What Happened? A Question We Keep Avoiding
We celebrate the empty cross, but risk forgetting the cost that made it so, and in a world growing numb to suffering, “what happened?” is a question we can no longer ignore.
Doug Davidson, known for reworking the world of Batman, once told a quieter, more unsettling story, one that had nothing to do with heroes or villains, and everything to do with truth. He had taken his three-year-old son with him to return a book at a seminary library. The boy had never been inside a place like that before. As they stepped into the vestibule, something stopped him cold, a crucifix. Not a symbol, not a polished ornament, but a body, twisted, torn, nailed, bleeding.
The child stared. In their church, the cross was always empty, clean, victorious, safe. The story they knew began after the pain, after the horror, after the silence. This was different. This was the moment no one lingers in. Doug hesitated, he thought about shielding him, pulling him away, explaining it later, softening it somehow. But it was too late. The boy did not cry. He did not turn away. Without breaking his gaze, with a weight no three-year-old should carry, he asked quietly, “Daddy… what happened?”
We live in a time that moves quickly past hard things. We scroll past suffering, summarise pain, sanitise truth. Even faith, at times, is curated, edited, made presentable. We prefer the empty cross, the risen Christ, the victory story, and rightly so. The resurrection is everything. But something is lost when we rush there too quickly, because the empty cross, on its own, asks nothing of us, the crucifix does. It confronts, it exposes, it refuses to let us pretend.
Good Friday is the day that answers the child’s question, not with comfort, but with clarity. What happened? Violence happened. Betrayal happened. Fear, power, silence, injustice, all converged on one body. And not just then, now. We are not so far removed from that scene as we like to think. The same patterns persist, only dressed differently. We still turn away, we still justify, we still choose convenience over truth, control over compassion. “The cross is not just something that was done to Christ, it is something humanity continues to participate in whenever truth is sacrificed for comfort.”
The crucifixion is not a distant tragedy, it is a mirror. What if, just for a moment, you did not look away? What if you stood still long enough to see it, not as symbol, but as reality, the weight of a body collapsing under pain, the breath that comes shorter each time, the silence of heaven that feels unbearable. What if you asked, honestly, without rushing to the ending, what happened? And what if the answer was not just historical, but personal?
“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast.” — Psalm 22:14–17 (abridged)
We often want a faith that lifts us, without first breaking us open. But the cross does not allow that. It slows you down, it strips away the noise, it forces a reckoning. And in a world that has learned to normalise chaos, numbness, and quiet cruelty, that reckoning may be the most necessary thing of all. “Until we understand the cost, we will always undervalue the grace.” So perhaps the better question is not just what happened to Him, but what is happening to us.
Prayer
Lord, I have moved too quickly. I have chosen comfort over truth. I have looked at the empty cross, but avoided the cost that made it possible. Today, slow me down. Let me see, let me feel, let me understand, even if it unsettles me. Answer the question I have been avoiding. What happened? And what does it mean for me, now? In Jesus’ name, Amen.