Good Friday
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I looked and saw a man hanging shamefully on top of a hill
Between two others, struck through and pinned up as an ominous bulletin
“Warning,” the whole scene says, “don’t end up like one of these.”
“Folly and shame” is all that can be ascribed to these lowest of society.
I shake my head unknowingly as I pass by the crowd
noting the jeers and the taunts, I say “this is meaningless.”
Trying to brisk through I day, keeping up with whatever normalcy I can muster
But, something grips me about that man on the middle cross.
He hangs there, yet “differently.” He speaks no cursed speech, no vile language.
The sign above his head seems to mock, but what is the cause of that mocking?
“King of the Jews” seems a funny charge when Herod is still living.
Is this another kind of king, hanging there so meekly?
“What a gruesome and weak display of power,” I say to myself
as I move on to tasks of my life. “Whatever cause he lived for
Is dying on the vine.” I laugh to myself, but at the end of the laugh I pause
swallowing, I say “no king like I’ve ever seen.”
Days pass, and that middle man has become somewhat of a pebble in my shoe
Naturally, I must be wiser and better, after all, it was him hanging there
But I move about life more uneasily, anxiously, “am I paranoid?”
“Get out of my head, shameful King!” I say with whatever authority I can muster.
Weeks pass, and I head into the city for a festival.
I hear a commotion, a herald standing in the street
I hear his closing line, it strikes me. “Let all the house of Israel know that this is the Christ of God
This crucified Jesus.” Could it be? That man on the middle cross?
With heart beating in my throat, I try vainly to move on
Yet, a strange urge to stop and remember, stop and consider grips me
What if that middle man, that shameful king, was just this?
What if that foolish criminal hanging so shamefully is, in fact, the King?
Gripped to the heart, I stop and cry out to the herald,
“What shall I do?” Though my hand held no hammer, and my fingers grasped no nails
And though my wrists wielded no whip and my arms pressed down no crown of thorns
I am convinced that somehow his death is mine to own.
And the herald said to me, “Turn to this crucified King
Die in his death, live in his life.”
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
He Absorbed our Punishment
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
He Took our Curse
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
He Showed His Love
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
He Brought us to God
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,
or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;
but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood
and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies;
your tongue mutters wickedness.
No one enters suit justly;
no one goes to law honestly;
they rely on empty pleas, they speak lies,
they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity.
They hatch adders’ eggs;
they weave the spider’s web;
he who eats their eggs dies,
and from one that is crushed a viper is hatched.
Their webs will not serve as clothing;
men will not cover themselves with what they make.
Their works are works of iniquity,
and deeds of violence are in their hands.
Their feet run to evil,
and they are swift to shed innocent blood;
their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
desolation and destruction are in their highways.
The way of peace they do not know,
and there is no justice in their paths;
they have made their roads crooked;
no one who treads on them knows peace.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
He Gave us Life
So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”