Have you ever felt betrayed by a friend? Someone you trusted did (or didn’t) do something and made you doubt the depth of their love and loyalty? And when you tried to bring it to their attention they either didn’t understand or outright denied it?
Jesus knows that feeling.
His friend Judas betrayed Him and His friend Peter denied Him not once, but three times. The night before He was killed, He found His friends sleeping instead of keeping watch and praying like He asked them to. His mental anguish was seemingly lost on them and they couldn’t even support Him in one small way by doing what He’d requested.
Have you ever felt abandoned or forsaken by a parent or even by God?
Jesus knows that feeling, too. While hanging on the cross, He cried out to His God and Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus is fully God and without sin, but He is also fully human with the full range of human emotions.
Jesus is fully God and without sin, but He is also fully human with the full range of human emotions. We sang a new song on Sunday called “Son of Suffering.” Jesus could feel hurt, rejected, afraid, and humiliated. He was punished in the worst way for a crime He didn’t commit, and when He was most in need of the support of His friends, they were silent and oblivious or turned their backs on Him. And even in the years leading up to His crucifixion, while He had support for His ministry and devoted followers, there was no one, not even His own earthly parents, who could fully understand His nature or the purpose to which God had called Him. The only one who could truly understand was His heavenly Father.
But His heavenly Father didn’t answer His prayers the way He wanted in the garden of Gethsemane, when He pleaded with Him to “take this cup” from Him. God did not spare His son from suffering on the cross. And He doesn’t always spare us from suffering either: “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
If you’re enduring trouble in this world, false accusation or assumptions from people who don’t really know you, or hurt, shortsightedness, or even betrayal from your loved ones who do know you, come take part in our Good Friday service on April 3rd at 7pm where we will sit with and reflect on the pain Jesus felt when He experienced those things. On Easter Sunday (at our regular service times) we will celebrate His triumph over death, and we hope you will join us for that, too. But before we can celebrate, we would be remiss not to observe and remember how Jesus relates to us and how He suffered. Then we can celebrate together how He ultimately defeated that suffering and in doing so gave us eternal hope to sustain us in our darkest days.
The Easter season officially began yesterday with Ash Wednesday and will culminate in Holy Weekend. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are two parts of the same story. So we warmly invite you to take in Acts 1 and 2 with us on April 3rd and April 5th. See you then.
