Good Friday Homily
April 3, 2026
John 18:1 – 19:42
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Why do we call today Good Friday? On the surface, “good” seems like an odd way to describe it. Death is not good. Suffering is not good. Betrayal is not good. Leaders using their power unjustly is not good. A “mob mentality” being stirred up amongst a crowd until they call for the execution of an innocent man is not good. None of these details that we find in the events leading to Jesus’ death on the cross are good.
That fateful Friday only becomes good when we realize, through faith, that all of these bad things happened within the life of God! Why is that good? Because it means that nothing—not even the worst that the world can throw at us—nothing is beyond the reach of God’s presence, mercy, and grace. The bad things that happen to us happen to Jesus, and through Jesus, they happen in the life of God. So, Jesus surrendered himself over to the consequences of all these bad things; he gave himself to be the sacrificial victim on our behalf—he became the Lamb of God.
Up until the time when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 A.D.—so about 40 years after Jesus’ death and being raised again—the priests in the Temple would ritually sacrifice lambs the night before the annual Jewish Passover festival. The people could then eat lamb on the first night of the Passover holiday, according to the laws of Moses (which we find in Leviticus 23, Numbers 28, and Deuteronomy 16). As they ate, they remembered how the Lord had freed them from slavery in Egypt centuries earlier. That very first Passover, on the night when they prepared themselves to escape from Egypt, an angel of the Lord “passed over” every house where the Hebrews lived and spared them from death, if the doorposts were smeared with the blood of a lamb. The blood of the Passover Lamb had the power to turn death away and preserve life.
When Jesus went to the cross, he became what John the Baptist foretold:“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Sin leads to death. And now, in Jesus, both sin and death have been taken into the very life of God! The God who turned death away because of the blood of the Passover Lamb, now has become the sacrificial Passover Lamb for all time. And the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, now has the power to forgive sin and defeat death for eternity.
Today is “good” because on the cross of Christ, all the powers of the world that lead to sin and death have been overcome. When God’s kingdom comes among us, the ways of the world are turned upside down: The wounded one becomes the healer; the last become first; the lowly become blessed; our waste of the good gifts of God’s creation is turned to care; our cruelty against our fellow human beings is turned into peace; and our rebellion against God is turned into reconciliation. All because the Messiah of God suffers as a servant and places his future entirely in the hands of his Heavenly Father.
Jesus does not save himself, and neither can we save ourselves. Yet upon the cross, with his dying breath, Jesus says “It is finished”. This is the good news that turns a bad Friday good: Christ’s mission is accomplished. His death has won our complete salvation. For in Jesus, even our sin and death have been taken into the life of God—which is where all new life begins. Amen.