Day 45, Good Friday, 2 April What is truth?

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 45, Good Friday, 2 April

What is truth?

The three passages we read on ‘good’ Friday speak to the heart of the matter. ‘He was rejected and despised yet he carried our sorrows, was crushed for our sins’ (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). In his musical arrangement of The Messiah, George Handel lingers over these words in moving sad repetition, particularly pausing on the words ‘rejected’, ‘despis-ed’. He matches the ‘ed’ of rejected with the ‘ed’ of despised.  We are invited to soak up this searing description of the fate of Jesus.

The letter to the Hebrews too, in 4:14-16 and 5: 7-9 tells us of his ‘weakness’ and his ‘silent tears’. We are introduced to the agony, pain and desolation of Jesus in his final hours.

These readings prepare us for John’s account of the Passion (18:1-19:42). Why do we always read John on Good Friday and not one of the others? Maybe because he gives so much room to Pilate and the judgement. Pilate makes feeble attempts to be just and do what is right. But the pressure of public opinion and of politics obstructs his vision and he gives in. ‘What is truth?’ he asks dismissively. But Jesus had said earlier in John’s gospel (8:32), ‘the truth will make you free.’ Pilate preferred the comfort of compromise and we have continued to do the same ever since. We cannot face the truth and so Jesus goes to his death again and again, all over the world.