Sisters and brothers, greetings in Jesus’ name. As we gather on this Good Friday, we pause to ask: what truly makes this day ‘good’? According to the Oxford Dictionary, ‘good’ means virtuous or estimable. Yet, as we reflect on the Scriptures – Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and John 18:1-19:42 – this ‘goodness’ is anything but simple. Isaiah introduces us to the figure of the ‘suffering servant’, an image that in Jewish tradition referred either to a coming messiah or to Israel itself, called to endure for the sake of the world. For us Christians, John’s Gospel presents Jesus as the fulfilment of this suffering servant.

Those of African heritage, like I am, can find deep resonance between the suffering we commemorate today and the experiences of our ancestors: the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, colonialism, and ongoing struggles against racism and oppression. In preparing this sermon, I found myself drawn to those who prefer to call today ‘Holy Friday’. While suffering is hard to call ‘good,’ I have no trouble calling it holy, for history shows that great good can come through suffering.

Centuries before Jesus, Isaiah spoke to Judah and Jerusalem in times of turmoil. His people, under judgment for turning away from God, faced threats of invasion and exile. Their situation cried out for a deliverer: a seer, a just judge, or a warrior king. But Isaiah delivered a different vision – of a suffering servant, one so disfigured and marred that people would turn away, one who would be rejected, despised, afflicted, and ultimately slaughtered like a lamb. According to Isaiah, even God would seem to reject and crush him. This hardly fits the image of a triumphant deliverer.

Even today, a divide remains: many Jewish people still look for a messiah to come, while Christians see Isaiah’s prophecy fulfilled in Jesus, as recounted in John and elsewhere in the New Testament. In John’s Gospel, Jesus is betrayed by a disciple, arrested, denied, flogged, crowned with thorns, mocked, and judged on false charges. Though Pilate declares, ‘I find no basis for a charge against him,’ Jesus is condemned by his own colonised people, handed over to be crucified by the Empire. His side is pierced to confirm his death, and his body is taken by secret disciples, prepared and buried in a new tomb – all on what we now call Holy Friday.

My friends, the suffering of Jesus is not distant from our stories. Our history is filled with Fridays: the days of enslavement, the violence and dehumanisation of colonialism, continued racism and economic hardship. The late theologian James H. Cone drew powerful parallels between the suffering of Christ on the cross and the lynching of Black men under Jim Crow – a chilling reminder of how Friday’s suffering continues in different forms.

But is this suffering truly ‘good’? Only when we consider what comes from it. As a mythical Black preacher once proclaimed, ‘Today is Friday, but Sunday is coming.’ The suffering of Friday carries within it the seed of Resurrection Sunday. God’s economy often links suffering and freedom, pain and deliverance. To reach the joy of resurrection, we must pass through the suffering of Holy Friday. Isaiah’s suffering servant and John’s account of Jesus’ passion remind us that it is the weak who are lifted up, the fallen who are restored, and the wounds of Friday that bring Sunday’s healing. Our ancestors’ struggle bore fruit in our resilience, dignity, hope and flourishing under pressure. Payment is made on Friday, but deliverance arrives on Sunday – not just in history, but in our lived reality. In God’s time, Friday’s agony is never the end. 

So, sisters and brothers, on this Holy Friday, let us remember: in God’s hands, suffering and adversity are transformed. We too are called to bear our crosses, trusting that today’s pain is not the last word. For ourselves, our families, and our communities, Friday’s endurance purchases Sunday’s liberation and flourishing. However dark the day, however heavy the cross, Sunday is coming. Hallelujah! Amen.