One of the most enjoyable things I do as Bishop is to have opportunities to talk to the children and young people in our diocese and listen to their questions about God and about our faith. Some of those questions are very challenging. I was asked once “Why did Jesus have to die such a terrible death?” And of course, linked to this question is “Why does God allow evil to exist in the world?” “Why does God allow people to suffer, especially the innocent and the good?”

These questions come back to me on days like today when we think seriously about the suffering and death of Jesus. Can we find answers to our questions here as we listen to a story that has been told and retold for two thousand years? Jean Vanier has written a book on the Gospel of John. In it he says “The death of Jesus is one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity.” In Jesus’ death on the cross we come face to face with this mystery of good and evil in our world. And as we listen to this Gospel, this “Good News” of the Suffering of Christ, can we find some answer perhaps to these questions that arise from the experience of suffering in our own personal lives?

Why must good people suffer? Jesus’ goodness is indisputable. He was a Man of Love; and he died the object of hatred.  He was the Innocent On.  He cured those who were sick. He helped people who were rejected, oppressed and scorned to realize that they were loved and were beautiful in God’s eyes. What he did was good and benefited so many people. And yet he was violently beaten down, crushed and humiliated in an agonizing death, abandoned by almost everyone but his mother and a beloved disciple.

Once again the mighty of the world misuse their power in order to abuse and crush the small and the weak, one more event in a long history of human oppression. And we ask: Where is God? Why does God allow this?

The Passion and Death of Jesus as told by St. John, is more than an historical account; it is a telling of Good News. As we follow the Passion of St. John we begin to realize that the Victim here is not a victim. Something very different is going on here from the regular crushing of any opposition by those with power. Here, it is not the ones in power that are in control. The religious authorities who shout for Jesus’ death are frightened and agitated; Pilate the Governor of mighty Rome is fearful and anxious. The mob that demands his crucifixion is unsettled, screaming and shouting.

Only Jesus remains absolutely calm and completely in control in this telling of the Passion. When the soldiers come to arrest him, he speaks his Divine Name and they reel back and fall to the ground in the face of God’s Son. Jesus allows them to arrest him. Pilate is the agent of the most powerful man in the world, the Emperor of Rome. Jesus tells Pilate that the only reason he has power over him is that God allows it. Finally with silent dignity the sacrificial Lamb of God goes to his death – on his own initiative, only because he has chosen to do so.

Jesus, in this Gospel, is the King with a power greater than the Emperor of Rome, for Jesus’ power will defeat death. He accepts his death on his own terms; he willingly offers his life to God. He will then bring about a new world and a new life that will be beyond the touch of suffering and beyond the power of death. In the face of human suffering, the Son of God chooses to enter into it fully. What we suffer, God suffers. In Jesus on the cross we see the mystery of God’s love for us. The message is that we too will triumph over suffering and death. 

Oppression of the weak and vulnerable by the powerful of the world is an evil which still goes on today. People die terrible deaths, an evil inflicted on them by those who have greater power, greater might. Innocent people suffer painful afflictions. Suffering and sorrow touch everyone. In the midst of all of this we look at Jesus on the Cross. We see the Innocent One, with deliberate intent, taking upon himself the evil of the world: all its oppression, its violence, its hatred, its unfairness, its agony and despair. We see the Son of God, through whom the whole world was created and given life, giving himself up to death for us. And we see the One who will rise triumphant over death. He offers that triumph to all of us.

So as we live our lives in a world where we must face the mystery of evil, we know that, as strong as evil may be, it will never overcome us. In other words, we have hope; hope that is founded on Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection from the dead. God has entered into our human pain. We will triumph over our darkness and pain as Jesus triumphed over the agony and humiliation of the cross. That hope sustains us and strengthens us through all the trials of life.

And secondly, no matter how great our suffering, no matter how great our pain, we do not endure that pain alone. Jesus himself has endured it. We hear so often today of people dying under torture. Even in that horror, when nothing else in this world can give comfort, we know that Jesus has himself endured that same horror and knows in his own body the pain that human beings can suffer. And, because of the cross, we know that the end is not the nothingness of death but the fullness of life forever. Even in the very worst of what life can be, we walk with Jesus, God with us, who has endured what we endure. Above all, we know that what lies ahead is fullness of life, where the very worst cannot even exist.

When the religious authorities saw Jesus dead on the cross, they thought they had destroyed this man who had challenged them. When Pilate ordered Jesus crucified he thought that he had rid himself of an unimportant trouble maker. He was dead and they were rid of him. Might and power had taken care of the problem. Death was stronger than anyone.

We know how ineffective their might and power was. We know how powerful the gentle love and humble kingship of Jesus was. Jesus was stronger than death. For the hope that this gives us and for the comfort that we receive in the difficult moments of our own lives, we say to Jesus in this Liturgy of Good Friday, “I thank you Lord, for you have rescued me.” And as we behold Jesus on the cross, the words of the Psalm rise from our hearts: “I love you God, my strength, my rock, my shelter, my stronghold.”