God of all things, grant us to follow in the
way of your Son this week, that through his Death, we might receive the riches
of your grace ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
On Good Friday, we are stunned observers. As we heard in the reading from Isaiah, “By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future?” It was not that long ago that we celebrated the birth of Jesus and since then we have seen the glory of God through his teachings, miracles, and healings. He has called disciples to follow him, he has raised the dead, pronounced God’s mercy, and fed the multitudes with just a few loaves. Who could have imagined what we just heard read in the Passion?
Sure,
we might say “Of course we saw this coming,” but that is only because we have
the benefit of reading gospels that portray this moment as the trajectory of the
story of Jesus and we have a 2,000-year-old tradition that has formed us. But even
for us though who know what is coming, each year when it comes to Good Friday,
we are stunned observers. You mean to tell me that this man who was executed by
the Romans is the God of Israel, the one who spoke “Let there be light” in the
beginning has been put to death? There is such darkness, such despair, such
violence on this day – how could this be God’s plan of salvation? How is Good
Friday Good News? These are the sort of questions that we ask as stunned
observers.
Good
Friday is not about you and it is not about me. Yes, of course, we reap the
benefits of this day, but this day is about Jesus and his Passion suffered for
us and for our salvation. Typically, we speak of liturgy as something that is participated
in, and we do have words to say, but Good Friday is about looking at the Cross.
Good Friday is not about what we are to do, it is about what God has done for
us. So sit with the horrors, the pains, the sense of being a stunned observer
of it all.
And
what we will see by looking at the Cross of Jesus is the sacrifice that was
made for us and for our salvation. The text from Hebrews is a faithful guide for
us in our contemplation of the Cross. The first thing to see when we look upon
the Cross is that the Incarnate God is the one hanging there. We heard in
Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are.” At
Christmas, we celebrate that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and the
Cross is why that matters so much. On the Cross is not an appearance of God who
feels not the pain and the agony of the nails and the labored breathing. No, on
the Cross is God, who in taking on flesh knows the excruciating pains of having
a body, of being betrayed, ridiculed, and rejected.
On
the Cross, we see that God has gotten down into the trenches of humanity. God
has seen and taken upon him the worst that humanity has to offer. The Cross
shows us that God is fully invested in us. Yes, God could certainly say “There
is no hope for these people, I am done with them.” But this is not what God has
chosen. God is all-in for us and for our salvation, and we see the depths of
this on the Cross. When we say that “God is love,” the Cross is the primary way
that we know we are right in making that claim.
Some
people though are not comfortable with the Cross and they try to get around it
theologically. They want to interpret the Cross as something other than a sacrifice,
as being about something other than forgiveness of sin. This is the second thing
we will see when we look at the Cross – that it is a sacrifice. We heard from
Hebrews that “He learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been
made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation.” The Cross is for us
and our salvation. Some will say that if God wanted to forgive us, the Cross
wasn’t needed, God could just forgive us. And that may well be true. But how would
be assured of our forgiveness? Without the Cross, how would know the height,
depth, and breadth of God’s love for us and commitment to us? Without the
Cross, saying “God is love” would be sentimental and theoretical. The Cross
though shows us just how very real God’s love is for us and for our salvation.
This is what makes us stunned observers: that we see that love is not saccharine,
love is not easy, love is not an emotion, rather love is the raw, vulnerable, and
humble giving of oneself to another.
This
is one of the reasons why seeing God as our Father or Mother is so helpful.
Imagine a parent that was not willing to make any sacrifice for their children –
never changing their priorities, never putting down what they are working on to
play a game, never adjusting their schedule or budget for the child. If the
child is to grow more than physically, the parent will have to make sacrifices,
to do things that they would rather not do, to live for someone other than
themselves. This is the language of sacrifice. And on the grandest scale, this
is what God Almighty has done for us and for our salvation – made the sacrifice
of loving us to the end.
It
is so important to keep in mind that everything about the Cross is for us and
for our salvation. God was not prevented from forgiving us without the Passion
of Jesus, but rather the Passion was endured so that we would be confident in
our forgiveness. God was not owed something because of human sin, because God can
never be lacking in anything, and yet God still paid a price so that we would
know that the accounts had been settled. God could have brought us into
everlasting life without defeating Death on the Cross, but God succumbed to Death
so that we would know that even in Death, we are never alone, never forgotten,
and never without hope. And this the last thing that I’ll point out about the
Cross for today – that it gives us a faith that can endure all things. As we
heard in Hebrews, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness.”
The Cross is what allows us to be bold in faith, constant in hope, and reckless
in love, because in the Cross we see God being all of those things for us and
for our salvation.
Hebrews
says that we can come to the throne of grace in boldness. Isn’t interesting that
it’s not the throne of judgment but the throne of grace? For fun, I was
recently participating in an online study of the art of the Sistine Chapel.
When we got to the session on the large “Last Judgment” on the altar wall of
the Chapel, the instructor cautioned us: “When it comes to considering the last
judgment and this portrayal of it, it might be disturbing.” My immediate
comment was “I’m not worried about the last judgment because it happened about
2,000 years ago on a cross just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.”
This
isn’t just my opinion, Jesus himself says as much in John 12 – “Now is the judgment
of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am
lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The world has been
judged on the Cross and we have been found not innocent, not guilty, but loved.
As Hebrews notes, when we come to the throne, we will receive mercy and grace.
On Good Friday, God says “No” to sin, “No” to everlasting death, “No” to
separation from God’s love. And three days from now, we will celebrate the “Yes”
of God. And so we have boldness in knowing that we are loved, that we are
forgiven, that Sin and Death are finished.
One
theologian has written a book about the Cross called The Day the Revolution
Began, and that is what we see when we look at the Cross. It is the revolution
of God’s love against all that stands between us and God. For us and for our
salvation, God took on our flesh and went into the depths of humanity so that
there can be no part of our lives that is not known and not redeemed by God.
For and for our salvation, Jesus was sacrificed so that we see this wondrous
love and know it deep within our being. For us and for our salvation, God has
given us the boldness to stand before the throne of grace and live not in the
fear of judgment and death, but rather in the light of grace.
That great hymn of Advent, which is never out of season, includes the line “with what rapture we gaze on those glorious scars!” Good Friday is the day on which we, as stunned observers, gaze on those glorious scars and recognize them as none other than the marks of love for us and for our salvation, as those scars are the very grain of the universe.
