Good Friday

So the empire disposed of the Jewish troublemaker.

Historian Diana Butler Bass passed along this reflection from Dr. Reggie Williams. He is Professor of Christian Ethics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. He is the author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance.

Stauros is used seventy-four times in the New Testament to describe where Jesus died ... an upright stake, like a fence post... The stauros alludes to something manmade, in the case of Jesus' execution, an element of statecraft, something developed by the occupying Roman imperial power to serve [as the]  instrument of torture and death.

... a stake defines ownership ...

Whose bodies are on the stauros? ... Jesus was one of the expendables, whose death secured the community of those comfortable with the governance of violent imperial power. 

I like to consider the spiritual, "Were you there when they crucified my lord? ... were you there when they nailed him to a tree?" ... the singer knows the grief ... but the song indicates that the stauros isn't the last word. ... Friday leads to Sunday ...