The Liberating News of Good Friday
by Pastor Tim Shaw
John 19:38 Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy–five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Author and New York Times opinion columnist, Tish Harrison Warren, wrote a blog post at the beginning of Lent (the season we are now in leading up to Easter) called, “We’re All Sinners, and Accepting That Is Actually a Good Thing.” Really? Why is our ability to accept the fact that we are all sinners a really good thing?
In her article Warren writes, “My favorite definition of sin comes from the English author Francis Spufford. He says that most of us in the West think of sin as a word that “basically means ‘indulgence’ or ‘enjoyable naughtiness.’” Instead, he calls sin “the human propensity to mess things up.”
Warren continues, “This is the slow dawning that I had about myself in college, and with it came liberation. Far from being a crushing blow of self-hatred, the realization of my actual, non-theoretical sinfulness came with something like a recognition of grace.”
Here’s the truth about me. I have the “non-theoretical” ability to do things and say things that can actually hurt other people. It is possible for me to fail to do things for others that I know are the right things for me to do. These sins of commission and omission are not only propensities that I have but descriptions of what I have done. I am a sinner.
Warren writes, “Every week now in church, I kneel with my congregation and admit, in the words of the Anglican liturgy, that I have sinned against God, “in thought, word and deed” by what I have done and by what I have left undone, that I have not loved God with my whole heart and have not loved my neighbor as myself. With my whole community around me, week in and week out, I admit, as Spufford says, that I have broken stuff, including other people and myself with my human propensity to, ahem, mess things up.”
The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not, fundamentally, good advice, even though we are called to live out the guidance we find in the Scriptures. The Gospel is NEWS. It is the amazing announcement of what has already been done for you and me (because we could not do it for ourselves or on our own). Jesus Christ took upon Himself all of my sins as well as the sins of the world. This stunning truth about what God has freely done for you and me should lead us to fall on our knees in humility and gratitude. Jesus died in our place so that we might be forgiven for all the ways we “mess things up.”
This Holy Week, let me encourage you to not just jump from Palm Sunday to Easter. If you do that, you just might miss the heart of the Gospel. God so loved the world that He gave His One and only Son. God poured out His love on the cross of Jesus. Let me encourage you to pause and remember what it cost to make the forgiveness of our sins possible. It cost the life of the Son of God.
Let me invite you to join us for the TENEBRAE SERVICE, either in person or online, tonight at 6:30 pm. We will lead you on a liberating journey to the cross of Jesus.
The most important event in the history of the world happened on Good Friday. The death of Christ on the cross reminds us that we are, indeed, all sinners, and accepting that truth and then receiving God’s forgiveness, is actually a really, really good thing for us to do. Our God is a compassionate God who is eager to extend His love and His mercy to us every time we ask. I am a sinner and I am a child of God, who is loved, forgiven and being transformed into a clearer reflection of Jesus. Embracing these truths is what can set us free.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what I have done, and by what I have left undone. I have not loved You with my whole heart and have not loved my neighbor as myself. I have messed things up. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Amen.
