I was thinking of writing a post. Instead I have a link. Pastor Gavin has posted about Good Friday and the meaning of the Cross, in good Covenant fashion. Our Lutheran Pietist fore bearers would sigh in relief I think to know that bit of the fundamental reason for our split with Orthodox Lutheranism had been remembered.
After the Good Friday Joint service with Immanuel, St Elias and Reconciler 9:45 PM;
As I sit and reflect after our Good Friday service I remembered what I was thinking of writing. As I have been contemplating the Passion of Christ this week, I have felt how Jesus' suffering and death on the cross ties and is tied to so much suffering in the world. Listening to Jesus' prayers in the Garden I have heard the questions of people I have counseled and am currently counseling. I have heard in Spiritual Direction session people ask why God had abandoned them to suffering or trauma or severe and debilitating illness or injustice.
Tonight though as we heard the passion of John chanted I heard so many layers of meaning and significance. All the weight of suffering and inhumanity we humans inflict on each other here it all seemed to be concentrated. The weight was unbearable. The enormity of the misery of Christ passion has begun to dawn on me. This is odd to say for I have been to Good Friday services most of my life. I know the passion of Christ so well. Yet, only now at 38 in my 4th year as a pastor 7th year as a spiritual director does the full mystery begin to dawn upon me. The enormity of this one event, the centrality it has for all human suffering and any possibility for human hope. I am overwhelmed. I am lost in a darkness that is light. Part of me wants to flee this unveiling this clearing that appears before me for its sight is too terrible. Not terrible because what is there is horrific but because it is so other and it beckons me beyond even my greatest good I could dream of accomplishing. It calls me to let go of all even the good I could achieve. I am overwhelmed and as look at the words I have written and I know they fail. Here perhaps there are no words only silence.
Larry,
ReplyDeleteI feared this year that I was too anxious to rush through Good Friday and into Easter. I think that perhaps it is because I have found myself in a place where I have not been comfortable with the emphasis that is placed on Good Friday. Perhaps it is also that I spent the week writing my Easter sermon, and it is hard for me to remain at the cross when I'm preparing to lead people to the empty tomb.
That being said, we used our Maundy Thursday service (the only midweek service we have here) to do Tenebrae and it was a powerful reminder of the journey that Jesus took.
Thank you for your thoughts here, they remind me of the true power of the cross, one that we should not rush through, but one that becomes even more powerful in light of the resurrection.
You may not realize it based on my last post (thanks for the link, by the way), but I find much power in the suffering God who joins us in our time of trial instead of removing us from it.
Anyway, awesome post, thanks for the powerful message.
Thank you Gavin.
ReplyDeleteNo, it was not lost on me (perhaps because I know you) that you find much power in the suffering God.
I linked to your post not only because I found the old Mission Friend argument against the view of the atonement that puts Christ between us and a wrathful God, but also because of the balance, the remembering of the interrelatedness of Cross and Resurrection. There would be little significance if Jesus had simply died of a disease or old age and rose again. Lazarus was raised from the dead, there was not universal significance of that resurrection.
The enormity and the hope of the crucified and suffering God is in that I already know what is coming. We are never completely at the Cross on Good Friday. After the Resurrection the experience of the first disciples of Jesus is impossible to recreate. Thank God. For with out the resurrection there is no power in a God who just suffers with us. God did not just suffer in Jesus Christ God overcame . "By death Christ beat down death" this is the enormity of the Cross and the terror of the Resurrection. this is the act of a God who as Paul in Romans says "gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were."