
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. The turmoil wracking our country has been occupying mine and others minds in this new post-Christian era. Even the Christians seem to be at each others throats. In years past I’ve witnessed many Good Friday services in our local churches. Some were profoundly great, and some were celebratory in nature which totally turned me off. The day that Jesus was put to death is not a day of celebration. It is rather a day to ponder one’s mortality, and the sacrifice of a God/man. Although we know the “rest of the story”, this is a solemn day to observe. In my tradition, we did not observe Good Friday, but later on I came to realize its significance.
My favorite theologian, NT Wright writes:
“The personal message of Good Friday, expressed in so many hymns and prayers which draw on the tradition of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53) and its New Testament outworking, comes down to this: “See all your sins on Jesus laid”; “The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me”; or, in the words which Jesus spoke at the Supper but which God spoke on Good Friday itself: “This is my body, given for you.” When we apply this as individuals to today’s and tomorrow’s sins, the result is not that we are given license to sin because it’s all been dealt with anyway but rather that we are summoned by the most powerful love in the world to live by the pattern of death and resurrection, repentance and forgiveness, in daily Christian living, in sure hope of eventual victory. The “problem of evil” is not simply or purely a “cosmic” thing; it is also a problem about me. And God has dealt with that problem on the cross of his Son, the Messiah. That is why some Christian traditions venerate the cross itself, just as we speak of worshiping the ground on which our beloved is walking. The cross is the place where, and the means by which, God loved us to the uttermost.”
N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God
May your Good Friday experience provide you with a richer faith.
ct