Saturday, March 26, 2005 AD
Good Friday, good copy
The remarkable WF Deedes - if Dan Rather was a "veteran journalist", then what word do you use to describe someone whose first major assignment was to report on the invasion of Abyssinia in 1936, and who is still writing regular reports and columns today? - had an interesting perspective on Good Friday in his column yesterday, in which he recalled the "solemnity" of Good Friday in his youth, and went on to say:
In all the religions of the world, is there anything to compare with the narrative of Holy Week, and Good Friday in particular? It's one thing for a religion to mark the death of its founder: quite another to treat it as the pivotal event of history, the hinge around which our whole faith pivots. To call this Friday "good".
In almost every other religion, the founder had a career lasting a number of decades, and lived to a good age. He had plenty of time to amass followers and build a legacy. Our Lord died at around the age of 33; His public career lasted barely three years; by that time He had attracted maybe 500 followers, most of whom deserted Him as His enemies closed in. And He didn't just die, He died a shameful and disgraceful death that marked Him out in the eyes of the world as a fraud, cursed by God.
Contrast that with Muhammad, who started his public preaching in AD 615, and who by AD 622 had fled for his life from Mecca (and it was only his privileged family background that had protected him until then). Following his exile to Medina, Muhammad lived another ten years, in which he amassed many followers, and won over cities and tribes by a combination of his teachings and his wars of conquest (the founder of the "religion of peace" personally led 27 military campaigns, and delegated a further 38 to his junior commanders, and even his highly-sympathetic biographer Barnaby Rogerson concedes that Muhammad "was the aggressor in this conflict").
By the time of his death, Muhammad was held in honour by tens of thousands of followers spread across the entire Arabian peninsula, who were determined to carry forward his legacy. The future of Islam was assured. Whereas it is inconceivable that Islam would have survived Muhammad's death had he lost his life in AD 618, as the leader of a small Meccan sect.
Similar comparisons can also be made with other significant religious figures (eg Buddha), and these comparisons are instructive because they remind us just how remarkable, indeed how odd, in human terms the emergence of Christianity was. It's so easy for us to take the Gospel narratives for granted. Easy also for us to read texts that speak of the future worldwide spread of the Gospel and to miss how completely astounding it is that such promises should actually have come to pass in human history.
So here's one crucial lesson of Good Friday, a lesson that (as Deedes puts it) "helps to fortify belief": Christianity just isn't normal.
I still accept the solemnity of the day and the beliefs that go with it, but, in more recent times, I regret to say, I have tended to view the events surrounding the Crucifixion through a journalist's eye and to regret how shamefully my copy would have fallen short of the accounts we are offered in the Gospels.A similar thought certainly struck me during yesterday's Good Friday service at our church: how remarkable it is that people should be gathering together to mark such an event (and in such good numbers, too - easily equivalent to the attendance on a well-attended Sunday morning).
From the trial under Pilate onwards, what a story it was to write. Even a rogue newspaper reporter, inventing news (such as America has experienced) could not have made it up; a thought that, through my worm's eye way of viewing it all, helps to fortify belief.
In all the religions of the world, is there anything to compare with the narrative of Holy Week, and Good Friday in particular? It's one thing for a religion to mark the death of its founder: quite another to treat it as the pivotal event of history, the hinge around which our whole faith pivots. To call this Friday "good".
In almost every other religion, the founder had a career lasting a number of decades, and lived to a good age. He had plenty of time to amass followers and build a legacy. Our Lord died at around the age of 33; His public career lasted barely three years; by that time He had attracted maybe 500 followers, most of whom deserted Him as His enemies closed in. And He didn't just die, He died a shameful and disgraceful death that marked Him out in the eyes of the world as a fraud, cursed by God.
Contrast that with Muhammad, who started his public preaching in AD 615, and who by AD 622 had fled for his life from Mecca (and it was only his privileged family background that had protected him until then). Following his exile to Medina, Muhammad lived another ten years, in which he amassed many followers, and won over cities and tribes by a combination of his teachings and his wars of conquest (the founder of the "religion of peace" personally led 27 military campaigns, and delegated a further 38 to his junior commanders, and even his highly-sympathetic biographer Barnaby Rogerson concedes that Muhammad "was the aggressor in this conflict").
By the time of his death, Muhammad was held in honour by tens of thousands of followers spread across the entire Arabian peninsula, who were determined to carry forward his legacy. The future of Islam was assured. Whereas it is inconceivable that Islam would have survived Muhammad's death had he lost his life in AD 618, as the leader of a small Meccan sect.
Similar comparisons can also be made with other significant religious figures (eg Buddha), and these comparisons are instructive because they remind us just how remarkable, indeed how odd, in human terms the emergence of Christianity was. It's so easy for us to take the Gospel narratives for granted. Easy also for us to read texts that speak of the future worldwide spread of the Gospel and to miss how completely astounding it is that such promises should actually have come to pass in human history.
So here's one crucial lesson of Good Friday, a lesson that (as Deedes puts it) "helps to fortify belief": Christianity just isn't normal.
