A Reflection for Good Friday 2026

Where are you? I cannot see you or feel you in this darkness, in this lonely place. The world has grown so remarkably callous and cruel. Perhaps it has always been like this. The sheer, brutal, stupidity of power. The narrative of the world seems to have been hijacked by the sheer, brutal, stupidity of power. We will take them back to the stone age where they belong, says the Caesar of the western world. And in war just think of the way bombs tear lives apart, communities apart. Empire crucifies. The sheer, brutal, stupidity of power. Power crucifies the weak in pursuit of victory. In a way it has always been like this. It just feels particularly shocking to see it so starkly, all over again.

It is hard to hear a counter-narrative to the narrative of stupid power. The powerlessness of God is almost impossible to see or sense amongst the war-games. But Christ stands with the forsaken, with the victims of war and genocide. Christ stands and suffers in the forsaken places, with forsaken people, and reminds us that these places, these people, are holy. They are full of the powerlessness of God. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? We fear forsaken places. We don’t want to spend any time in forsaken places; they eat away at our easy certainties.

Where did it go? Where did our wisdom go? When did we make the decision to give the world over to the egos of the strong men? The crucifiers, the war-profiteers. Did you know that many religious people in the USA believe Jesus is somehow part of this new war? Egging it on as it were. The US war-secretary is a professed Christian, and he regularly and lovingly reports how his new war is killing the enemy. He is like a young boy with a new toy. A new lethal toy. Look what this can do. Look how strong I am. Jesus loves us but not you over there. Look at this bomb. Look at this war. Just look how much Jesus loves us but not you.

How could the crucified be a war-leader? How could Christ be turned into a captive of the military industrial complex? Do people read the Gospels? It’s a serious question. Do people read the Gospels and actually take them seriously? But I suppose this is the way of it. Talk to the strong men of Iran. Have they read their Koran? Do they know that the name of Allah is the name of a boundlessly merciful and compassionate creator? Perhaps after a time God always must be put aside when it comes to matters of power. Strong men use God as one more prop, one more justification, for the violence they are about to unleash. As Trump said, we’ll keep on bombing our little hearts out. That use of language. Its absence of humanity or sympathy. The language of power.

The cross was a symbol of worldly power. The Romans used crucifixion to oppress and terrify populations. The cross was the forsaken place for forsaken people. But God took this symbol of worldly power, took this forsaken instrument of torture, and made it into something else. It is like a dream where the thing you fear most becomes the thing which is most beautiful. The monster becomes something infinitely precious. At the heart of what is most brutal and most loveless, God speaks words of unconditional love and forgiveness. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

We do not know what we are doing. Because of that we create more suffering. In our personal lives it is when we are most certain and convicted that we probably cause the most suffering. In Jesus’ time, it was the conviction of God being on their side which led the religious leaders to crucify God. If you asked Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, or the Iranian leadership, if they thought God was on their side, I suspect they would answer yes to that question in some form or other. God is on our side therefore let us crucify God. Their God is a God of absolute, lethal power.

Therefore, it is in the spaces of darkness, doubt, vulnerability where love’s counter-narrative is written, the counter-narrative to the narrative of the sheer, brutal, stupidity of power. It is in the spaces between the words. It is in the apparently forsaken spaces where love seems to live, not in the secure and apparently certain places of power.

What happens when we give up the narrative of control? When we enter, with Christ, into the most forsaken spaces? Well, we find another narrative. It might seem to be a narrative of powerlessness, of weakness, at first. But perhaps we begin to sense, in this dark place, we can see in a new way? A way which is on the other side of thinking we know what we are doing. We have to travel, as it were, around the dark side of the moon to learn the divine secrets of this other side. Is it too easy to say that God meets us in the loss of control, in the loss of certainty, in the humiliation of our vulnerability? It probably is a little too easy to say that. Feeling forsaken feels absolutely horrible. Feeling lost, discarded, unloved. All of these things Jesus felt. All of these things Jesus underwent. The crucifying power of divine love is, in its way, a terrible power. So much easier to cling to the weapons of power we can wield in our personal lives. Our conviction we are right. So much easier to cling to the ways of the strong men. Dominate. Capture. Control. Jesus loves you, but not you, or you, or you.

There are no easy answers, no slogans, in the shadow of the cross. That in itself matters. It matters that, at the foot of the cross, there are no easy answers because easy answers are again the language of power with its simplistic certainties. There is the primal call of ultimate aloneness. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? There are words of unconditional love and surrender. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. But a door is opened. That which is most monstrous has become beautiful. A new way of living is revealed through an old way of death. When we let go of what we know, when we let go of the narratives of power, a divine dimension of infinite preciousness is born. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

The Reverend Ben Brown