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Special Report
Thank God It’s Friday?
Special Good Friday reflections, inspired by New Testament scholar Joel Marcus.
On Good Friday, the hours between noon and 3 o’clock have traditionally been reserved for the faithful to reflect on Jesus Christ’s great suffering on the cross. Churches encourage prayer, reflection, and silence. Your humble scribe is not good at any of those things. So, half a dozen years ago now, I went looking for help.
I found an indispensable aid in the form of a short book by the New Testament scholar Joel Marcus. It carries the highly improbable title (for the purposes of Good Friday reading, anyway), Jesus and the Holocaust: Reflections on Suffering and Hope. When I told a Jewish friend about my annual reading habit, he joked that it was mighty goy of me to give “equal time” to a rebuttal of the Gospel of John.
That is not why I keep coming back to Jesus and the Holocaust. I come back because it has a way of concentrating the mind on Good Friday like no other devotion that I am aware of. I come back because it is a beautiful book and a brave one.
The project began when Marcus preached the Good Friday service at the Episcopal cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1995. That year also marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust and so Marcus, who is Jewish by birth and Anglican by conversion, determined to “explore the links between that one Jewish death” in the first century and the some “6 million Jewish deaths that occurred more than 1,900 years later.”
Marcus took this approach because he had “wanted to see if the hope that Christians have found hidden in the darkest hour of their liturgical year might shed any light on the most tragic moment of our recent history — and vice versa.” He gave the parishioners (and, later, readers) the sort of stories that they expect from the Gospels and the Hebrew Bible at this time of year, and also poems, paintings, and tales of Jewish persecution.
To wit, before Marcus gets to the reading from the prophet Isaiah about the “suffering servant” (a figure Christians interpret as Jesus and Jews believe to be Israel), he relays to us the story of the liquidation of 4,000 Jews from the Lithuanian shtetl of Eisysky on September 25, 1941. The town’s Jews were ushered to open graves, ordered to strip, and then, in groups of 250 or so at a time, “shot in the back of the head by Lithuanian guards with the encouragement and help of the local people.”
One teenage boy named Zvi Michalowsky was put on that firing line but survived. He did so in the first place because of good timing. He figured out when the volleys were coming and launched himself into the pit of bodies a split second before the soldiers fired. The boy continued to get by because of his cunning and his audience.
After Zvi clawed his way out of the pit, he made his way to a few Christian homes and begged for shelter. “Jew, go back to the grave where you belong!” the first homeowner told him. The naked, bloodied young man was similarly rebuked until he got to the home of an old widow, who tried to chase him away with a burning piece of wood. Rather than run away, he, well, he innovated. “I am your Lord, Jesus Christ,” Zvi said, “I came down from the cross. Look at me — the blood, the pain, the suffering of the innocent. Let me in.” And let him in she did.
Marcus’s multidisciplinary (some would say jumbled) approach was not one that carried with it any assurance of success and it could have gone badly wrong. This is a danger that the author absolutely grasped. The most obvious point of the third chapter (“An Atheist in Five Minutes”) is that “nothing can induce despair more quickly than a premature, ill-thought-out affirmation of faith.”
Jesus and the Holocaust gets the mood and the magnitude of Good Friday exactly right. There is hope here today, but it’s buried pretty deep.
About the Author
Jeremy Lott is editor of RealClearPolicy.com, RealClearBooks.com and RealClearReligion.org and associate editor of RealClearScience.com.
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Dee See| 4.22.11 @ 6:45AM
"I'd rediscovered the God of my youth----"
-John Bunyan
treatise
Do what soul you still have left a favor,
start downloading the commentaries and treatises of John Calvin, John Bunyan and John Gill this Good Friday weekend.
And better still, throw out your mind control
TV and radio, along with your surveillance grid
PCs, and start studying them.
REALLY
Tina B| 4.22.11 @ 7:13AM
Or. . . . go to oneplace.com on your PC and listen to some of the finest apologetics of the modern era for free.
May I recomment Alistaire Begg, Ravi Zacharias, or Erwin Lutzer. You'll have to scroll to the bottom and find them in "all ministries" links and let the stone be rolled away. . .again! Happy Easter.
Ryan| 4.22.11 @ 7:52AM
Or...just re-read the Easter story in the last chapters of the Gospels.
And go to Church on Sunday, and hear the Word preached.
Darin| 4.22.11 @ 9:32AM
The fact that the Son of God paid the price for MY sins, that he died that I might live, humbles me beyond words. For now I can only thank him in prayer. One day I'll be able to thank him in person!
ShortNSweet| 4.22.11 @ 9:47AM
Well said Darin! Me too!
ShortNSweet| 4.22.11 @ 9:46AM
Praise God, My Savior Lives! I serve a risen Savior!
As God's children we are commanded to go to Samaria, Judea, and to all parts of the world, and tell them about Jesus, the Messiah, God with Us, Wonderful, Counselor, the King of Kings!
Easter is representative of the most wonderful day in the history of mankind! God bless us all! God looked upon the sinful state of mankind, and sent His only Son into this world to live the perfect life, to give His life sacrificially for the sins of all man, and die, and was raised on the third day to life eternally with God. It is why we live! The choice is ours.
My son and I were once having a conversation about a small persecution he had suffered in school that day. I told him this..."If you and I are right, and Jesus is the way (to the Father), the truth, and the life, we have heaven to look forward to, and this life is our hell. If we are wrong, and that kid is right, we all die and have not lost one thing." Years later he reminded me of that conversation. It was profound enough for a child to never forget.
Which do you choose? I choose Christ!!!!!!
Happy Easter!
Al Adab| 4.22.11 @ 11:06AM
Well said. Little to add to your post except to note how interesting it is that the neo-pagans have co-opted the day for earth day. It cannot be coincidental. When we spend so much energy worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, it is serious error.
PJ| 4.22.11 @ 10:38PM
Did you also know that it's Lenin's birthday?
Brian B| 4.22.11 @ 1:23PM
--Marcus took this approach because he had "wanted to see if the hope that Christians have found hidden in the darkest hour of their liturgical year might shed any light on the most tragic moment of our recent history -- and vice versa."--
Say what? Christ's victory on the cross over sin death and our adversary is our darkest hour?
It's the greatest moment and the greatest demonstration of love in history; the moment the Light of the world eternally vanquished the darkness.
We aren't saved by the resurrection, as wonderful as its promise is, we're saved by His substitutionary sacrifice on the cross.
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 12:07AM
Actually, I believe he was referring to the several days between Crucifixion and Resurrection as the darkest hour. (Jewish graduate of TCU, A+ in my Biblical Literature and Life Class, and not just because I aced Old Testament.)
Publius| 4.23.11 @ 8:36PM
At the time of the Crucifixion, it was indeed a dark day. Consider that the "good" in "Good Friday" is retrospective. In real time, it was the darkest of dark days for the mortals that were witnesses to the event.
Only retroactively can we see that it was the Death that gave us all life. At the time, Friday and Saturday were both days of despair.
David T| 4.22.11 @ 3:08PM
The lenten season is indeed the darkest time of the liturgical year. There is no joy--it's all about privation and sacrifice. It's as though we are sealed in the tomb with Jesus until that great morning when the stone is rolled away and we can all shout "Alleluia, Christ is risen" once again.
Michael L. Hauschild| 4.22.11 @ 6:54PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
C S Lewis| 4.22.11 @ 7:01PM
these video's are joyful! I've watched them over and over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....r_embedded
http://toddstarnes.com/2011/04/christians-rise-up/
alice moore| 4.22.11 @ 9:28PM
Thank you, for the links CS Lewis. Just got back from the Good Friday Service.
Occam's Tool| 4.23.11 @ 12:05AM
A Happy and Blessed Easter and Good Friday to all my friends posting here.
Margie| 4.23.11 @ 2:18AM
"He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me." Mt. 10:40.
Jesus says that, O.T~ that means you!
You are loved.
Dee See| 4.23.11 @ 12:33AM
Forget the matter of fake fractional reserve,
debt-serf fake currency, USURY itself is profoundly condemned in the Old Testament
(making something out of nothing thereby
mocking God Almighty himself).
And on this Good Friday we might also reflect that
Jesus Christ himself flew into a rage at the money lenders infesting the temple.
He may in fact be the only divine religious figure
anywhere in human history to have done so.
THINK ABOUT THAT
-----------------------AND THEN KEEP THINKING
Margie| 4.23.11 @ 2:26AM
Dee See,
Half the time I cannot understand what you're saying, but I do know that if you like John Bunyan's (author of The Pilgrim's Progress) writings you are OK in my book. :^)
Some of his works are:
A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul, 1658
A Discourse Upon the Pharisee and the Publican, 1685
A Holy Life
Christ a Complete Saviour (The Intercession of Christ And Who Are Privileged in It), 1692
Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ, 1678
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 1666
Light for Them that Sit in Darkness
Praying with the Spirit and with Understanding too, 1663
Of Antichrist and His Ruin, 1692
Reprobation Asserted, 1674
Saved by Grace, 1675
Seasonal Counsel or Suffering Saints in the Furnace – Advice to Persecuted Christians in Their Trials & Tribulations, 1684
Solomon's Temple Spiritualized
Some Gospel Truths Opened, 1656
The Acceptable Sacrifice
The Desire of the Righteous Granted
The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded, 1659
The Doom and Downfall of the Fruitless Professor (Or The Barren Fig Tree), 1682
The End of the World, The Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment, 1665
The Fear of God – What it is, and what is it is not, 1679
The Greatness of the Soul and Unspeakableness of its Loss Thereof, 1683
The Heavenly Footman, 1698
The Holy City or the New Jerusalem, 1665
The Holy War – The Losing and Taking Again of the Town of Man-soul (The Holy War Made by Shaddai upon Diabolus, for the Regaining of the World), 1682
The Life and Death of Mr Badman, 1680
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, 1678
The Strait Gate, Great Difficulty of Going to Heaven, 1676
The Saint's Knowledge of Christ's Love, or The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, 1692
The Water of Life or The Richness and Glory of the Gospel, 1688
The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate, 1688
Northern Rebel| 4.24.11 @ 5:12PM
Can you imagine how it must have been for those of faith during the time between the crucifiction, and the ressurection?
Would I have had the faith to continue to believe, or would I have questioned my faith, after watching Him die on the cross?
What an amazing time to have existed!
We Christians would all hope that had we been there, our faith would have been resolute, and rock solid.
The good news is that Christ would have, and still continues to forgive us, and love us, and want the best for us. Ours is the God of love and peace.
Chritians worship life, love, and the peace that our Lord blesses us with. We are not a religion that worships death, and cruelty, as others do.
HAPPY EASTER MY FRIENDS!
Alan Brooks| 4.24.11 @ 11:43PM
Um, crucifixion is cruelty. You ought to have stopped while you were ahead.
Tina B| 4.25.11 @ 4:44PM
We don't worship the crucifixion, we worship He who was crucified.
Romans were the experts who loved crucifying their subjects, with pomp and circumstance. We wept for Him as He walked the Via de la Rosa. We wept as they plunged the nails into his wrists or palms or the area covering both, and then his feet. Romans loved that blood and cruelty. We stood and wept as they raised the cross and as He cried out. We wept for Him as He died for us.
Pagans worship objects, dates, times, seasons, created things, but not Jesus. We worship Him within dates, times or seasons and through the use of objects:: crosses, trees, Easter Lilies and the like. We use his creation to worship the Creator.
That is the difference. Pagans worship the created. Christians worship the Creator, Christ.
C Smith| 4.27.11 @ 1:23AM
Scripture clearly, simply, and unquestionably states that God created the world in six days:
"Six days [Yom] shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.... For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day...." (Exodus 20:9-11).
Yom, the Hebrew word for day is always used in Scripture to denote a literal 24-hour day. Pope Benedict appeared to affirm this biblical prerequisite during an Easter Vigil mass, in St. Peter's Basilica:
"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense...."
However, his words just don't ring true: Catholic schools include evolution in their science curriculums; Catholic churches teach evolution as a natural God perpetuating process; the Vatican consistently affirms that the "science" of human evolution and faith are not inconsistent.
An earlier pope also allowed "research and discussions...[to] take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution" (Pope Pius XII, Encyclical, Humani Generi, 1950). Attempting to bridge controversy, this pope re-introduced the heretical body-spirit dichotomy of first century Gnostics, i.e., the body matters not, spirit is all. However, the Lord's linage is a linage of the flesh and consequently:
".... every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world" (1John 4:3).
http://darwinsalbatross.blogspot.com/
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 9:55PM
is good