The Sanctified Skip
“Can we skip to the good part?” Does anyone else remember the wave of reels that came on the tail end of such a catchy song? Skip the pregnancy—here’s the baby! Skip the airplane—here’s the vacation destination! Skip the line—here’s the ride! Skip the six months of eating healthy and working out—here is my super lean body!
We live in a culture that loves the highlight reel.
We post on socials for all to see the best and brightest moments of our lives. We set impossible standards and make ourselves sick trying to keep up—to achieve the perfect life we believe others have. We all have stories that include some very painful parts. But—our culture insists on flipping past the difficult chapters and skipping to the ones that are prettier in nature, making us feel as though those dark chapters are full of shame and failure.
Paying attention to the positives in life is not a bad thing—not even close. A glass-half-full mentality is oftentimes a much better mindset than the latter. But—when we refuse to acknowledge the harder parts of our stories, the good loses its depth. Without contrast, even joy becomes muted. It’s our willingness to sit with the difficult chapters that gives meaning and weight to the beautiful ones.
Even the modern church loves skipping to the good part. This is one of the places where believers should stand apart and respond differently, but often, we don’t. We have learned to soften blows with scripture. To rush redemption. To place a hopeful bow on something that is still bleeding. Not because we don’t believe it is coming—but because we don’t know how to sit in pain that hasn’t found it quite yet.
Easter is the perfect example. Christians love Easter. How could we not? Christ glorified. Death defeated. Our sins forgiven. Heaven forever. That’s a pretty good highlight reel, huh? I guess our culture isn’t the only place the fast-forward button is hit—for there is a very big one in this space too. Any guesses?
Skip the crucifixion, skip the tomb—here’s the resurrection.
We join together on Palm Sunday, wave our branches to celebrate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem—and our salvation moment within reach. The gruesome nature of Friday gets softened by the word “good”—pointing to what it produced, rather than what was endured. We fast forward through the shock and stillness of Saturday—a full tomb, an empty cross, Jesus’ blood still dried on the ground below it. Then, we join together again on Easter Sunday, celebrating and rejoicing because “He is risen!”
Easter is the foundation of our faith. It carries immense weight, without doubt. But—to get to such a holy day, and the redemption tied to it, we owe it to Jesus not to skip His suffering. We should absolutely preach the resurrection with passion and zeal, but many times, with our lead foot placed on the pedal, we blaze right by the cross and the tomb. It will, of course, get an honorable mention in most sermons—a brief congregational wave as we fly by on our way to the comfort and redemption found in Easter morning.
As much as it makes our hearts bristle, we shouldn’t sugarcoat what Jesus endured at the cross, for that was the very avenue to our salvation. We shouldn’t sanitize His suffering—we should stop and actually sit with Him in it.
So—that is exactly what we are going to do today on this ‘Good’ Friday…
It all started with a kiss in a garden—a betrayal for thirty pieces of silver from a place of trust.
Roman guards flood the scene. Jesus does not fight as His hands are bound and He is arrested. No—He goes willingly, knowing full well what lies ahead. His disciples, those who had repeatedly pledged their lives to Him, flee in every direction. The garden suddenly turns quiet.
Accusations without truth are voiced into the night. Verbal disownment flows from the mouth of one who pledged he would die for Jesus. Denial. Denial. Denial. The rooster crows in a haunting confirmation of Jesus’ words to his disciples just hours before.
With the rising sun comes a Roman scourging. A flogging so violent and brutal that Jesus’ body is left marred and unrecognizable. Flesh hanging, bones exposed, systemic blood loss weakening Him beyond recognition. Countless executions never made it past this point. But for Jesus—this was just the beginning.
Soldiers strip Jesus, leaving Him fully exposed. Fully humiliated. Fully shamed. A thorny crown for a “king” is shoved down onto His head—a cruel way to show Jesus, and everyone who sees, exactly what they believe He is not. Blood drips into His eyes and blurs His vision. They spit. They laugh. They mock in sarcastic worship, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They dehumanize The Creator of Humanity in every way.
And still—He does not fight.
“Behold the man!” Pilate shouts as he presents a battered and unrecognizable Jesus before the crowd, hoping the gruesome state of His body will satisfy their hunger for more blood. But—their thirst only grows at the sight.
Pilate tires once again to end it all—for the man he knows to be innocent, spared of such a fate. “Jesus or Barabbas?” He asks. “Who is worth saving?” Barabbas—a career criminal, a murderer, a man deserving of punishment? Or Jesus? The Healer. The Teacher. The Rabbi. The Messiah.
“Barabbas!” The crowd roars in return.
“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?”
“Crucify Him!” They demand.
With a wash of his hands, Pilate succumbs.“I am innocent of this man’s blood.” The decision has been made. Jesus will be crucified. There are no cries for mercy—no pleas from the crowd to reverse the decision.
A heavy crossbeam is placed on Jesus’ back. He is forced to carry the very wood He will soon be pinned to. A death march towards where it will end—begins.
Every step drives rough, splintered wood into torn muscle and open wounds. The weight of the beam is too much for Jesus’ worn frame. His strength fails. His knees buckle. A body already emptied by blood loss and shock collapses to the ground.
The soldiers stop—not out of compassion, but urgency. This execution must stay on schedule. A man is seized from the crowd. A stranger. Unprepared and unwilling. But the beam is lifted from Jesus and placed onto the stranger’s back.
Jesus keeps walking, one staggered step at a time. Still condemned. Still bleeding. Still alone.
And still—He does not fight.
He is led outside the city, to Golgotha—the Place of the Skull. The wooden beam that would soon become a cross is dropped to the ground with a hauntingly loud thud. Jesus is laid atop it. His arms are stretched out, signaling to all of creation, “I love you this much.”
Next come the nails. Not thin, polished metal, but rough iron spikes—long enough to punch through flesh and bone and marrow—thick enough to hold the weight of a grown man. One arm is pinned down, then the other. Instinct pulls Him away, but surrender holds Him still. He knows this must be done.
And so—He does not fight.
He sees my face, and yours too, as the sound of metal against bone cuts through the air. He knows it is the only way. The shock of pain is so intense that it steals His breath in back to back waves. He is given no chance to find it again before His feet are stacked in preparation of the same heinous treatment. His bones are no match for the strength and force of the steel as another spike is hammered through.
Jesus feels the jolt of the cross as it’s lifted and dropped into place—the weight of His body wrenching against the nails in one violent motion.
The cross is not merciful. The cross does not kill Him quickly.
Every breath is a battle. Jesus pushes up on pierced feet, tendons straining, nerves screaming. He pulls against pierced hands, raw wrists grinding against iron. Fire shoots through His limbs just so His lungs can drag in one more breath. The sky itself darkens, as if creation itself cannot bear to watch what is happening to its Creator.
Above Him a sign reads, “Jesus of Nazareth—the King of the Jews.” Even in death, He is mocked.
And still—He does not fight.
Jesus lifts Himself once more to cry out to His Father, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Lament pours out of a heart that is screaming far louder than his body ever could.
”It is finished.”
And then—He releases His final breath.
The body that once healed is suddenly still. The hands that gave sight to the blind, crusted in blood. The voice that calmed storms, no longer can be heard. Death took its time—but has finally found its mark.
The weight of mankind’s sin… the weight of my sin… the weight of your sin… rests upon Him. Separation from God. A borrowed tomb. A stone rolled into place.
Nausea. Disbelief. Shock. Sorrow. These things pour from the hearts of His followers.
Jesus is dead.
How can it be?
That, my sweet friends, is the ugly truth—the precursor to Sunday—the sanctified skip. As uncomfortable as it may have been to read, believe me, it was even more uncomfortable to write. Trying to do justice to what Jesus endured is an impossible task, and in all my effort (and countless rewrites), I know I still fell impossibly short.
But maybe, hopefully, you are feeling a tug in your heart.
Most of us are aware of our path to salvation, but everything in us wants to look the other way and focus our eyes on the glory of the destination and not the road it took to get there. We all know what happened on Easter Sunday, but we often miss the two days before. Jesus on the cross was ugly. Death is ugly. But we can’t simply skip over these things just because they make us feel something we don’t like feeling.
This last Easter, my church (www.redrockschurch.com) did something a bit out of the norm—and it was hauntingly beautiful. They had their typical services on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, but then, on Good Friday—they paused. They zoomed into the mess. Maybe not in as intense a way as we just did, but they gave Jesus’ suffering a moment to breathe before they celebrated His resurrection.
As we just learned, it’s one thing to face hard parts and quite another to sit still in them—to pause at the climax of trauma. Not just watching a moment unfold, but actually stopping and drawing attention to it. So much in our very human bodies and minds tells us that such a thing is a horrible idea. But that is exactly what my church did on the day Jesus was crucified and death entered His story. They had a service that was somber and heavy. No upbeat worship music, no bright lights—a dimly lit room and acoustic worship. They embraced the sadness of Friday.
If only there was a way to have given them a giant hug—I would have. Instead of skipping to the good part, we sat through the hard part, and got to the good part—together.
In the same way our society often looks away from the pain in our stories—we, in turn, often look away from the pain in His. This truth punches me in the gut every single time. Jesus deserves so much more. He deserves not just a glance His way, but for us to pause, fall to our knees, look up and take in the blood, the gore, the pain—and stay with Him through all of it.
Jesus on the cross has always been sacred ground. But somewhere along the way, sacred shifted to uncomfortable, uncomfortable to uncharted, and uncharted to untouched. At some point in history, the church—cheered on by the culture that surrounded it—began hurrying people off such sacred ground, simply because it was uncomfortable soil for our feet to touch.
The church is at its brightest not when it avoids the dark, but when it kneels down beside it. Some of the most faithful work we will ever do is sit together in the stillness of night and admit we can’t yet see the light of dawn.
Today may be Friday, my friends, and it is very dark…
But take heart—Sunday is coming.
Much Love,
Jamie
Follow this link to find the location and service times of Red Rocks Church's Good Friday/Easter services:
Red Rocks Church Services
