Good Friday Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
HOLY WEEK GOOD FRIDAY...

...We stopped the car outside the most unlikely looking house. One wall looked as if it was going to collapse at any moment. The door was hanging off on one hinge. An upstairs window was broken. There was a rustle in the bushes nearby, as though we had interrupted a rodent in its afternoon work. Could this really be the place?

We thought back through the last hour of the drive. We had followed all the signposts. We had taken all the turns. We had checked the mileage. There was no other house in sight. This must be the place. But . . . why?

The resolution of that story must wait for another time. But unless we feel something of that same sense of horror and bafflement as we read Mark 15, we are missing the point. We have followed all the signposts, from the voice at Jesus’ baptism through Peter’s blurting out that Jesus was the Messiah, through all the events of Jesus’ early public career, through the transfiguration, right up to the triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the crowds hailing him as king, and then, dramatically and ironically, Caiaphas asking if Jesus really was the Messiah and Jesus saying yes, and much more. He’s the king! He’s the Messiah! He’s the one Israel has been waiting for! We’ve taken all the right turnings. We’ve checked our calculations. This must be the moment. There is nobody else in sight. Either he’s the Messiah or nobody is...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright