To lose someone you love is very hard. Think back into your own lives and remember the numbness, the emptiness, the fear, the dawning realisation that it’s over, the person you’ve loved will never be with you again. It’s a moment when you have to grow up and face the truth of your own mortality. Those same emotions, loss, pain, hurt, numbness, frustration – they are all there in the Good Friday story. Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary of Magdala, John the beloved disciple experience every emotion that you or I experience as they watch Jesus die. All the emotions that went on that First Good Friday still go on today in the lives of God’s people, in our lives.

Good Friday goes on all around us every day

More than that, the Good Friday story goes on all around us every day. The story is going on in our midst in the broken dreams and lost hopes that we all have. It goes on in the lives of those who suffer. It goes on in the people of Gaza or Iraq. It goes on in the lives of those whose dignity is eroded through injustice and racism, those who struggle to survive, those imprisoned, those who are homeless. The truth is that most of us stand back and watch Jesus die each day and like the crowds who watched on Good Friday we say and do nothing.

Why begin by reflecting on Good Friday? It’s because this year on Sundays we will be reflecting on Mark’s Gospel which is largely a passion narrative pointing towards Jesus’ crucifixion and the understanding of that crucifixion. Mark wants to prove to his community that Jesus is the Messiah. He wants us to see Jesus as the suffering servant who comes to the full knowledge of who he is through the cross. He wants to show us that Jesus came to his glory in an absurd and backward way - the way of the cross.

Mark doesn’t want his reader to proclaim that Jesus is Lord too quickly or too lightly. We have to know what we’re saying and its implications because to say ‘yes’ to Jesus implies that we’re willing to go through darkness to find light, that we’re prepared to go through suffering and death to find life. This is not a sugar coated Gospel. Much of Mark’s Gospel is an invitation to enter into this experience and know who God is for us, the God who brings life from death and light out of darkness. There are times when the evangelist does proclaim the glory of God by miracles, signs and wonders but you’ll find that in every miracle story there is a pulling in the other direction. Mark invites us to think of the cost involved in walking the Jesus way. Undoubtedly Mark wants to prove that Jesus is the unique Son of God but only in terms of the suffering servant. We will understand who God is when we see the crucified Lord. It’s then that we’ll understand that God is the eternal giver made flesh in Jesus.

Often in failure and mess we are able to see more clearly the presence of God

At the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is caught up with the crowds all around him but as the Gospel progresses you find him moving out of the crowds to fewer and fewer people. Until finally at the foot of the cross there is no one who is able to confess that ‘Jesus is Lord’ except, ironically, a Roman centurion. Richard Rohr says that one person in Jesus’ moment of absolute loneliness is free to recognise that Jesus is Lord. When he was in the crowd working miracles they were all cheering him. When he was on a cross only the Centurion said, this was truly the Son of God and that is the climax of the gospel.

It’s almost as though Mark is challenging us to recognise the presence of God in the world and is showing us through the cross that it’s often in failure and mess that we are able to see more clearly the presence of God. The challenge is to open our eyes and see. We have to learn how to recognise the presence of God in the cross, in ugliness and weakness and failure, in much of what we call humanity. In recognising God present in the midst of suffering and brokenness the invitation is to trust that, as Jesus rose from the dead, so he will continue to rise in the brothers and sisters whose lives appear to be nothing but agony and heartache.

Fr Chris Thomas heads up the Irenaeus Project. He is a member of the Emmaus Family of Prayer and a priest of the Liverpool Diocese.