Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
A Sacred Mystery We Will Never Solve
I never attended a worship service on Good Friday until I became an Episcopalian. In the church of my childhood, hymns and sermons with Good Friday themes permeated the entire year. We sang hymns like:
On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross;
The emblem of suffering and shame,
And 'twas on that old cross, where the Dearest and Best;
For a world of lost sinners was slain.
Or
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood;
Lose all their guilt and stain.
Or
Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There's pow'r in the blood! Pow'r in the blood!
Would you o'er evil, the victory win?
There's wonderful pow'r in the blood!
Or
Alas! And did my Savior bleed! And did my Sovereign die!
Would he devote that sacred head, for sinners such as I?
At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,
And the burdens of my heart rolled away;
It was there by faith, I received my sight;
And now I am happy all the day.
Many of the sermons I heard preached back then included some retelling of, or reference to, Jesus' death on the cross. Blood. Suffering. Death. These are dark, disturbing themes. But in my childhood church, it was clearly understood that Jesus took up the agony of the cross to reclaim all of humanity -- one individual at a time -- as God's own.
These days, I would want to argue that Jesus' death cannot be understood apart from Jesus' life and ministry. The Son of God not only died "for" us; he lived "for" us as well. The life Jesus lived and the death Jesus died tell us something about God's very Being.
On Good Friday we are vividly reminded that, for Christians, theoretical abstractions do not bring about the healing and wholeness of salvation. God did not send an "idea"! In Jesus, God offered God's own Self. As much as we might like to drain the blood of Jesus from our religious language, we cannot. As much as we may wish it otherwise, the Church (yes, even Episcopalians!) proclaims Christ crucified. And today, above all days, is the day to ponder a sacred mystery we will never solve.
The Rev. Gary Manning
Rector
Trinity Church, Wauwatosa
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