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Shortly after coming here to St. Luke’s as your Interim, I was told by some that a factor had been my Gospel according to Superheroes program. I was very gratefully for this because of my love of this work, and I have been thankful to have opportunities to use these lessons, such as with our past Vacation Bible School. Now Gospel according to Superheroes has had many steps with its origin on the way, though when it really got started was in my work with youth through Black Panther.
As you can imagine, T’Challa, the Black Panther, is one of my favorite superheroes, top 5 for sure. What you might not expect, though, is that while the film Black Panther is high on my list of favorite MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) movies, it’s not a the very top. That place still belongs to Captain America: Winter Soldier.
This has been something I’ve been pondering and wondering in myself lately, why this is, and I’ve come up with an answer. As much as I love Black Panther and as much as it has impacted how I look at my Faith, there is one scene that really bothers me. It is the scene when T’Challa and Killmonger battle for the mantle of Black Panther and T’Challa loses. It’s the moment that T’Challa is left for dead and almost dies.
Looking back I can see how this scene is integral to the film and import for what the story is trying to convey. Yet it’s still just so hard to see a hero I love, a hero who is defined by being a good person, lose.
This is why Good Friday is a struggle for us and, as I have often seen, for preachers. We don’t want to focus on the loss; we want to get to the Triumph. We don’t want to wallow in the Crucifixion; we just want to get onto the Resurrection.
Yet Jesus’ Death is integral to the story. It’s integral to our salvation even. We cannot have life without Jesus’ Death. We cannot have victory without Jesus’ loss.
What makes it harder is that this day is our fault. We may not be able to escape sin because of the Fall, but as humanity we once had a choice. Even now we have many choices where we all choose sin over God. If it weren’t for our wrong choices, we wouldn’t need to be saved. If we just listened to God, we wouldn’t need Him to bail us out. If we had just lived as we were supposed to, Jesus wouldn’t have to die so we might live.
Good Friday isn’t just the day the hero, Jesus, loses and dies. It’s the day we lost too. It’s the day that we have to live into our failures as God makes the ultimate sacrifice on the Cross to raise us back up again.
As much as it hurts, we need this day. We need to live into the hurt of Good Friday with all its failure, loss, and death. This day is an integral part of the story. It plays a key role in God’s story and our story. We cannot live into what is to come without understanding the pain and sacrifice of today. We cannot find hope before we live into the despair of Jesus’ Death and Crucifixion.