The Politics of Good Friday: Crosses, Crowds, and the Corruption of Power

Good Friday was never apolitical. From the beginning, and certainly from the moment Jesus stood trial before Pilate, the cross became its usual site of death and a symbol of empire - the brutality of state-sanctioned execution, and the lengths to which the powerful will go to preserve themselves. Good Friday is the state at its worst, colluding with religion to silence the disruptive, to crucify the liberator, and to make a spectacle of justice-turned-on-its-head.

Luke 23 drips with irony and political theatre. Jesus - nonviolent, prophetic, healing the sick, feeding the hungry - is accused of inciting revolt. The charge is deeply political. “He stirs up the people,” they say, “teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee to this place”. 'Stirring up the people' can get you lynched under empire. Jesus was lynched by a coalition of political elites and religious leaders because his presence disrupted the order of things. He refused to play nice with Rome, and exposed corruption in the temple. He embodied the kind of kingdom that threatens the other kind of kingdoms.

Today, we still see the same choreography of power. As the late great Dr. Howard Thurman once observed, Jesus belonged to the disinherited, and thus, he was a threat to those who hoard and withhold power. To this day, Pilates still wash their hands, pretending to be neutral, while handing over the innocent to systems designed to destroy them.

Then there is the Silence

Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent. Herod knew it too. But public opinion was more politically useful than truth. “Crucify him!” the crowd cried, because the state and religious leaders manipulated them into fear, and they did not have the pampalam to seek and learn facts for themselves. 

And nothing is new under the sun.

School boards are rewriting history. Textbooks are being redacted. African American studies programs under fire. Educators are surveilled and silenced. Public libraries are targeted for extinction. The cries for justice and sensible gun control are being muffled by bureaucracies that are drunk on culture war. The movement for truth - be it Black Lives Matter, trans visibility, or reproductive justice - is being lynched before our very eyes. The whole system has become Golgotha. I was told that the department of education fiasco is about returning the department to the states as it was before. Tell yourself more of that. None of it is about efficiency, or better standards; it is about control to prevent the masses from being stirred up with facts. You see, an educated public is a dangerous public. And a dangerous public, like the one Jesus nurtured on hillsides and street corners, refuses to be quiet.

Good Friday reminds us that the protest movement will always be on trial in empire. You can be arrested for praying with your feet in the streets. You can be banned from teaching truth. You can be demonized for feeding the poor or sheltering the unhoused or demanding that Black and Brown bodies be seen as fully human.

The cross looms over all of it as a political warning. This is what happens when you dare to challenge the status quo. This is what the empire does to prophets. The cross is not a sentimental reminder of suffering - so stop it. Just as the crowds gathered to watch as the criminalized Jesus was hung up on a cross, it was not so long ago that families turned out with picnic baskets, blankets, with children in tow to watch as other Black men were hung up on trees until they breathed their last as if the violence was a spectacle. Some of the same people have the balls to talk about 'family values' while they repeat the same violence is a different dance. 

Good Friday is a mirror that tells the truth about empire. It also holds space for the truth about God: God is not on Pilate’s side. God is not allied with Herod. God is not in the mob. God is with the condemned. God is with the silenced. God is with the crucified. And that means God is with us - those who dare to speak even when censored, to march even when surveilled, to teach even when threatened, and to preach even when some leave.

Micah 6:8 is still the mandate. Isaiah 58 is still the blueprint. The Sermon on the Mount is still the syllabus. Jesus didn’t die so that we could be quiet, comfortable, and complicit. He died because he wasn’t any of this. He cannot be separated from the shit that people endure today - no matter how hard we try to domesticate his execution and turn the cross only into a nice pendant. 

Do not forget: crucifixions/lynchings are still happening. Prophets are still being silenced ("Pastor, the sermon was a little heavy today"). Movements are still being criminalized. And yet, the Spirit of the living God is still quoting Sistah Harriet Tubman and whispering, "Whatever you do, keep going."

Let the empire tremble. I will stand at the foot of the cross—and rise from it. Mother Mary, I am still weeping with you. 

Have a meaningful Good Friday. 

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