Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12; John 19:16b – 37
It’s frustrating to try to summarize and offer a few quotes from these remarkable sermons by Wright — I always want to offer you the whole thing because so much of it is meaningful. So again, I am forced to choose and again I suggest you buy this wonderful book and read it in its entirety: Christians at the Cross by N.T. Wright.
About God Friday, Wright says that it is the “cataclysmic event” of Holy Week, an event that made no sense at all at the time, especially to Jesus’ friends and followers: “the stupid and pointless snuffing out of the brightest light and best hope Israel ever had. Jesus’ crucifixion must have made his followers wonder if Satan had been tricking them all along, if God had not after all been at work in Jesus, if Israel’s God was maybe not the world’s creator and judge after all, if maybe Israel’s God didn’t exist, if maybe there was no God at all….Watching Jesus get dragged off to a mockery of a trial, a brutal and degrading beating and then the worst torture and death imaginable would force all those questions on them. If we don’t recognize that, then we have domesticated the cross, turned it into a safe symbol of private faith, and forgotten what it was really about. And then we wonder why we are left with nowhere to turn when things in our own lives, our own families, our own communities, our own civilization, seem to go not just pear-shaped — at least a pear still has a shape! — but utterly chaotic, totally random. Good Friday was chaos come again: darkness, earthquake, violence and the death of the one who had given life to so many.”
[And now I am skipping a lot of excellent writing about the cross to get to the best good news about the Cross…]
“…in Jesus’ world that word ‘finished’ is what you wrote on a bill when it had been settled: ‘Paid in full!’ But underneath these is the meaning John intends, I believe, most deeply. When God the creator made his wonderful world, at the end of the sixth day he finished it. He completed his work. Now, on the Friday, the sixth day of the week, Jesus has completed the work of redeeming the world. With his shameful, chaotic, horrible death he has gone to the very bottom, to the darkest and deepest place of ruin, and has planted there the sign that says ‘Rescued’. It is the sign of love, the love of the creator for his ruined creation, the love of the saviour for his ruined people. Yes, of course, it all has to be worked out. The victory has to be implemented. But it’s done, it’s completed; it’s finished.”
Did you hear that: “IT’S DONE!! IT’S COMPLETED!!! IT’S FINISHED!!!!”
What are the sorrows, confusions, pains, betrayals, sins you want to place in the basket and put on the Cross? Perhaps for you it would help to write them down as the people at Easington Colliery did. Perhaps kneeling and naming would be an act of relinquishing your efforts to carry them. Or perhaps like me, it would help you to have a permanent tattoo stamped on your forehead so you can never forget: PAID IN FULL! (In case you’re wondering, I don’t have such a tattoo, but i have wondered, due to my penchant toward gospel memory loss, if it might be a good idea:)
Whatever you do, sing, dance, cry, celebrate — GOOD FRIDAY IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF CHAOS!
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