Good Friday Sermon

Here is the sermon from Good Friday, March 29.

There are some things in life that just call for much more of a demand for justice than others.  Just last week, I remember reading a story about a little 13 month old who was shot in his stroller.  Being the father of a youngster of about the same age, you can imagine that I could relate a little bit to the story.  Somewhere deep in my heart, I found myself thinking that there could be no punishment suitable enough for the person who had done such a thing.  I didn’t know of all the circumstances surrounding that event, but that didn’t matter.  I don’t know that you could ever make a convincing argument that such a thing is the right thing to do.

And as I thought about that, my thoughts inevitably flashed back over the last decade or so.  We’ve had other similar moments that make us want to see justice served.  A rampage in Connecticut.  A guy unleashing his fury in a movie theatre in Colorado.  A little further back, airplanes being crashed into towers and other significant buildings, simply to strike fear into our way of life.  And deep down inside, we want to see justice paid.  We want to see the wrong made right, and we want to see the guilty party suffer and pay for their role in such events.

And yet, I would suggest that these aren’t the only realms where we want to see someone get what they deserve.  Sure, there are other things in our lives that aren’t quite on the same scale as these that I’ve just described, but we still want to see right done, even if it may not be quite as “big” as gunmen and terrorists.  We know of that person at work who will say or do anything to get a leg up on everyone else, even if it means lying or taking credit for something that doesn’t completely belong to him or her.  We want to see that person exposed for who they are.  We want to see the right thing done, and the right thing is for justice to be done.

That desire for justice is a remnant of the original design with which God created us.  When God first molded the man out of the dust of the earth and breathed His very own life into the man’s nostrils, God made Him to know what was the right thing to do.  Since the man, and shortly after that, the woman, knew God perfectly, they knew exactly what God’s desire and design for life was.  They knew that God had created them to live according to His perfect design, and were happy to do so.

That is, until that day when they first followed their own thoughts and instincts rather than what God had said.  Immediately after they had done what God had said not to do, they recognized that God was a God of justice.  They knew that they had done what God had specifically said not to do, and so they tried to hide.  They knew that God would demand justice.  Deep inside, they knew that justice would be demanded of them.  And rather than face that justice from God, they sought to hide away from the God of justice.

As we gather today, my friends, we are witnesses to a God of justice.  There is indeed a price to pay for wrongdoing, or, to use God’s more serious word for it, there is indeed a price to pay for sin.  God is a God of right.  God is outraged at wrong, or at sin.  Even from the beginning, God warned the man and the woman about the price of sin.  It demanded death.  And as we continue to live as His creation, we still see that sense of justice that God originally created within us.  When we see wrong, we want to see a price paid.  We want to see justice.

And yet, there is also something troublesome about our desire for justice.  We want to see God’s justice done.  The thing is, we often want to see God’s justice done when it comes to the things that other people do.  We want that liar in our office to get caught in a lie and to pay the price.  But we really don’t want to see justice done for that time when we stretched the truth a little bit.  We don’t want to see justice done for that time we forget to get our task done.  We’d rather have it overlooked.  We try to hide it from the sight of others.

But today, we stand face to face with the cross of Jesus.  That cross of Jesus is a cross that demands justice.  And we simply cannot stand there and face that cross without facing a difficult truth in our lives.  There is that within us which demands God’s justice.  Not a single one of us can stand before that cross of Jesus and claim that we have no sin.  We stand face to face with the cross of Jesus, and that cross calls us to repentance, to a recognition that we have indeed sinned and done what is wrong in God’s eyes.  That cross calls us to repentance, and to confession of that sin, and to reflection on our lives as God’s Spirit searches out the sin within us.

But that’s not all we see when we stand face to face with the cross.  In a fashion, the cross itself shows us that we see more than simply God’s justice at work.  We see two different wooden beams that intersect to form the shape of the cross.  And, in a similar fashion, we see two very significant characteristics of God which intersect at the cross.  We’ve already focused on the characteristic of God’s justice.  We see that very prominently as we stand facing the cross.  But we see another characteristic of God at work on that very same cross, the characteristic of mercy.

God doesn’t always give us what we deserve.  In fact, God seems to go out of His way to withhold His hand from giving us what He really should give.  We get cut off in traffic, and a few choice thoughts flash through our minds about that driver that definitely do not demonstrate love for our neighbor.  If God were only a God of justice, that should be it.  We have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves, and we should get God’s justice.  But God withholds His hand.  He doesn’t give us what we deserve.  And that’s where we see God’s mercy at work.

God could give us what we deserve at the moment that we sin against His design for our lives.  But God chooses to hold His hand still.  And that’s a little unfamiliar to us as we live our lives.  We like to see people get what they deserve.  When they go speeding by us, we want to see the police car pull them over as they go around the bend up ahead.  Or if they do something against us, we look forward to letting them know what they did wrong.  If they deserve a chewing out, we often find that we can’t wait to let them have it.  And so, mercy is something that we aren’t all that familiar with.

But as we stand facing the cross, we see God’s justice and God’s mercy come together.  God withholds His hand from giving us what we deserve.  But God still pours out the full price for the wrong and sin that has been done.  God withholds His hand from us, and instead puts it on the cross.  God will see justice done.  The price will be paid, and that paid in full on the cross by Jesus.  God will see mercy done.  God doesn’t give us what our sin calls for, but pours it out on Jesus on the cross.

Justice and mercy come together in a way that only God can imagine.  Jesus willingly pays the price for justice, choosing to bear the weight of your sin, and my sin, and the sin of the whole world, on the cross.  Jesus pleads with God to look upon us with mercy, by offering to take the price upon Himself.

That’s what we gather in worship to observe today.  God is a God of justice and a God of mercy.  In the cross of Jesus, God shows us that He can be the God of both of those equally.  And yet, even as we stand face to face with the cross today, what we see is only an ending point.  A cross, as an instrument of death and judgment, simply cannot be more than an ending point.  You only encounter death at the cross.  Death is found here, and nothing more.  And even if it means the death of our sin, we simply cannot stop here.  Death is an ending.  But as we stand face to face with the cross today, we anticipate something more.

Setting us free from our sin is only part of what our God desires for us.  As Jesus dies the death that God’s justice demands, and as He shows the Father’s hand in mercy, as God withholds His hand of judgment from us, we are set free from our sin.  But we simply cannot stop here at the cross.  If we did, we only stop at death.  And Jesus’ death on the cross anticipates something more, because God desires for more than simply the death of our sin, and the price of our justice.

As we stand face to face with the cross, we also anticipate God’s grace.  Death is not the ending that God had in mind.  Yes, death became involved, because sin calls for death.  Sin calls for God’s justice, and justice in this case means death.  But even though God may withhold His hand in mercy, we still are face to face with death at the cross.  Jesus may have taken our sin, but He died with our sin.  And so, the cross anticipates something more, the grace of God.

Death is not the end.  The price of God’s justice has been paid for you by Jesus on the cross.  God has withheld what your sin deserved, and has shown you mercy, as Jesus endured in your place on the cross.  But God’s design and will isn’t to merely end in death.  God doesn’t want it where only the price is paid and nothing more.  God is a God who does new things.  He kills, but He brings back to life.  God not only withholds His hand from the justice that we deserve, but He goes to extra lengths.

God pours out His grace into our lives.  As we stand face to face with the cross today, we anticipate more.  We anticipate God’s grace.  We anticipate resurrection.  We anticipate new life.  You and I may feel sorrow for our sin today, but we know that we will come upon the day of rejoicing, when death is overcome.  We are thankful for God’s mercy shown to us by Jesus on the cross, but we also anticipate God doing even more in our lives.  God will pour out His grace as He gives new life.  Our sin, and the nature tainted by sin, will be put to death, and God will give new life.  And the sign of that new life is resurrection!

God’s justice and mercy intersect at the cross.  But even as they intersect, they point us in anticipation of God’s grace.  God will do for us above and beyond what we could ever expect.  God kills, but God makes alive again.  God not only sets you free from your sin, God gives you new life.  God not only withholds what you have deserved, God gives good and perfect gifts to you by His grace.  

Today, however, we stand face to face with the cross.  We confess that we have done that which calls for God’s justice in our lives.  As we humbly stand before the cross of our Lord Jesus, we bow our heads in humble thanks that He would endure the cross and its shame in our place.  And even as the sorrow for our sin washes over us, even as we hear Jesus giving up His Spirit into death, we still find ourselves with a measure of anticipation.  This is not the end.  God is not only a God of justice and mercy.  And so, we wait.  We anticipate God’s grace.  We anticipate new life.  We anticipate resurrection.  May it be so, for Christ’s sake.  Amen.