Yesterday, we received a bold command from Jesus to love one another, with Christ-like love. Today we come face to face with the fact that we can’t. That we fall so short, even when we try our best. Today we come face to face with our brokenness, our sinfulness, our betrayal and denial of Christ… (Yesterday, our service ended a little chaotically and confusingly…) “We have failed you God. We have denied you, just as your disciples did long ago. We have hurt those you called us to love. We’ve even hurt our own selves, the earth which you entrusted to us and which is part of us, and our own human bodies that you give us as your temple.” Today we come face to face with the cross…[pause] the cross of [vertical] God’s divine will for us and [horizontal] our wanting to go our own way.
Yesterday we received a bold command from Jesus to love one another; today we come face to face with fact that we all fall short. And so that leaves us totally dependent on grace. Totally lost on this rocky way, without the crucified One going before us. Today is good, because in the cross and death of Jesus we have hope. We have a Christ who hangs…on our brokenness. Who lifts our sin and death onto himself. We have a God who looks down from that holy cross of brokenness and sin…and declares—exactly what no one would ever expect – a triumph: “It is finished.”
Those are not words of defeat; those are the words of a victor! God has “finished” the sin and the brokenness of this world, even death itself.
God has finished, washed away, your shortcomings and denials and wrongful words and hurtful actions. According to the Gospel of John, this is Jesus’ finest hour, the hour of his glorification by God. (Martin Luther was not shy to say that John was his favorite Gospel, particularly because of this climactic account.) Here Jesus soars. “It is finished!”
In this cross is triumph. In this tree, this ugly tree of DEATH, is—exactly what no one would ever expect—LIFE! Life for all the world, life for all the sinners, life for all the nations, life for you, LIFE FOR ALL.
Good Friday is good…because on this day Christ takes the whole sin of the world onto himself, lifting it from us, so that we might stand up straight and live anew…that we might be free of death to live and serve and dance and sing, always, always glorying in the cross. [sing it: “In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever, ‘til my ransomed soul shall find rest beyond the river.” This Friday is good.
I don’t know about you, but I grew up imagining this day, Good Friday, as a funeral for Jesus, as if he had died all over again. But I’ve learned that that kind of thinking, that kind treatment of Good Friday only developed in the late 20th century. Thanks be to God for some recent discoveries and reclamations of how the earliest Christians saw and honored this day:
It’s not a funeral!
This is a day to adore the cross, albeit a serious and contemplative time. We can only sit in joyful silence and adore the cross, as though the cross is Christ himself. So I invite you: be in the midst of the cross this night, bask, linger, sisters and brothers in Christ! Come to its foot, as you’re able (in a little bit). Kiss the cross, bow down before the cross of Christ, ponder the final 3 words of Christ in the Gospel of John: IT IS FINISHED. Sin is finished, death is finished, all the powers that draw us from God are finished. AMEN?
From the cross on which Christ is lifted up, Jesus draws all things to himself, and in so doing solidifies the new law of love, where there are no boundaries to God’s compassion, no limits to God’s grace, even death itself cannot hold back this love divine. On this day, on this cross, is the hope of this entire world. May we glory in this cross of Christ forever. AMEN. Thanks be to God. AMEN.
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