The 55th Psalm: A Meditation for Good Friday

Good Friday is, of course, the day that we bury Christ, and with Christ, we bury ourselves. It’s not a happy day, but it is a very real day, and by that I mean that, in my belief, it is one of the very few times in the life of the church when the Church is sort of officially honest about who we are, about what we have done and what we have become. We drop any myths about our own righteousness and accept our hypocrisy.

Good Friday is about being broken, it is about falling down and taking ownership of the very real fact that, yes, I really did put Christ on that cross. How do we deal with that, and then move straight on to Easter, with all its rejoicing and celebration and good food? We can do it because we have a God who is alive and who is living within us, not condemning us for our sin, but yet convicting us to bury what is past and to move on into life.

But now, before we get ahead of ourselves and rush on into Easter, let us pause and meditate on those things that have brought us not to Easter, but to Good Friday. I don’t believe that God wants us to obsess over our mistakes, but God does want us to reflect on them, and I can almost hear my mother saying to me, “Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.”

The other day in Morning Prayer, we read together Psalm 55. It was written by King David, possibly during a time when he was dealing with the betrayal of his trusted advisors. But we can almost hear the sound of Jesus’ voice in the Garden of Gethsemane, agonizing over his own betrayal by those whom he loves.

Give ear to my prayer, O God:
do not hide yourself from my supplication.
Attend to me, and answer me;
I am troubled by my complaint.
I am distraught by the noise of my enemy,
Because of the clamour of the wicked.
For they bring trouble upon me,
And in anger they cherish enmity against me.

How often do we think of things from the perspective of Jesus? He came to love us as his own family, he came to teach us how to love Him:

It is not enemies who taunt me –
I could bear that;
It is not adversaries who deal insolently with me –
I could hide from them.
But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend,
With whom I kept pleasant company;
We walked in the house of God with the throng.

At that moment of betrayal, I wonder if David realized that he was speaking with the Lord’s voice to us, because even though this may have been his own expression of pain, is read now as prophecy:

My companions laid hands on a friend
And violated covenant with me
With speech smoother than butter,
But with a heart set on war;
With words that were softer than oil,
But in fact were drawn swords.

King David was in such anguish that he prayed to God to destroy those who had hurt him. Christ, however, prayed to God, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” Amen.