Good Friday is a hard day. It's depressing and it's confusing. Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? How do we make sense of this? Christians have struggled with understanding the meaning of the cross ever since the very beginning and the struggle has continued through the centuries. We can see that from reading today's passage from Hebrews if we stop to consider the passage in its larger context.

The book of Hebrews tells us that the atonement day ritual, as it has been practiced by the Jews for thousands of years, is a ritual that has now been outdated. In fact, it was nothing more than a preview for the real thing that would come to replace it. In the traditional atonement day ritual, the high priest has an animal killed and then he enters the holiest room of the temple to sprinkle i…