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Share via EmailMarking Time on Good Friday – A Lenten Reflection
by Russ Ramsey on March 13, 2009 My work as a pastor has me dealing a lot right now with the chronology and sequence of the last days and even hours of Jesus’ earthly ministry prior to His death. I put the following image together based on my best analysis and synthesis of the four Gospel narratives’ treatment of Good Friday. The information in this chart is far from exhaustive, but still fascinating to digest. I think one of the important aspects of this story that eludes us sometimes, due to a prevailing sense of familiarity, is how these events occurred in real space and time.
Russ Ramsey is the author of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, and he is currently working on a Lenten narrative to go with it. He serves as a pastor at Midtown Fellowship Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He and his wife Lisa have four amazing kids.
9 Comments
1531 days ago
Thanks for this, Russ. One of my favorite things about The Passion of the Christ was the way it gave me a sense of the sweep of the whole day…I’m trying to remember, though–why was the first trial so early? Was it sort of a manipulation of the news cycle, so to speak? Were they trying to get the trial done before anybody could protest?
1531 days ago
Yes Jonathan. The Chief Priests wanted to have their verdict before anyone woke up so that in the morning, potential “would-be” sympathizers would be told, “Well, he was tried before the Sanhedrin and found guilty of blasphemy.” That would have– and did– sway public opinion.
Prior to Jesus arrest: “And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.” Matt 21:46
Also, “Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.” Matt 26:3-5
And it appears that the reason they needed somone to help “hand Him over” was so they could get close to Him without there being an uproar– maybe thinking they’d do this at night all along. The hope was that the arrest, trial and verdict could all be locked in place by the time people awoke to hear what had happened. Fascinating stuff to me.
1531 days ago
Russ, I’d love to see a map with this day superimposed upon it. Any idea if one is out there? Looking at the times, Herod and Pilate must have set up shop within a mile or two from each other for Jesus to be seen by Pilate, walked over to Herod, then back to Pilate within a two hour span. For some reason I picture them in far off castles. But maybe ancient Jerusalem was like Jack Bauer’s LA on 24. Everything was 5 minutes away.
Thanks for the time-line. Very interesting.
1531 days ago
Aaron, the ESV Study Bible has some really wonderful built-in maps, including maps of the routes Jesus would have walked on this night. One of these days I am going to do a post on the ESV Study Bible. The study helps are the best I have ever seen in any study Bible by far. Look around Mark 15 or Luke 23 and you should see a map at the bottom. I wish I could link to it online, the ESV folks are pretty proprietary with their notes and maps, at least in the digital world.
Here’s the link to the Study Bible. You get the gist: http://www.esvstudybible.org
1531 days ago
Oh, and sorry about the grainy quality here. I morphed it from a word doc to a PDF to a jpeg.
1531 days ago
Thanks Russ. I will check out the ESV. And I’m glad you mentioned that about the quality of the picture. I wasn’t sure if it was the image that was grainy or the fact that I’m on my third frozen pint glass of ice cold milk. And it’s barely 10:30. I might need help.
1531 days ago
Russ,
Thanks, can you post this out on your church website or on Facebook? I’d love to have a copy of this for my Good Friday devotional time.
Also, are you posting the sermons in this series on the Oak HIlls site? Once complete, that would be good to share. Maybe that is another suggestion, like song of the day, we have sermon of the day
Aaron,
If you keep this binge milk drinking up, we’ll have to check you into a MA program!
1528 days ago
Wow Russ… I wish I would have had this a few weeks ago.. will file it away..
thanks again,
Greg
1523 days ago
Thanks Russ. I am going to use this in my classroom. I think AP’s, “High Noon,” would fit well with this as a, “song of the day.”
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