Oh The Anticipation!
On the Dreadful Knowledge of Death
Today, Good Friday, the Orthodox Church recounts the Passion of Christ. During Holy Week, I think about how much Jesus personally anguished over His death. He surely predicted it; among many things, is this evidence that He struggled to process the torment that awaited Him? He had the knowledge of His death, particularly a painful, tortuous death that ended not with the mercy of speed, but suffocation. How miserable is such knowledge; how dreadful it is to know how and when one will die.
The Prophet Isaiah wrote about how the Christ would proceed to His death willingly, being lead like a lamb to the slaughter. Yet a lamb knows not what awaits it. But Jesus did. And the anticipation and the anxiety lead him to pray the night before His crucifixion in such agony that his sweat became like drops of blood. He was in such distress that an angel strengthened Him.
It is worth pausing here and recalling the dread of an upcoming painful experience. We all have them. Jesus spoke of a pregnant woman in “sorrow” because her hour has come. David the Psalmist fasted for seven days and sought God “from the ground” on behalf of His sick child, refusing to rise or eat until the child was healed or died. Present misery is difficult; misery delayed is agonizing.
Dreading the moments before His arrest, Jesus asked the Father to take away the torment that awaited him. But in perfect character and in the same breath, Jesus declared His obedience to the Father. He, the Son of God, disclosed to His disciples that His soul was sorrowful to the point of death. How did He do it? I have found myself wanting to believe that because Jesus was the all powerful deity, He could have simply willed the pain away. But my faith convicts me otherwise. Jesus was fully man and felt every lash, every nail piercing His body, and gasped for every last breath of air.
Today we rightly focus on Jesus’ death and agonize with Him. But we also ought to recognize and rejoice that the mental anguish He endured preceding His death concluded today. At long last, the moment He came for has arrived and now our grief for Him turns to joy. It is in this exasperation that Jesus breathes his last and cries, “It is finished!”