Good Friday - Part 1

Good Friday  - Part 1 – Isaiah 52:13-53:12, MSG  Psalm 22

Holy Father,

As we come to you now, insert us into the story. God help us step into the 2000-year-old tradition of setting this day apart. Help us to be fully present here and now. Help us take our anxieties and stresses and lay them down at your feet.  Help us take this day as a time to pause and reflect. A time to consider. A time, to be struck by the power and the promise you fulfilled for each and every one of us.  For Lord, today is not a normal day. Today is not a normal Friday. Today is Good Friday.

Amen

Historically, Christians around the world, across various traditions and generations, have taken the Friday before easter, and called it good.

Which is honestly a confusing title. What about today is good? Open God’s word, take it and eat it. And it will seem sweet and first, but it will soon hit your stomach and turn sour.

What is good about crowds of people screaming, “Crucify him! Crucify him! We want nothing to do with him, and would rather have Barabus, the murder in our midst!” When days before, they sang “Hosanna in the highest! Save us lord!”

What is good about a whip flagging his back deeper and deeper with every hit? What is good about soldiers taking him and placing a royal robe around his body, handing him a staff, and placing a crown of thorns on his head? What is good about him being beaten to a pulp and then forced to carry his own cross up the hill of the skull? What is good about his hands and his feet being pierced with nails? What is good about him gasping for breath? How is this good?

Pause

And yet, hundreds of years before it happened… God had already spoken about this day.

Isiah 52:13-53:12 - “Just watch my servant blossom! Exalted, tall, head and shoulders above the crowd! But he didn’t begin that way. At first everyone was appalled. He didn’t even look human— a ruined face, disfigured past recognition. Nations all over the world will be in awe, taken aback, kings shocked into silence when they see him. For what was unheard of they’ll see with their own eyes, what was unthinkable they’ll have right before them.” Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this? The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him. He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn’t say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence. Justice miscarried, and he was led off— and did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people. They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man, Even though he’d never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn’t true. Still, it’s what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life. And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him. Out of that terrible travail of soul, he’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad he did it. Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant, will make many “righteous ones,” as he himself carries the burden of their sins. Therefore, I’ll reward him extravagantly— the best of everything, the highest honors— Because he looked death in the face and didn’t flinch, because he embraced the company of the lowest. He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many; he took up the cause of all the black sheep.”

Don’t you remember what we did in the garden? Who are we to define good and evil? Right and wrong? Good and not good?

1 Corinthians 1:18 “The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hell-bent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out.”

We call today Good Friday, because it was good. Not for him, but for us. Because “ God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” We take today, and we join with thousands of Christians around the world to remember that it was through his, through Jesus Christ our lord and Savior, through his wounds, that we are healed. That through him all things will be made good again. Through him all will be made right. Through the pain and the suffering, of feeling forgotten and abandoned, through his death, we are made clean.

Today, we remember that through his pain, we are made good.

 Will you take this time to remember what he has done for you? Can you move out of complacency and towards humility? Can you, for a second, tune everything else out and listen for his whisper of love? Can you, for the next hour, look at this cross and remember that it is good?