Good Friday

Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, 
and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had 
received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, 
and gave up the ghost.
(St. John xix. 29,30)
 
Jesus the crucified, Jesus the suffering Servant and dying Lord of Good Friday, is betrayed by one, and then denied and abandoned by the others, including all of us. Sinful man betrays and forsakes God, denies His rule and governance in human life, and abandons Him for the temporary and fleeting pleasures of this world, as important as they might seem. So, as we look back on this Good Friday, as Christians, it is our duty to identify with any sin that reveals no acquaintance or familiarity with Jesus Christ. We do this because we desire to repent. We desire to repent because we believe that Jesus Christ is God’s forgiveness of sins made flesh. And we believe that this forgiveness of sins is truly and perfectly offered to us through the death of God’s own Son on the Tree of Calvary. We believe also that this forgiveness of sins calls us into death, first, the death of Jesus Christ, and then our own deaths. If we will not die to sin by embracing the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, beginning here and now, we will never come alive to God the Father through the Risen Christ on Easter Day.

Before we repent, we must look into the nature of what Jesus Christ is doing for us when He dies on the Cross of Calvary. St. Paul tells us that by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (Romans v. 12) By one man’s disobedience to God, sin and death entered the world of human nature. Thus, from the time of Adam to Christ all men were oppressed with, enslaved to, and overcome by that sin which prevents them from obeying God purely and perfectly. St. Paul continues:

For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. (Ibid, 15,16)
 
Jesus Christ becomes the forgiveness of all sins. He allows Himself to be brought to death by all sin. He allows Himself to feel the effects and nature of all sin. He becomes both the cause and the effect. He feels the malice of the sinful perpetrator of His death. He feels the effect of it all as the victim. Jesus [humbles] himself and is obedient [to God the Father] unto death, even death upon the Cross. (Phil. ii. 8) Thus, through His sacred humanity He brings man’s addiction to sin to death. Through His most holy Passion, He will overcome Original Sin. Through His enduring obedience to God the Father, He will suffer the worst and the best that man’s sin can do to God, and out of it make something much better and new. Sin and death will taunt, tempt, mock, deride, torture, and kill God’s Word made flesh. They will bring Jesus Christ to death. But what sin and death cannot kill is the Word of God’s Love in the heart of Jesus that persists through suffering into death and then up into new life. For even while dying unjustly, the Son of God’s forgiveness will begin to make new life, a new manhood, a new Adam whose nature will be shared as Humanity’s new life for all who believe and follow Him.

Today, we come to the vision of Christ crucified. We come to see what our sin has done to God in the flesh. To our sore amazement, we find in Jesus Christ not some obscure theological concept but the living the forgiveness of our sins made flesh. For this forgiveness of sins is God’s uninterrupted desire for our salvation. This desire is still at work in the heart of the suffering and dying Christ. What do we hear emerging from the lips of the dying Jesus? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) Father, today they kill me through ignorance, confusion, weakness, and pain, but I desire them still. Father forgive them, for tomorrow they may repent and believe and become our friends. Next, we hear. Today, shalt thou be with me in Paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) Look Father, this convicted thief dying alongside me has confessed his sin and desires to come and follow me. Father, I desire him. This is our first death-bed conversion! And then what? Father, my Mother and dear John are here watching and waiting, dying to become a part my death and new life. Father, I desire them. Woman, behold thy son!...Disciple, Behold thy mother! (St. John xix. 26, 27) Father, already we have our first two missionaries, members of the new humanity that I am making. My Mother is ready to become the mother of your new spiritual children. My friend, my spiritual brother, is ready to become a new spiritual son to the Mother of my redemption and salvation. Jesus still desires to make all things new, to bring good out of evil and life out of death, though He is in extreme pain and agony.

Jesus continues. Father, I am suffering and dying. The pain is acute. Strengthen them spiritually now, as I grow weaker and weaker, and my pains grow stronger and stronger. For, Father, the devil is once again on my back. My wounded and lacerated head, hands, and feet are overwhelming me and crushing my sense of the outside world that looks and gazes upon me. I am becoming blind, deaf, dumb, withered, and palsied like those I came to heal. I feel the pain of Job, and I hear the words of his wife: Curse God and die. (Job ii. 9) I feel the darkness. The silence is deafening. The nothingness envelops me. Lord I am spent; is there any more for me to do? Father, thou seemest to be absent from me. The deep and mysterious power of sin is attacking me. I sense and feel the nothingness not as that pure potential “about to be” that you and I once made real. I endure man’s rejection of thee my God. I sense the distance between thee and me. ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) Why…art thou so far from my health, and from the voice of my complaint? I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not: and in [this] night season also I take no rest.’ (Ps. xxii. 1,2)

But, I know that ‘thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.’ (Ps. li. 8) I gasp for that spiritual drink that will satisfy my soul. ‘I thirst.’ (St. John xix. 28) There is one more thing for me to do before ‘It is finished’ (Ibid, 30), before ‘I commend my spirit into thy hands.’ (St. Luke xxiii. 46) There is Roman soldier over there, I cannot see him clearly, but he has not moved throughout this my suffering death. He has not taken his eyes off me. He is not vengeful or malicious. He has been looking into my eyes from the beginning. By his own judgment, he knows that something is terribly wrong. And yet he also sees that something is coming to pass that will be wonderfully right. The seed of faith is growing in his heart. ‘Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.’(Idem, 29, 30) This Roman soldier, perhaps with another, gave Jesus his last sip of wine. Father, I thank you for giving me this drink through him. I thank you for moving him to provide me with the drink that is becoming his own offering of himself through you. Keep him near, my Mother and disciple will need his help in taking me down from this tree and burying me. And through them, let us welcome him into the Body of my Death, which is already becoming the Body of our new Life.

Today, we come to the Cross to repent. While we are crucifying Jesus Christ, He desires us. Neither suffering nor death, neither pain nor torture will stop Jesus from desiring our salvation. Hans Urs Von Balthasar sums up what has happened for us.

Jesus, the Crucified, endures our inner darkness and estrangement from God, and he does so in our place. It is all the more painful for Him, the less He has merited it. There is nothing familiar about it to Him: it is utterly alien and full of horror. Indeed, He suffers more deeply than an ordinary man is capable of suffering, even were he condemned and rejected by God, because only the incarnate Son knows who the Father really is and what it means to be deprived of Him, to have lost Him (to all appearances) forever. It is meaningless to call this suffering “hell”, for there is no hatred of God in Jesus, only a pain that is deeper and more timeless than the ordinary man could endure either in his lifetime or after His death. (Sermon for Good Friday)

The desire for our salvation is alive in the heart of Jesus Christ as He takes on our darkness and estrangement from God. Love that is the Light and Life feels the pain more acutely than any man can because He has not earned or merited this condition. The pain is perfectly present because the Son of God must endure what is contrary to His own nature in the fiber of all His being. Because He is the Love that is the Light and Life that knows God perfectly and loves Him absolutely, His brokenness for us will be all the more pure and complete. He will lovingly endure the pain of a broken heart until He can overcome sin and open to man the gates of everlasting life once again. St. Paul tells us that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death (Romans vi. 4) because the light hath shined in darkness, and the darkness overcame it not. (St. John i. 5) 

Amen.
©wjsmartin