(Sorry for being so late in posting this.)
Some people think that re-reading a novel is pointless, since you already know the ending. But some novels are so well written that part of the joy and profit in reading them is to watch the story go by again, to get to know the characters better, to relish the insights the author has in what it means to be human.
We revisit Good Friday each year for similar reasons. We know that Easter is coming, but want and need to see the day of crucifixion again, to understand it better, and to be shaped by it. We mustn’t undercut the seriousness or darkness of the day. But neither can we understand the day if we try to see it apart from the resurrection.
The darkness began when our ancestors decided they would be better off without God. Seeking a life apart from him who is life, they only found death, as God had warned. God had said of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “In the day that you eat it, you will die.” Usually we interpret this statement as a warning of dire consequences and a threat of punishment, and leave it at that. But could it also be more? Might that warning also be the promise of a cure?
As we read the OT and watch the centuries roll past, it’s obvious that we need some kind of major cure for the desperate mess we have made for ourselves. Mankind is plagued with murder, disease, slavery, strife, demonic forces, ignorance, superstition, blasphemy, starvation, bitter hatred for God and neighbor, corruption—and death of the sort that is anything but hopeful or curative. This death, rather, is the ultimate threat, the great fear, the final enemy.
Enter Jesus. Luke’s gospel announces him as the Savior, the Anointed One, the Lord. Luke portrays him as the one God has sent to fight and defeat all of those oppressors we see in the Old Testament. After his baptism and his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus begins his public ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth by reading from Isaiah 61,
The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of Yahweh.
Then he comments,
Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
And then he spends the next three years putting those words into action. He casts out demons, heals fevers, teaches, forgives sin, heals paralysis, raises the dead to life, calms a storm at sea, feeds thousands by miraculously multiplying bread and fish, demonstrates what following God really means, heals lepers and more lepers and more lepers, raises more dead to life, forgives more sins, bring outcasts back into fellowship with God—in short, he achieves victory after victory over every force that has oppressed us from the beginning. Thus he embodies the gospel, the good news of the kingdom of God. Jesus is Lord, he is God-with-us, and he restores his people to life with God.
Then, when he knows the timing is right, he provokes events so that the tide turns against him. His human enemies, fearing loss of power and prestige, capture him and arrange with the Roman military occupation to have him executed by crucifixion. They torture him, strip him naked, and nail him to a crude scaffold in public. This humiliating process usually results in a slow death by suffocation. Yet even there, amid the shame and the pain, he acts like the king he is. While others mock and taunt Jesus, one of the criminals also being executed there asks Jesus to remember him when Jesus enters his kingdom. And even in the middle of his own pain, this shepherd-king will not let one let one sheep die without love and hope. “Today,” says Jesus to the thief, “you will be with me in paradise.”
Not long after this, Jesus dies.
Why? What did the death of Jesus do?
Luke records that, a couple of days later, Jesus has risen from the dead. He is alive and beyond the power of death. He appears to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, saying that the Old Testament foretold that all this was to happen, and he explains the events in detail. And then he tells the disciples to “Go and proclaim forgiveness of sins in my name.” Luke shows that Jesus has defeated death. Death no longer has a hold on him
Beside this portrait of Jesus’ death in Luke’s gospel, let me set some remarks by St. Paul, particularly in II Cor. 5:14-17. What St. Paul says there looks very odd at first glance:
For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this: that one died, therefore all died. And he died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we now know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ—new creation! The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come.
One died for all, he says, therefore all died. Somehow, and the passage does not say how, but somehow Christ’s death has changed the reality of us all. His death has accomplished our deaths. We have died because Christ died.
And again, in Gal. 2:19-20, St. Paul comments:
For through the law, I died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the live I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself up for me.
Not only has Christ been crucified, but we also have been crucified with him. We have died in Christ’s death.
And we needed to die. We had so corrupted our lives that they needed to be destroyed and remade. As St. Paul says, “If anyone is in Christ—new creation!” Instead of the isolated, lives that were decaying back into a corruption worse than the nothing from which we were created, Jesus has connected us to himself so that we have his own life and fellowship in us.
So the arrest and crucifixion in Luke’s gospel do not turn the narrative from a series of victories to a final defeat, but rather they move the narrative from the signs of victory to the substance of Jesus’ victory. Jesus died, not so that we would not have to die, but so that we might die in him and in him be raised to a new life, a life beyond the reach of death, a life hidden with Christ in God.
Tonight we remember Christ’s battle against our last and greatest oppressor, death. There is great mystery here. Theology and preaching should help us see and understand more clearly, but should not lead us to think that we have figured it out. Rather, they should lead us to love and praise Jesus, who loves us and gave himself for us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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