Friday -- The Good One
Sermon
THE VICTORY OF FAITH
New Testament Sermons For Lent And Easter
A youngster in Sunday School asked the pastor, "If Jesus died on Friday, why do we call it good?"
It seems contrary to reason to call this day Good Friday, when congregations around the world remember Jesus' death with black and an empty chancel. Images like these recount the day: forsaken, scorn, thorns, despised, grief, sorrow, wounded, tears, darkness, and death. How can we use a word like good in the same breath? What good can come from Jesus' death on the cross on a day long ago on a hill called "the place of the skull"?
Several years ago Granger Westberg wrote his classic book Good Grief. He explained how grief was a normal and necessary human experience at a time of loss. Healthy people engage their sorrow and work through it in such a way so as to emerge from their valley of shadows with a newfound peace and strength. Grief is good when it honestly expresses the hurts and hopes of the one who has suffered a loss. Good Grief!
Good Friday! This day is called good because it honestly expresses the heart of God in relationship to all humanity. "For God so loved the world, that he sent his only son.ƒ" Jesus, the Son of God, enfleshed the will of God to love men and women and children and the world itself to death -- to love us to death, if that is what it took to bring us back into relationship with God. This willingness to go all the way, one-sided, unconditioned, unsolicited, defines the nature of God's covenant with his creation.
God has covenanted never to abandon his world. The covenant of the rainbow in Noah's day was a heavenly sign that was sealed on earth in the blood of Jesus. Just as the American Indian would seal a promise and bond a relationship by mixing blood, so too God mixed the blood of Jesus into the history of the world to seal his promise given in the Garden and bond humanity to himself in an everlasting relationship of love. "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."
Good Friday is a day about relationship. God created us to live in relationship with him. "In the image of God he created them -- male and female he created them." This is how the Bible opens the saga of creation and history. Adam and Eve, you and me, were created to live in relationship with God. As close as our breath, so close are we to be with our Creator, our cosmic lover and companion on our earthly trip through time and space.
But, the relationship has been broken. Adam and Eve disobediently stole some fruit from God's tree in the Garden; ever since, humanity has been robbed of a healthy relationship with God.
Augustine, a bishop of the early church, tells his story, which is really a reflection of our story. In his book Confessions, he admits to stealing fruit from a pear tree when he was seventeen years old. There was a pear tree near his family's vineyard. Now, Augustine was not poor, nor was he hungry. Yet, he stole pears from his neighbor's tree just for the joy of the theft. You might think, "Well, it was only a pear tree. I mean, we are not talking about adultery or murder or idolatry, or any of the 'big' sins."
Yes, we are! For there is no distinction in the eye of God. James writes in the New Testament, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." It is like being a little bit pregnant. You either are or you are not. So too with the law; we either keep it in its entirety, or we fail to keep it, no matter where we fall short. Paul reminds us about the truth of the matter: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The relationship with God has been broken. It does not matter if you stole a pear or killed your neighbor. Both acts come from the same disobedient heart. The result is the same -- the relationship with God has been broken. It must be mended. Paul agonized, "Wretched man that I am; who will deliver me from this body of death?" We cannot accomplish it from our side of the relationship. God must do it from his side. That is exactly what God did on Good Friday.
Some people criticize Christianity as too morbid, focusing so much upon humanity's sinfulness. Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote, "Without the consciousness of sin, there is no Christianity." Of course, the truth hurts; but there is a purpose for our being so sensitive to this truth of our basic human sinfulness. It is like what Augustine wrote in his Confessions: "I reviewed my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, so that you may grow sweet unto me, O God." The purpose of remembering our sinfulness is to see the sweetness, the goodness of God.
Good Friday is not about our being good, worshiping God, and trying to get along with one another with the best of intentions, even as Paul admonishes us "to provoke one another to love and good deeds.ƒ" Good Friday is about God being good and forgiving us, even when we were no longer good to his only Son, whom we crucified. The words of Paul are like a two-edged sword cutting both ways: "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
This day, Good Friday, is the lens through which we see clearly just how much God loves us -- not because we deserve it, but because we need it. What we deserve is death, since "the wages of sin is death." What we get instead is the death of Jesus, which covers the wage and sets us free to be children of God. The relationship is now restored, in the words of Paul who wrote, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself ƒathat is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.ƒ"
This is why we can come with confidence to the sanctuary of God's house. We are invited into a new and living way to be ourselves in the world. We are forgiven sinners, who can face the darkest Fridays of our lives with hope, because God is with us all the way all the time. He is faithful to his promises to be with us in the deepest valley, even unto the end of time. He is powerful to fulfill his promise. Neither sin nor death can stand in his way to do for us what he says he will do.
We can pray with Søren Kierkegaard, that melancholy Dane who prayed his way through cross-marked Fridays: "Lord, hold not our sins up against us, but hold us up against our sins; so that the thought of you, when it wakens in us and every time it wakens, may remind us not of how much we have sinned, but of how much you have forgiven us; not how we went astray, but how you saved us" (paraphrase).
Good Friday! It is a good day to die; it is a good day to live. Amen.
It seems contrary to reason to call this day Good Friday, when congregations around the world remember Jesus' death with black and an empty chancel. Images like these recount the day: forsaken, scorn, thorns, despised, grief, sorrow, wounded, tears, darkness, and death. How can we use a word like good in the same breath? What good can come from Jesus' death on the cross on a day long ago on a hill called "the place of the skull"?
Several years ago Granger Westberg wrote his classic book Good Grief. He explained how grief was a normal and necessary human experience at a time of loss. Healthy people engage their sorrow and work through it in such a way so as to emerge from their valley of shadows with a newfound peace and strength. Grief is good when it honestly expresses the hurts and hopes of the one who has suffered a loss. Good Grief!
Good Friday! This day is called good because it honestly expresses the heart of God in relationship to all humanity. "For God so loved the world, that he sent his only son.ƒ" Jesus, the Son of God, enfleshed the will of God to love men and women and children and the world itself to death -- to love us to death, if that is what it took to bring us back into relationship with God. This willingness to go all the way, one-sided, unconditioned, unsolicited, defines the nature of God's covenant with his creation.
God has covenanted never to abandon his world. The covenant of the rainbow in Noah's day was a heavenly sign that was sealed on earth in the blood of Jesus. Just as the American Indian would seal a promise and bond a relationship by mixing blood, so too God mixed the blood of Jesus into the history of the world to seal his promise given in the Garden and bond humanity to himself in an everlasting relationship of love. "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."
Good Friday is a day about relationship. God created us to live in relationship with him. "In the image of God he created them -- male and female he created them." This is how the Bible opens the saga of creation and history. Adam and Eve, you and me, were created to live in relationship with God. As close as our breath, so close are we to be with our Creator, our cosmic lover and companion on our earthly trip through time and space.
But, the relationship has been broken. Adam and Eve disobediently stole some fruit from God's tree in the Garden; ever since, humanity has been robbed of a healthy relationship with God.
Augustine, a bishop of the early church, tells his story, which is really a reflection of our story. In his book Confessions, he admits to stealing fruit from a pear tree when he was seventeen years old. There was a pear tree near his family's vineyard. Now, Augustine was not poor, nor was he hungry. Yet, he stole pears from his neighbor's tree just for the joy of the theft. You might think, "Well, it was only a pear tree. I mean, we are not talking about adultery or murder or idolatry, or any of the 'big' sins."
Yes, we are! For there is no distinction in the eye of God. James writes in the New Testament, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." It is like being a little bit pregnant. You either are or you are not. So too with the law; we either keep it in its entirety, or we fail to keep it, no matter where we fall short. Paul reminds us about the truth of the matter: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The relationship with God has been broken. It does not matter if you stole a pear or killed your neighbor. Both acts come from the same disobedient heart. The result is the same -- the relationship with God has been broken. It must be mended. Paul agonized, "Wretched man that I am; who will deliver me from this body of death?" We cannot accomplish it from our side of the relationship. God must do it from his side. That is exactly what God did on Good Friday.
Some people criticize Christianity as too morbid, focusing so much upon humanity's sinfulness. Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote, "Without the consciousness of sin, there is no Christianity." Of course, the truth hurts; but there is a purpose for our being so sensitive to this truth of our basic human sinfulness. It is like what Augustine wrote in his Confessions: "I reviewed my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, so that you may grow sweet unto me, O God." The purpose of remembering our sinfulness is to see the sweetness, the goodness of God.
Good Friday is not about our being good, worshiping God, and trying to get along with one another with the best of intentions, even as Paul admonishes us "to provoke one another to love and good deeds.ƒ" Good Friday is about God being good and forgiving us, even when we were no longer good to his only Son, whom we crucified. The words of Paul are like a two-edged sword cutting both ways: "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
This day, Good Friday, is the lens through which we see clearly just how much God loves us -- not because we deserve it, but because we need it. What we deserve is death, since "the wages of sin is death." What we get instead is the death of Jesus, which covers the wage and sets us free to be children of God. The relationship is now restored, in the words of Paul who wrote, "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself ƒathat is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.ƒ"
This is why we can come with confidence to the sanctuary of God's house. We are invited into a new and living way to be ourselves in the world. We are forgiven sinners, who can face the darkest Fridays of our lives with hope, because God is with us all the way all the time. He is faithful to his promises to be with us in the deepest valley, even unto the end of time. He is powerful to fulfill his promise. Neither sin nor death can stand in his way to do for us what he says he will do.
We can pray with Søren Kierkegaard, that melancholy Dane who prayed his way through cross-marked Fridays: "Lord, hold not our sins up against us, but hold us up against our sins; so that the thought of you, when it wakens in us and every time it wakens, may remind us not of how much we have sinned, but of how much you have forgiven us; not how we went astray, but how you saved us" (paraphrase).
Good Friday! It is a good day to die; it is a good day to live. Amen.
