Tonight many from our church, along with guests, will gather for our annual Good Friday service at 6:00 PM. If you had not planned to come or have forgotten about it, I encourage to join us for this service that reflects on the death of our Savior.
For the last few years, Christine has planned our Good Friday service. In preparing this year’s service, I have been reminded that this year she is no longer here to do so. However the plan that we will use for this year's service is one she found a few years ago and implemented. It takes us through the stations of the cross — those events Jesus endured on his way to the cross and on the cross itself.
My worship on this Good Friday will be richer this year as I reflect on the eternal reward that Christine has now received as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. We only have hope for eternal life because Jesus did endure the cruelty and suffering of the cross, and because of Christ’s resurrection, which we will celebrate on Sunday. However, as Charles Colson wrote a few years ago, we must not “rush the celebration before coming face-to-face with the paradoxes that are at the heart of the Christian faith” — paradoxes which are seen most clearly in the c ross.
Richard John Neuhaus wrote about this a few years ago in his book, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus. Neuhaus writes, “If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything.” What is that truth? It begins with the truth about the human condition, namely that we are sinners and our sins keep us from God. So what does God do? He paradoxically punishes the offended party — his Son — instead of the guilty party — us.
Colson reflected on the cross, in his meditation on Good Friday, this way: “Our unwillingness to see our sins as they really are—that is, as God sees them—leads us to embrace another falsehood: that is, that we can make things right. Even though our culture is, in many respects, post-Christian, it still clings to the idea of redemption. However, just as with our ideas about sin and guilt, our ideas about redemption are pitiful and impoverished.
“On Good Friday, God made it clear ‘that we are incapable of setting things right.’ He made it clear by taking our place. On the Cross, ‘the Judge of the guilty is Himself judged guilty.’ This is, of course, the great scandal, one that paradoxically points to the great truth at the heart of Good Friday. We are powerless to set things right, and only God, the offended party, could undo the mess we created.
“The Cross—God’s way of bearing witness to the truth about our condition—is as offensive today as it was 2,000 years ago. Now, as then, we insist on misinterpreting the events of that Friday afternoon, but to no avail. Our sin has been judged, and God Himself bore the punishment. And that is the truth about everything.”
So reflect on the cross today. It is the most important reflecting you will ever do.
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