Before the Cross of the Savior

Good Friday

The Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion

Is 52:13 - 53:12  The Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant.
Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9  Let us confidently approach the throne of grace.
Jn 18:1-19:42  The Passion according to John

We place ourselves before the cross of Christ Jesus today.  We place ourselves before him on the Mount of Calvary.

As Peter said, on a different mountaintop—on the Mount of the Transfiguration—it is good for us to be here.  In fact, there is no place better.

For here all things leave off.  All our pretentions, all our illusions, all our claims—and fears—about who we are and who we are not.

Today we place ourselves before the cross of Christ Jesus and we hear, and we see, the whole judgment of God.

For we are sinners, and this is our work.  And we cannot justify ourselves now.

For we are like Peter, the one who denied him.  And we are like Judas, the one who betrayed.  And we are like the other friends, who fled or followed, at best, at a distance.  And we are like the religious authorities—the holy people—who condemn.  And like the guards who mock.  And the mighty Pilate, who knows the truth, but will not stand up for it out of fear.  We are like the crowds, who jeer or who do nothing.  There is a little bit of each of these in each of us—even in the best of us. 

We stand before the cross of Christ Jesus, condemned men and women—condemned not by God, not by Jesus, but by our own actions, by our own hard hearts.  It is we who have so often refused to believe, to trust, to step into the light of truth God pleads for us to enter, refusing to step into the lives he begs for us to live—lives of mercy and compassion, full of grace and truth.

Many of us object: How could a good and loving God do this to his own beloved Son?  And we find ourselves condemned by our hypocrisy.  For it is not God who condemned this Son, but humanity—men and women like us—we condemned.

And so we place ourselves before the cross of Christ, sinners—without justification, without righteousness, without excuse.  And we hear and see God’s judgment.

His judgment is true—it cannot be otherwise.  And it is clear—nothing could be clearer. 

“It is finished,” he says.  Tetelestai, in the Greek that John wrote, a word meaning “the bond is canceled…the debt is paid."

What he has chosen to do with us is to accept us, to accept us as his own, and to give his life for us, for he does not want our death.  And so we are also like Barabbas, the insurrectionist and the murderer, who finds himself suddenly freed from his cross, his place on Calvary taken by an innocent man.

My sisters and brothers, we stand before the cross of Christ, and nothing could be clearer: God has chosen to take everything we give—all our hatreds, all our denials, all our betrayals, all the crosses that we lay too easily on one another and ourselves—God has chosen to take them all upon himself.  And there is nothing now we can do to change that.

There is only a question—a question for each of us to think and pray and ponder on this day, through all our hard-won days.  The Lord says to each of us: “I have set you free, as free as Lazarus from the tomb, for I love you, and I have no desire for your death, but for the Father’s glory—God’s glory for you—his glory for us all, the glory he planned for us before the world began.  Now what will you do?  My sister…my brother…what do you want to do?

AMDG