Good Friday (March 29, 2024)

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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

“Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

I’ll read that again.

To these words from German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we might add that cheap grace is Easter without Good Friday, Resurrection without the Passion and Cross, feasting without fasting. Ours is a culture of cheap convenience. We even go out of our way not to look at death by shipping the elderly to Florida or putting them in homes. Almost everything about our culture surrounding death is about making it very private. But here today, Mother Church calls us to hold the precious death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in front of our eyes and to reflect on it. And when we spend time with the Cross, we see a warning against the cheap grace that Bonhoeffer railed against, we see the medicine of our salvation. And we see the power of God.

The cross stands as a warning against cheap grace. And don’t misunderstand me when I use the term cheap grace: grace is absolutely free, but it is not cheap. The outstretched arms of Christ beckon all to come within his loving embrace no matter who we are or what we’ve done. But it’s not cheap. 1 Corinthians 6:20 “For ye are bought with a price”: And the price is the precious blood of Christ. To understand the Cross as the price of our redemption is to understand each and every one of our sins, no matter how great or how small as an insult to our Lord suspended in the air, a visceral spit in his face, a strike to his precious face, a nail through his holy and reverent hand or foot. Cheap grace is a license to misuse liberty; but costly grace, the kind of grace we think about today, is about veneration of the cross and adoration of the one on it because even when we insult him, spit on him, strike him, or hammer the nails, he doesn’t close his arms or turn his back but continues to beckon us to come to him.

The more we meditate on this mystery of the Cross, the more it changes us; it is the medicine to our sick souls. And like any regimen for healing, it involves removing the cause of the ailment, infusing what is lacking, and training to repair what has been damaged. The Cross removes the cause of sickness. St. Paul identifies the first cause of sickness in Colossians 2:14–15: “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” He defeats Satan and the demons who keep us in bondage. And the consequence of that is expressed in Hebrews 2:14–15: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” Christ’s victory over Satan is a victory over death itself; death is trampled by death “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” But we also know that the battle is not just “out there” between angels and principalities, it also rages in here with sin. But the Cross solves this too: “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)” (Rom 5:17). By taking away the cause of our sickness, the devil, death, and sin, Jesus also infuses in us divinity. As St. Athanasius says: God became man so that man became God. The Cross is a font from which springs infinite merits that are bestowed to those of us in Christ. At the Cross, we are changed for the better because to go and die with him is to be raised with him, the mystery at the heart of Baptism. And this means the cruciformity—to be cross-shaped—is a way of being that we are called to. The Cross is our trainer, always showing us what we should be.

If the Cross is an instrument that can affect such a change, that can make sinners saints, that can destroy the devil and death, that can so fittingly and simultaneously reveal love and justice, then we know that there is a power behind the Cross that is incomparable to any other kind of power. 1 Corinthians 1:18 “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” The world looks at the dereliction of the Cross as a defeat, but this revelation of God’s power confounds the Jew and Greek, the wise, the powerful, and the eloquent. And yes, for this reason the Cross seems so hard to believe, but the method of Cross in no way does away with the majesty of God; quite the opposite: only God’s ineffable power could use such a lowly means to bridge the insurmountable barrier between divinity and humanity. It’s precisely because the Cross is counter to our human expectations that we know it is the power of God.

On Easter, we will celebrate the Resurrection, another display of divine power. But let’s not skip ahead too fast. Let’s sit here in the tension: this moment of dereliction is the moment of our salvation. Listen to these words from Leo the Great: “When any who belong to the Christian observance, then, know that any exceed the limits and that their desires tend toward something which makes them deviate from the right path, let such as these take refuge in the Cross of Christ and fashion the movements of the harmful will to the wood of life. In the prophets words, let them cry out the Lord and say, ‘Pierce my flesh with nails from fear of you, for I fear because of your judgments.” That is cure to cheap grace: holiness that comes only from clinging to the Cross. “Keep me as the apple of the eye, Hide me under the shadow of thy wings,”