Why is it ‘Good’ Friday?
by Aaron Stead
Cognomens are fascinating. Or in plain English, words added to a name to create, for example, the nicknames of kings.
Some are generic: Catherine the Great. Others describe accomplishments: William the Conqueror. Certain ones refer to appearance or character: Frederick Barbarossa (Red Beard) or Richard the Lionheart. Yet the most noteworthy are the bizarre, of which one stands apart in its aloofness: Ivaylo the Cabbage. Why was this Bulgarian Emperor of the 13th century known as a cabbage? Surely the comparison to stewed rabbit food is an affront to the grandeur of monarchy? It is rather counterintuitive. Cognomens are often a counterintuitive breed.
Days can have cognomens too. Although in our modern world they are usually confined to days when either a lot of money or a lot of blood is lost: Black Monday, Bloody Sunday. But the one remarkable in its contradictory name is Good Friday. Like Black Monday it was a day of financial loss for some, like bloody Sunday it was a day when excessive blood was shed. And yet we do not call it Black Friday or Bloody Friday, but Good Friday.
This is odd given it was a day on which an innocent, and peaceable carpenter from a provincial backwater was executed upon an imperial cross. Blood was shed; life was shed. Yet this anniversary of death, Jesus of Nazareth’s death, we call "Good".
Ivalyo was called the cabbage as he was a man of the people. Or more strictly a man of the cabbage-consuming peasant people. He came to the throne in a violent revolution and ruled for a single year before being deposed.
Jesus too was a man of the peasants. He slept under stars, eschewed wealth, he had no home to call his own. He conversed with the lowly, healed the leper, and cared for the meek. Yet we do not call him Jesus the Cabbage, but Jesus the Christ.
Christ is not a surname but a cognomen. It is a Greek title meaning "anointed one". Ordinarily, one anointed is a King. But in the bible, it has a more specific meaning. It is the one anointed to suffer and be slain; and in so doing secure the salvation of all who would call upon his name. The Christ is a provider of sanctuary for the sin-sick soul, a deliverer from death, and a rescuer from realms and dominions beyond our control or understanding. And it is through this anointed one's death that we are counterintuitively freed. No longer are those who claim his allegiance captive to the weight, guilt, and shame of judgement; as in his death, the penalty for all the atrocities of humanity is paid. It is in his death that liberation from sin and death is secured.
Those anointed to the same kingly office as Ivaylo secure safety for their subjects through living, often at the point of the sword; yet this anointed one secures sanctuary for his people through his dying, his side pierced by the point of a Roman spear as he hung humiliated upon a splintered cross.
His accomplishments on that day went far beyond that of simply identifying with the lowly like a man called 'cabbage' but amounted to rescuing the lowly as one named Christ. It is startling to consider who it is he chose to save. On the cross, as he bled dry, he pardons not nobles or power brokers but a disgraced thief upon a neighbouring cross. "Today you will be with me in paradise" he gasps.
Moreover, unlike Ivalyo, he did not create a temporary pause in the rule of the imperial nobility; instead, he ruptured the reign of the dominion of death permanently, assuming as a seat a heavenly throne. There is no end to the impact of Christ's death. His sacrifice does not need to be redone. As he said with his dying breath "it is finished". Of his reign and the expanse of his kingdom, there will be no end.
Yet his reign is not like that of earthly kings, marked by wars, rebellions, and uprisings. Rather it is one marked by peace and grace.
And so this counterintuitive cognomen "Good Friday" makes sense, not in the morality of the barbarism wrought upon his flesh, but rather in what that death secured for all who would call upon the anointed one's name. And so this Friday, unlike every other Friday, is especially Good due to the Good news that it brings