Good Friday Chief Service 2024

Good Friday

The Passion of Jesus Christ according to Saint John

March 29, 2024

Our self-image is always wrong. In times of prosperity, we perceive ourselves with pride. In times of adversity, we may rage and demand better; or, sink into self-loathing. But it’s all wrong, the self-love and the self-hatred. The only right image is to view ourselves cross-eyed; which is to say, we see who we are by looking at Christ’s cross. There we find that our pride is damned, but there is no cause for self-loathing, for the stretched-wide arms of Jesus proclaim the Father’s forgiveness. The cross is the Gospel. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the story of our identity. Our self-image is wrong, but the cross-eyed view is the truth. On Good Friday, we discover God has taken who you are out of your hands.

The gospel is “the eternal statement of who you are” (Russell Moore). The Triduum—the three holy days—give us the Supper of Jesus, the cross of Jesus, the baptism into Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus. These Holy Days give us the gospel, the good news that God in Christ loves us, absolves us, embraces us, welcomes us, accepts us, and will tear open the graves of those who fall asleep in Him.

God has taken your salvation out of your hands. Forgiveness, life, resurrection – none of it depends on you, your hard work or your right choices. Everything depends on God’s work and God’s choice. On the cross you see His work, His atoning work—and joy of all joys, His atonement is not limited. You see His choice for you in the inspired confession of John the Baptist, a central part of the Church’s liturgy, but particularly central to Good Friday: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” “The world” – that is God’s choice. You can know and be certain that it is for you, for you are included in “the world.” We make wrong choices, foolish choices, catastrophic choices; but God’s choice, there on the cross, is for you anyway, despite your rebel will.

What Pilate said is true: “Behold, your King.” He is your King; all He does is for you. So when your King says, “It is finished,” your salvation is accomplished, your debt paid, your sentence commuted, a full and complete pardon granted. And in exchange, He gives you life, guarantees your resurrection. God has taken it out of your hands. He has taken salvation out of your hands and placed it in His own. Your salvation is in the infant hands forming in the womb of the blessed virgin. Your salvation is in the hands that stopped the coffin of the widow of Nain’s son. Your salvation is in the hands unhesitant to touch lepers. Your salvation is in the hands cracked and bleeding, pierced to the tree, stretched out to embrace you and the cosmos.

Pilate, without realizing it, spoke the truth about Jesus, “Behold, your King!” In the same way Caiaphas, the High Priest, unwittingly preaches the Gospel. For “it was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people” (Jn. 18.14). Jesus dies, one man for the people. Caiaphas means this should save them from Roman wrath, but in the providence of God, this death saves us all from God’s own wrath, what we justly deserve for our sins, what our entire race has merited for our mass rebellion. Jesus the “one man” dies for “the people.”

From creation, everything man has is gift. He has given you your body and soul, eyes, ears, and all your members, your reason and all your senses, and still takes care of them; likewise He has given you house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all you have. He lavishes everything upon us entirely by His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us. As at creation, so in salvation, God does the work. That’s what it means that one man dies for the people. Everything is taken out of your hands and placed in His.

The German theologian Oswald Bayer puts it this way: “The Kingdom of God is not being prepared but has been prepared, while the sons of the Kingdom are being prepared, not preparing the Kingdom; that is to say, the Kingdom merits the sons, not the sons the Kingdom.” Christ’s merit makes you a son of God, forgiven, an heir of everlasting life, with the promise of resurrection. We do not merit the Kingdom, but the Kingdom merits us. We do not earn the Kingdom, but the Kingdom earns us. We do not enter the Kingdom, but the Kingdom draws us in and grants us entrance. We do not rebirth ourselves, but are born again, all by God’s grace.

So rejoice on this Friday which is truly good: for your salvation is out of your hands, and entirely in the hands of Jesus.