✝️ Why Was Jesus Killed?

On Good Friday, I wanted to share with you all what my faith means to me and my reflections on the lessons I have learned about this day. For some reason, as important and joyous as Easter is, it’s this day that brings out the most reflection from me.

Perhaps it’s because I feel so strongly that we are being conditioned to hate one another, to be in constant conflict with one another. We are being conditioned to forget that we are neighbors.

But before I say more, I want to be clear: this is MY faith journey, and MY personal feelings along the way. I do not assume, nor expect, that everyone feels the way I feel, nor do I feel in any way that anyone has to feel the way I feel. This just my reflection about an very important day to me. Everyone is on their own journey, and I respect that.

Good Friday is important to me because it is a day that we remember the death of Jesus. But if I only remember that he died—and not why—I may be missing the point.

One of the most profound Good Friday sermons I ever heard began with a simple truth: Jesus had a life before he died. And that life—the way he walked, the things he said, the people he loved—was a threat to the systems of power that ruled the world around him.

He didn’t toe the line. He didn’t flatter the elites. He flipped tables in THEIR temples. He called out religious hypocrisy. He criticized the legalism that kept the poor in chains and the powerful in gold.

His parables weren’t just moral stories—they were direct challenges to Caesar’s kingdom, making clear that the Kingdom of God was a different kind of order altogether. One rooted not in dominance, but in love. Not in hierarchy, but in justice. Not in exclusion, but in welcome.

Jesus didn’t simply die. He was executed—by the state—for speaking truth to power. For calling out corruption. For challenging the exploitation of widows and the poor. He healed on the Sabbath. He flipped tables in the temple. He told stories—parables—that pointed people away from the Kingdom of Caesar and toward the Kingdom of God.

That Kingdom was not an abstract idea. It was a political and spiritual challenge to the very foundations of Empire. And it still is. It would inspire Thomas Jefferson to declare that our rights were inalienable and given to us by God, not a king.

Jesus preached that forgiveness wasn’t something we just begged from God—it was something we had to offer to our neighbors. Because it’s our neighbor we hurt. and it’s our neighbor who must forgive us. And in healing that wound, we draw nearer to God.

Jesus preached forgiveness not just as a transaction with God, but as a human responsibility—something we owe each other. It’s our neighbor who must forgive us.

He lived and died as a Good Neighbor, practicing an open table where Jew and Samaritan, Greek and Roman, rich and poor, male and female all had a seat. He died not to uphold division—but to break it.

That table is still open.

The crucifixion wasn’t just the end of his Earthly ministry. It was the consequence of it. His death didn’t come because he lost—it came because he lived so boldly, so lovingly, and so dangerously, that the powers of the world had no answer except violence.

And still, they lost.

Because three days later, the tomb was empty. And in that moment, we saw the full truth: that love is stronger than death, and that the empires of this world—no matter how powerful they seem—will never have the final word.

This Good Friday, I remember Jesus not as a passive sacrifice, but as a courageous force of divine love who lived in defiant solidarity with the hurting, the marginalized, and the overlooked.

He was killed for how he lived. But he lives still.

And if I call myself a follower of his, then it’s not enough to mourn his death. I challenge myself to live like he lived, love like he loved, and challenge the systems he dared to confront.

Because that, to me, was the point.

Warmly,

Brett Yarris