Let’s face it: we all want friends who brighten our day, not friends who darken our day. We want friends who would offer us the best of their times and share their joys with us, not friends who burden us with the weight of their sorrows and sufferings.

After all, why stick our necks out for our friends? As they say, “friends are basically just friends”; we do not expect them to rally around us with support during critical moments of our lives, and neither should they expect that of us.

So much for Jesus defining friendship as being willing to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13), even his own friends were very much fair-weathered friends; at least during his earthly lifetime. They stuck with him when there was much to be gained. But at the worst moment of his life’s horrors, they fled, denied him, and went back to their own careers (which they had left behind for what they had thought was a better career prospect when they had first met him).

We may hate to admit this, but many of us are fair-weathered friends of Jesus. With our lips, we confess him by saying the sweetest things about him. With our hands, we show our piety. But when the gospel confronts us with the predicament of Christ’s sufferings and his call for us to carry the cross, we say we must not be fanatics in following religious teachings. We often refuse to journey with him in his darkest moments.

And then, ironically, when Easter dawns, we rejoice that Jesus is risen! Because at Easter, the weather becomes fair again. But on Easter morning, this Jesus who had been abandoned by his friends appeared before them and showed them his scars soon after saying, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19-20).

Have you wondered why he showed them his scars? Could it be that he might have been telling them, “You did this to me”?