not know who he is, but we know his part in the story: he is to bring Peter in so he can betray Jesus.
• Between Peter’s first and last denial, Jesus is being interrogated by Annas. Again, Jesus is defiant. Not only does he defend his teaching, but he does not acknowledge the high priest’s authority, even when he is struck in the face. As in the garden, Jesus shows himself to be non-violent.

3. Trial before Pilate (18:28—19:16)

• It takes place in Pilate’s headquarters, the Praetorium. An interesting cat-and-mouse game takes place between Pilate and the Judeans who brought Jesus to him. They don’t want to be ritually defiled by entering a Gentile’s military compound; Pilate wants to humiliate them by reminding them who has the power.
• Pilate comes out to bargain with the Judeans four times. He tells them to judge Jesus according to the law of Israel. They say they are not permitted to put anyone to death (I can hear Pilate saying under his breath: “Of course, I know that.”)
• Going back inside Pilate now confronts Jesus with the question: Are you the King of the Judeans? It is now Jesus who gets testy: “Who told you that?” (I would like to imagine Jesus muttering under his breath: “because you don’t seem to have enough brains to think on your own.”)
• After reminding Pilate that he could summon his followers to fight for him but that he refuses to do it, showing who holds the real power, Jesus forces the procurator to admit that he does not know what truth is. But the readers of the gospel know it: it is Jesus and his word. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Pilate is doomed. Jesus wins.
• Pilate has Jesus flogged, an opportunity for the soldiers to have some fun, which they did by placing a crown of thorns on his head, dressing him in a purple robe, taking turns to address him as a King, and striking him on the face. Rape seems to be suggested in the Synoptic accounts, where it says that Jesus was undressed to put the purple robe on and then dressed again with his own clothes, but John has none of this.
• Out of the Praetorium one more time, Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd dressed in the purple robe and tells them that they can crucify him, since he finds nothing wrong with him. Again, he is playing with the Judeans: he knows they can’t do that because it is not part of their punishment system; they don’t crucify people, they stone them.
• Now the exchange becomes a bit more balanced. The Judeans succeed in scaring Pilate by mentioning the title Son of God. Therefore, he asks Jesus where he is from, lest he be a divine being in the guise of man, something not uncommon in Greek and Roman mythology. He then wanted to release him, but he was pressured by the Judeans who said that if he would do that he would be siding with Jesus and against the emperor. The cat was caught. He gave in. He handed Jesus over to the soldiers to be crucified, which they dutifully did, not without some enjoyment on their part (19:29, 34) as well as some disappointment (19:32-33).

4. Crucifixion (19:16-37)

• Making sure that Jesus’ crucifixion was properly understood in Rome, Pilate placed the inscription we already talked about and in which it was made clear that he was getting rid of an aspirant to the throne.
• From the cross Jesus, still a commanding presence, commends his mother to the care of the disciple whom he loved (the readers of the gospel knew who he was, we do not). And then decides when he would die, right after receiving the sour wine which was supposed to alleviate the pain and extend his life. He refuses to die by Roman design and takes control of his own life: he gave up his spirit.

5. Burial (19:38-42)

• Two secret disciples, one for fear of the religious leaders, the other for fear of his reputation, finally overcame their predicaments and took care of Jesus’ body. Upon receiving permission from Pilate, they took the body down from the cross and prepared it according to the burial custom of the Judeans.
• This was always done by women (see also Mark 16:1; Matthew 23:56-24:1) but in John it is done by men, another way in which this gospel is more theological than historical.

Contextualization:

As we prepare to engage the text from our present social locations, what are some of the issues that come to mind?

• What assumptions are we to avoid?
• What is the concept of truth?
• What is the concept of God?
• What is the relationship between Jesus and God?
• What is Jesus’ attitude towards violence? What toward power?
• How do we prevent antisemitic readings of the gospel?
• What is the relationship between political and military power?
• What is the role of the army in politics?

There were many in the early Jesus movement who identified the “servant” in Isaiah 52:13—53:12 (hereafter Isaiah 53) with Jesus; that much is certain (for example, Matthew 8:17; John 12:38; Romans 15:21; 1 Peter 2:22). Thus, for many Christians throughout history, the one who “was despised and rejected” (Isaiah 53:3), “borne our infirmities” (Isaiah 53:4), and “was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5) could not be anyone except Jesus Christ and the proof was in the Gospel accounts. With such a constellation of New Testament references, it is no wonder that for centuries the Church has elected to read this text on Good Friday.

It is also true, however, that at least some early Christians—including the author of Luke-Acts—recognized that such an identification was not self-evident from the text alone. In a story about a gentile interested in Judaism in Acts 8:26–40, an Ethiopian court official, a eunuch, is portrayed as reading Isaiah 53 earnestly but not understanding it (verse 34). The apostle Philip must explain to him how the prophesied servant in the passage can be identified with Jesus—this is part of his sharing the “good news” (verse 35)—to which the eunuch responds, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (verse 37).

Today, most Bible scholars recognize that, from a historical-critical perspective, the referent in Isaiah 53 is not so easily named. The original hearers/readers of the poem who lived hundreds of years before the New Testament might have seen the servant as a contemporary figure or perhaps as a famous historical one. Moreover, it may be that at some point in the textual transmission of this poem, the servant represented a collective whole (see also Isaiah 41:8–9; 44:1); this is how many Jewish interpreters throughout history have interpreted Isaiah 53.

Additionally, as Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Brettler demonstrate, certain details in the poem itself call into question a few assumptions we might make about the servant if we identify him automatically with Jesus.¹ For example, the servant may not actually be portrayed as dying in Isaiah 53. The passage is certainly laden with death language (for example, the simile: “like a lamb led to the slaughter” in Isaiah 53:7 and the readying of his grave in Isaiah 53:9), but the point of this imagery could be that, although the servant was near to death, God exalted him and raised him to great heights (Isaiah 52:13). Such a stunning reversal would be consistent with how death imagery is used in other poetic texts in the Hebrew Bible (for example, 2 Samuel 22:6; Psalm 86:13, Ezekiel 37:1–14). To use a loosely analogous cliché: when someone has “one foot in the grave” it does not mean that they are dead (yet) but rather that they are still alive (but only just).

Another common assumption about the servant in Isaiah 53 is that he is an otherwise able-bodied person who has suffered great injury, but Jeremy Schipper has pointed out that the servant’s tribulations appear more like social and political experiences of disability.² Schipper presents evidence both from the Hebrew Bible and from the ancient Near East that suggests that the servant may be suffering from a skin abnormality (for example, the root ngʿ “stricken” in Isaiah 53:4 and verse 8 is paired with the skin disease sara‘at in Leviticus 13:22 and 1 Chronicles 26:20–21). The social stigma of such a malady may be why the servant is one “from whom others hide their faces” (Isaiah 53:3).

Further, literary evidence from Mesopotamia describes how people with certain skin anomalies were separated from society for reasons of ritual purity or concern for contagion. Similar practices are described in the Hebrew Bible (see Leviticus 13:46; 2 Kings 15:5). Thus, the servant is “cut off from the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8). Notice how these descriptions of the servant’s suffering emphasize the social experience of disability, rather than the diagnosis. We are told little about his condition and much more about how others react to him: “Just as the many were appalled at him—So marred was his appearance, unlike that of man, form, beyond human semblance—(52:14 New Jewish Publication Society; see also 53:3). From this analysis, we should note also that, if the servant is indeed depicted as disabled in Isaiah 53, the role of sacrificial imagery in the passage is called into question since a purification offering is usually required to be “without blemish” (see Leviticus 4:3; 5:15).³

Reading the servant of Isaiah 53 as a person with disability opens many interpretive possibilities to us. We might realize that not all adversity needs to be moralized and that we should not expect all those who suffer unjustly to behave like martyrs. This is especially true for people with disabilities whose problems we usually prefer not to see (Isaiah 53:2) and whose fight for justice we often despise and reject (Isaiah 53:3).

Even as historical-critical scholars of the Hebrew Bible add more nuance to our understanding of famous passages like Isaiah 53, preachers should not shy away from proclaiming this poem from the pulpit. Further, they should not refrain from identifying Jesus with the servant. The point should not be proving the servant’s identity definitively one way or another but rather to be like the Apostle Philip. We can demonstrate to others how Jesus can enrich our reading of Isaiah 53 and in turn, how the servant in Isaiah’s poem can help us understand Jesus. Additionally, a non-exclusive identification of the servant with Jesus might enable our hearers to read a little of themselves in the passage as well. This might have been the experience of that Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 when he read about another disabled servant of God who was socially maligned through no fault of his own.

Notes

1. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible with and without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (New York: HarperCollins, 2020), 287–312, esp. 295–303.
2. Jeremy Schipper, Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31–59.
3. Jeremy Schipper, “Interpreting the Lamb Imagery in Isaiah 53,” JBL 132.2 (2013): 315–25.

Borne out of a gut-wrenching anguish, Psalm 22 is the cry of one who knows what it is to be bullied by his enemies, rejected by his community, and abandoned by God.¹

The threat for the psalmist is imminent as a “company of evildoers” surrounds him like bulls ready to attack and lions eager to devour. Bystanders despise and mock him. Even God seems to have forsaken him. The one in whom his ancestors trusted, the one who he has worshiped since his birth, this one has also seemingly cast him aside. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the psalmist cries. “O Lord, do not be far away! … Come quickly to my aid! (verse 19).” Yet in his time of trouble, God remains agonizingly silent.

The distress of the psalmist is palpable. With no one to help, the psalmist is consumed with a fear that debilitates him, exacting a physical and emotional toll. “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax (verse 14),” the psalmist murmurs. For twenty-one verses, the psalmist voices his agonizing pain, his loneliness, his feelings of abandonment. God, where are you? “Deliver my soul from the sword … save me from the mouth of the lion! (verse 20a, 21a),” the psalmist pleads.

Then rather abruptly, the threat is gone. The enemies who once circled around the psalmist have been replaced by a worshiping community. The psalmist’s fear of affliction has been redirected into fear of the Lord. Lament has turned to praise. The world, which was once a place of danger for the psalmist, has become a place of joy and blessing—not just for the psalmist but for the wider community as well to whom blessings now flow. “The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord (verse 26a).” All this, the psalmist tells us, is God’s doing. In the end, God did not despise the affliction of the afflicted but heard his cry, his desperate plea for help. God turned his face toward him. God answered and acted for his sake, one whom the community had stigmatized, marginalized, and cast off. The holy God, enthroned on the praises of Israel, stooped down and attended to the needs of one despised and rejected.

For those familiar with the Christian Scriptures, it is almost impossible to read this psalm without calling to mind the events of Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. “Eli, eli, lema sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” Jesus cried (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Certainly the gospel writers understood Jesus as taking on the experience of the psalmist and all who would pray this prayer, embodying the sorrow, the loneliness, and the abuse reflected in this psalm. Soldiers gambled for his clothes (cf. Psalm 22:18 and John 19:23-24). Passersby jeered at him (cf. Psalm 22:7-8; Mark 15:29, Matthew 27:39). Enemies sought his life. And God remained silent.

The associations between this psalm and the passion of Christ highlight how fully and completely Jesus entered into the suffering of humanity, taking the sorrow and anguish of those who are afflicted upon himself. So the writer of Hebrews can speak of Jesus as one who became like his sisters and brothers in every respect and who is able to sympathize with us in our weakness and suffering as he intercedes for God’s mercy on our behalf (Hebrews 2:17, 4:15). But Jesus’ suffering is not just about solidarity and sympathy. Jesus not only suffered like us or with us, he suffered and even died for our sake. His is a redemptive suffering, a vicarious suffering, a suffering that marked the beginning of the end of all senseless and gratuitous suffering caused by human sin and evil. Jesus’ suffering brings about the new day described in verses 22-32 when all the families of the nations shall worship the Lord and the poor shall eat and be satisfied and the Lord will reign with justice and righteous and suffering and sorrow shall flee away.

As we consider this psalm on Good Friday, at least two avenues for reflection open themselves up to us. First, Psalm 22 reminds us that our faith is not rooted in a facile triumphalism. Christ’s was a hard-won anguish-filled victory against all that the forces of evil could muster. He stared sin and evil in the face and put them to death in his own body. This psalm, then, gives us a glimpse of what our redemption cost God, the Son submitting to the excruciating journey of the Via Dolorosa all the way to his brutal death on the cross. The father, tormented by Jesus’ cries for help and overcome by grief at his last breath all for the sake of our redemption. What wondrous love is this? What greater demonstration of love can there be than that God would lay down his life for us?

Second, it is not difficult to imagine those in our society who would pray this prayer, those who are the target of prejudice and injustice, those who suffer gratuitously on account of laws, policies, and social norms which fail to make space for them, those whom our society has pushed to margins. Good Friday is a day to join with Jesus in his fierce grief and sorrow over the sin of the world, to lament the forces of evil and cry out to God to bring healing to our sin-sick world. Through the cries of Psalm 22, we are reminded the evil that still plagues our world and even resides in our own hearts and so we lift up our voices in lament, awaiting the day when God will finally bring an end to all evil and pain.

“Come quickly, Lord. Do not be far away!”

Note

1. Commentary first published on this site on March 25, 2016.

Most days we insulate ourselves from death, choosing to ignore our own mortality and that of those we love. But the readings from Good Friday place the horror of death squarely before our eyes as we focus on the crucifixion of Jesus. In facing Jesus’ death on the cross, however, we discover resources for our own faithful living and dying.

The epistle reading from Hebrews unfolds in two parts (4:14-16; 5:7-9). The first section of the reading marks the beginning of a major section of this biblical sermon (4:14-10:39) that examines the author’s main point: Jesus, the Son who is seated at God’s right hand, is our high priest (8:1). 

Jesus’ identity as priest points in two directions, underscoring his relationship both with God and with human beings. On the one hand, Jesus is the exalted Son of God, “the great high priest who has passed through the heavens” (4:14). Jesus as Son now ministers in the heavenly sanctuary (8:2) and so is able to save human beings for all time (7:25). On the other hand, as a human being, Jesus experienced the full range of testing that we ourselves know. He identifies fully with our frailty and limitations (4:15).

That identification includes our fear of death, as the second passage from Hebrews 5:7-9 makes clear. During his earthly life, Jesus prayed fervently to God “with loud cries and tears,” and he trusted God was able to deliver him from death (5:7). Some interpreters connect this experience of prayer to Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:40-46), some to Jesus’ prayer from the cross (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34), and others to language often used to characterize the prayers of the righteous. The exact reference is not essential. What matters is that in his prayers, Jesus stands with us as mortal, facing death. This solidarity reveals that Jesus, like us, is vulnerable and finite. In our final trial, Jesus provides a model for us, crying out to God for help. He shows us that in moments of crisis and peril we can find solace and strength in prayer. Because of his reverence, God heard his prayers. God’s answer did not mean God spared Jesus the experience of death, but rather that death’s power over him was not permanent.

Jesus’ identification with humanity extends as well to his learning “obedience through what he suffered” (5:8). As Jesus responds to and obeys God’s call, that submission includes his paschal suffering and death (2:9, 10; 9:26; 13:21). He does not cling to any prerogatives as God’s Son, but fully embraces his human lot. As a result, he becomes a model for all of us who also learn through suffering. 

In addition, Jesus becomes “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (5:9). The gift of salvation is fundamentally an experience of grace. That affirmation returns us to the opening words of this reading. Jesus’ own experience of suffering and death underscores that he has known every kind of testing we experience (2:17-18; 4:15). This ability to identify with us equips him for service as our compassionate high priest. But as our forerunner, Jesus has also entered into God’s presence in the holy place on our behalf (6:19-20; 9:12, 24). As a result, he has charted “a new and living way” for us to approach God (10:20).

Because Jesus has identified with us and opened new access to God’s presence, we are empowered and called to respond with confidence. The author of Hebrews sets out our response in terms of two imperatives that sum up his message: we are to hold fast and to move forward.

The first imperative is to hold fast to our confession (4:14). This word of encouragement recalls the description of Jesus as “the apostle and high priest of our confession” (3:1). Our declaration of faith in God and Christ is also the ground of our hope (10:23). Because Jesus, who is the content of our confession, is faithful even in the face of hostility (2:17; 12:2-3), we too can hold fast as we face obstacles and opposition. Jesus’ faithfulness calls forth our own.

The second imperative is to approach God’s throne (4:16). Those who approach or draw near to God do so for the purpose of worship (Exodus 16:9; 34:32; Leviticus 9:5; Numbers 10:3-4). In a fundamental sense, all of Hebrews is a call to worship God. In addition to repeated reminders to draw near (4:16; 7:25; 10:22; 11:6; 12:18,22), the author counsels against the opposite movement of “turning away” or “shrinking back” (3:12; 6:6; 10:38-39). Countering our reluctance to approach God due to judgment and exposure (4:12-13), the author encourages boldness because Jesus is our sympathetic high priest whose presence with God assures our needs are met with mercy and grace in our time of need (4:16).

In these two brief passages, the author of Hebrews connects Jesus’ experiences with our own, reminding us that the testing of the cross connects to our own. Jesus’ role as high priest means he identifies with us but also represents us before God (5:1). His identification with us includes our mortality. But now, as exalted Son, he has passed through the heavens (4:14) and into God’s presence. When we approach God in prayer and worship, alongside us stands one who knows our experiences of weakness and mortality from the inside. His presence gives us confidence so that we can hold fast to our confession of faith even in the midst of trial and draw near to God who offers us the help we need.