This is the Friday called "good." Yet what is good about it? All that we call good is turned upside down, inside out. It's such a long wearisome day, full of contrasts that reach through the ages to the present, but the story remains the same. It is a tale of great betrayal, rejection and abandonment, a tale of small lies, infidelity and fear, of power, collusion and contempt for life. It is a story of killing by the State, by Politics and Religion; premeditated murder of the innocent and the guilty. A day of lost hope and the powerlessness of the few.

Several days ago I heard a poem/song that touched me. It's called "Secret Ambition" by Michael Smith. One verse reads:

"But nobody knew his secret ambition
Was to give his life away."

How strange that one should have as an ambition to give away one's life and yet Jesus spoke many times about this to us who would be his followers. He said:

"I lay down my life for my sheep."
"No one has greater love than to lay down one's life for their friends."
"If you want to follow me you must take up your cross daily."
"You must lose your life."

Jesus rebuked Peter for trying to put a stop to his headlong rush into the hands of those who would harm him. Paul says rarely will anyone die for another, though perhaps for a good person, someone might actually dare to give up one's life. Yes, Jesus turns our world upside down by dying for us today, by making sacrifice, pain, suffering, grief, sadness and even death, good.

June 22, 1996 in Ann Arbor, Michigan there was a rally of the Ku Klux Klan at the City Hall. It was quite legal. There were also 300 anti-Klan people assembled to protest the rally. One white male Klansman stood out, perhaps because he was proudly displaying Confederate flags on his vest and T-shirt. Suddenly, without warning, a swarm of angry anti-Klan demonstrators rushed him, pushed him to the ground, beat him with their signs and kicked him. Appalled, an 18-year-old African American girl named Keisha Thomas, threw herself over the fallen man, shielding him with her own body from the kicks and punches. Keisha, when asked why she, a black teenager, would risk injury to protect a man who was a white supremacist said, "He's still somebody's child. I don't want people to remember my name but I'd like them to remember I did the right thing."

A black teen laying down her life for a racist - an enemy. I think Keisha understood Good Friday, understood Jesus' words "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

What is your secret ambition?
What is my secret ambition?
As followers of Jesus Christ, what is our secret ambition?