One focus for tonight. Yesterday it was 2- love neighbor, remember Jesus. Wash feet, communion. Tonight it is the cross. Tonight it is the depth of God’s love for us. Tonight it is that we, as undeserving as we all are, are so loved and cared about by God that Good Friday happened for each one of us. If only one of us had needed redemption, the whole story would have happened. Instead, each one of us, without exception, needs a way to be brought back to God, to be redeemed. And we have it- in the cross.
And on this cross Jesus turns to his mother and the beloved Disciple, the one who is not named but who we all could be, he turns to them are creates the start of the new community to come. A community based not on blood kin, but one based on Jesus where we are called to take care of each other. As the son dies, a new community is born. And continues. Jesus proclaims that it is finished- he has finished the work God gave him to do, he has loved his own to the end.
It is amazing to me how the cross has been transformed, redeemed really. It has gone from being an instrument of torture and death, to a fashion item or a decorative piece. No one, that I am aware of, actually uses cross’s for killing people anymore. It has lost that purpose. Now we use gurney’s and IV drugs, guns, bombs. Now folks, including me, have collections of crosses- whole walls filled with interesting and beautiful items. Can you imagine a wall of gurneys with lethal IV’s, or guillotines, or small decorative guns. But most of us don’t wear small firearms around our necks. We wear a cross- a sign of God’s love for us, a sign of our redemption.
The silence in this service- it may make you uncomfortable. It should make you uncomfortable. There are many things here that should make us all uncomfortable. This is not a comfortable day. This is not a comfortable service. This is not a comfortable set of beliefs we hold and this is not, I remind you, a comfortable God we proclaim! As C.S. Lewis put it, when speaking of Aslan the Lion, the character of Jesus in his Narnia books, He is not a tame lion. He also does not do that which he does not want to do. This is a sacrifice willingly taken. There is no room here tonight for regret about the cross, for wishing the cross had not happened. God wanted the cross. Jesus wanted the cross. To take this death and turn it around. To take this thing that others saw as awful and degrading and to turn it into life and forgiveness.
He is a lion that has opened for us the way. We may, as Paul writing to the Hebrews put it, have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus. We may approach cleansed from all our sin, provoking each other to love and good deeds. We are not sorrowful, but joyful; not grieving, but grateful; not introspective, but looking outward. This sacrifice, this cross, is not a symbol of death any longer, but a symbol of life, and of forgiveness. While this is a somber night, the events we remember, the cross we focus on are somber things, it is not a night of regret. It is a night of gratitude and love. It is the night when even as death and evil appeared to have the upper hand, God won the ultimate victory over death and evil. Behold the cross, on which hung the Savior of the world.
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